Chapter 5 - The Confession of a Traitor
I scrambled to my feet, wiping soot and blood from my forehead, breathing in the cold night air. Antonio and two guards rushed over, pulling me away from the collapsing inferno.
“Are you hit, Boss?” Antonio asked, inspecting my torn sleeve and blackened hands.
“I’m fine,” I spat, my voice raw from the smoke. I looked back at the burning wreckage of the laundry block. Clara’s body was gone, consumed by the flames that Marco had engineered to bury the truth.
“Find Marco,” I said quietly, the fury inside me condensing into something cold, heavy, and absolute. “Find him now, or I will turn every inch of this city upside down until I am standing over his grave.”
Before Antonio could answer, the crunch of gravel echoed from the front gates.
Headlights cut through the lingering mist. A black Mercedes S-class—Marco’s car—slowly rolled up the winding driveway, stopping fifty yards from the main entrance of the mansion.
The driver's door opened, and Marco stepped out.
He wore his usual immaculate charcoal suit, unbothered by the rain, holding a black umbrella in one hand. He didn't look like a man running for his life. He looked like a man arriving for a board meeting.
As he walked toward us, his gaze shifted from my soot-stained clothes to the roaring flames of Building E-409 behind me. A slow, thin smile touched the corner of his mouth.
“It seems we had an accident, Alessio,” Marco said smoothly, stopping ten paces away. He adjusted his cuffs. “I told you those old wiring systems were a hazard. You really should have demolished this wing months ago.”
Antonio stepped in front of me, his gun half-raised, but I held up a hand, motioning for him to stand down.
I walked slowly toward Marco until we were standing face-to-face. The smell of peppermint and tobacco was faint beneath the scent of burning wood.
“You signed off on E-409 as vacant yesterday,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.
Marco didn't flinch. He didn't blink. He just tilted his umbrella slightly to keep the drizzle off his shoulders. “Paperwork gets messy when you run an empire, my friend. Mistakes happen in the ledgers.”
“It wasn't a mistake that you put Clara and my daughter in that building,” I said, watching his eyes narrow just a fraction of a millimeter. “And it wasn't a mistake that someone poisoned Clara tonight before setting fire to the room.”
Marco sighed softly, a sound almost theatrical in its disappointment.
“You always were too smart for your own good, Alessio,” he said, his tone shifting from deferential advisor to something cold and calculating. “Ever since Isabella died, you’ve been slipping. You let sentimentality cloud your judgment. When Isabella came to me seven years ago begging for help to fake her death because she knew your enemies were closing in on her, I helped her.”
My fists clenched so hard my fingernails broke the skin of my palms. “You helped her?”
“I gave her a new life,” Marco smiled, a cruel, bitter twist of his lips. “I gave her sister, Clara, the identity to take care of the child in secret while Isabella went into hiding abroad. But Isabella couldn't stay away, could she? Three months ago, she tried to come back to New York to see you. She wanted to tell you the truth about your daughter.”
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Marco took a step closer, lowering his voice so only I could hear.
“So I had her car run off the road into Montauk Harbor,” Marco whispered. “Just like I had Clara poisoned tonight. Because an empire cannot be ruled by a man who cares about family. You belong to the Moretti syndicate, Alessio. Not to ghosts.”
