Chapter 14 - The Price of Betrayal
Salvatore Moretti collapsed onto his knees on the Persian carpet, clawing at Dominic’s combat trousers.
"Dominic! Dominic, please!" Salvatore begged, tears and saliva streaming down his chin.
"I raised you after your father died!"
"I taught you how to shoot, I taught you how to run the ports, I protected you from the commission!"
"You are my own blood!"
Dominic looked down at the man who had occupied his father’s chair for over a decade.
There was no anger left on Dominic’s face, only a vast, empty void of pure contempt.
"You killed my father, Salvatore," Dominic said, each word falling like an icy stone into a deep well.
Salvatore froze, his eyes bulging in complete, horrified shock.
Lorenzo Castiglione stepped forward, tossing the thick leather dossier onto the mahogany table.
The papers scattered across the wood, showing the ordnance requisition receipts from twelve years ago.
"You bought thirty pounds of C4 explosive from a depot in Virginia," Dominic whispered.
"You wired it to the ignition of my father’s sedan outside our church in Brooklyn."
"Then you stood over his open coffin and told me the Castigliones had made me an orphan."
"You stole twelve years of my life, Salvatore."
"You made me wage a war against innocent men while you siphoned our foundation into offshore accounts."
"And last night, you tried to make me murder the only woman who ever loved me for who I was."
"Forgive me, Dominic," Salvatore sobbed, pressing his forehead against Dominic’s steel-toed boot.
"The greed blinded me... the trust was too large... I only wanted what I deserved!"
"You deserve nothing but dirt," Dominic replied quietly.
Dominic did not pull the trigger of his rifle.
He stepped back, pulling his boot away from his uncle’s desperate fingers.
He looked toward Don Falcone and the assembled council of the Five Families.
"What is the judgment of the commission for a man who attempts to murder his own brother's widow and frames the council?" Dominic asked.
Don Falcone leaned on his ivory walking stick, his aged face carved from granite.
"The code has existed since our grandfathers crossed the Atlantic," Falcone spoke with heavy, solemn finality.
"Treason against blood cannot be pardoned."
"Treason against the matriarch cannot be cleansed with gold."
"Salvatore Moretti is stripped of his rank, his name, and his protection."
"His assets are forfeit to the widow Elena and the legitimate Don."
"The council ratifies Dominic Moretti as the supreme leader of this territory."
Falcone turned his cold eyes toward Salvatore cowering on the carpet.
"Take him out of this hotel," Falcone ordered.
"Do not let his filthy blood stain the carpets of the commission."
Matteo and two burly soldiers stepped forward, grabbing Salvatore beneath his armpits and hauling him to his feet.
Salvatore screamed and kicked like a terrified animal, but their grips were made of iron.
"Dominic! Dominic, look at me! I am your family! You cannot do this to me!" Salvatore shrieked as they dragged him across the marble foyer toward the service elevators.
The heavy brass doors closed on his screaming voice, sealing his fate forever.
He would be taken to an abandoned foundry near the Gowanus Canal, where the Moretti family closed its darkest accounts.
Dominic stood at the head of the long table, the silence in the grand ballroom thick and heavy.
He lowered his rifle and turned toward Lorenzo Castiglione.
"The Brooklyn corridor is yours, Lorenzo," Dominic announced, his voice carrying the authority of an undisputed Don.
"The shipping lanes through Red Hook belong to the Castiglione family unconditionally."
"The blood feud between our names ends today, ratified by this council and witnessed by my mother."
Lorenzo bowed his head slightly, a gesture of profound respect between two men who had stared into the abyss and survived.
"A fair covenant, Don Dominic," Lorenzo replied.
"May your home find peace."
Dominic did not care about the territories, the contracts, or the nods of approval from the ancient crime lords.
He turned his back on the council, walking straight to his mother’s wheelchair.
He dropped to one knee before Donna Elena, burying his face into her lap just as he had done when he was a boy.
Donna Elena placed her frail, trembling hands onto his head, stroking his dark hair as tears fell onto his neck.
"Take me to her, Dominic," Donna Elena whispered softly.
May you like
"Take us to the girl who gave her flesh to keep an old woman alive."
Dominic stood up, took the handles of the wheelchair with his scarred hands, and pushed his mother out into the gray light of morning.
