Chapter 5 - The Usurper’s Coronation
At seven o'clock in the morning, the winter sun broke through the clouds over Manhattan, painting the skyline in cold shades of slate and gold.
Inside the grand boardroom of the DeLuca corporate headquarters on Madison Avenue, thirty men sat around an eighty-foot mahogany table.
These were the capos, the underbosses, the financial launderers, and the corrupt political fixers who controlled the city’s underground veins.
Every man wore a black silk tie out of customary mourning, but the tension in the room was thicker than gunsmoke.
At the head of the table, sitting in the high-backed leather chair that had belonged to the DeLuca patriarchs for forty years, sat Santino Rizzo.
Santino wore a bespoke charcoal suit, a black cashmere overcoat draped across his shoulders, and Matteo’s stolen gold signet ring on his finger.
He leaned back, lazily tapping the rim of a crystal glass with a gold Montblanc pen.
Beside him stood Raymond Miller, the syndicate’s chief legal counsel, clutching a thick leather-bound folder bearing the family seal.
Miller was sixty-two years old, with thinning silver hair and sweat beading nervously along his wrinkled forehead.
"Gentlemen," Santino began, his voice amplified by the acoustically engineered cedar paneling of the room.
"We gather here under the shadow of a monumental and heartbreaking tragedy."
"Our beloved Don, Matteo DeLuca, was taken from us in the prime of his life by a sudden and catastrophic cardiac failure."
"Dr. Vance did everything medically possible, but the damage to his heart was insurmountable."
A chorus of performative nods and solemn murmurs rippled across the table from the loyalists Santino had already bought off with offshore accounts.
"In accordance with our sacred traditions," Santino continued, gesturing toward the nervous attorney.
"We must ensure that the family remains unified, protected, and decisively led during this period of vulnerability."
"Mr. Miller, please read the emergency succession addendum executed by Don Matteo last month."
Raymond Miller cleared his throat, his hands visibly shaking as he opened the leather folio and pulled out a notarized document.
The paper was a masterpiece of legal forgery, drafted three weeks ago by Santino’s private team and stamped with Matteo's forged signature.
"The document reads as follows," Miller stammered, adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses to conceal his darting eyes.
"'In the event of my unexpected incapacitation or sudden demise, the entirety of the DeLuca trust, executive voting shares, and operational commands...'"
"‘...shall be transferred with absolute executive authority to Caporegime Santino Rizzo.’"
"‘Furthermore, all operational decisions regarding territorial expansion and alliances shall fall exclusively under his discretion.’"
The room erupted into an immediate, furious storm of shouting, desk-slamming, and overlapping arguments.
"This is absolute garbage!" a voice roared from the double doors at the back of the boardroom.
The heavy mahogany doors flew open, crashing against the decorative plaster moldings with the force of an artillery shell.
Sofia DeLuca marched down the central aisle like an avenging Valkyrie, flanked by two towering bodyguards who looked terrified to touch her.
Sofia was twenty-eight years old, possessing the same piercing emerald-green eyes, raven-black hair, and aristocratic cheekbones as her brother.
She wore a long black tailored wool trench coat and leather gloves, her face pale with grief but blazing with unadulterated fury.
"You think you can forge my brother’s hand and steal this entire empire while his body is still warm, Santino?" Sofia hissed.
She slammed both palms down onto the polished mahogany table directly across from Santino, staring him down without flinching.
"Matteo despised you for the last six months," Sofia declared, her voice ringing clear above the stunned silence of the capos.
"He told me last Sunday that you were secretly meeting with Don Moretti at the marina in Atlantic City."
"He was preparing to strip you of your crew and audit your construction shell companies on Monday morning."
"And suddenly, my thirty-four-year-old brother, who ran five miles every morning and never had a heart murmur in his life, drops dead?"
Santino did not lose his composure; he merely offered a patronizing, sorrowful smile that made Sofia’s hands clench into fists.
"Sofia, my dear, you are hysterical with grief, and that is entirely understandable," Santino said softly, raising his hands in mock placation.
"Matteo was a brother to me; his passing has ripped the heart out of all of us."
"But this document is legal, certified, and fully registered with our private judiciary."
"Where is his body, Santino?" Sofia demanded, cutting through his rehearsed performance like a scalpel.
"I went to the estate medical wing two hours ago, and the room was locked down by your private muscle."
"I want an independent autopsy performed by the chief medical examiner at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital before any burial takes place."
Santino’s smile hardened into a cold, reptilian line of absolute authority.
"The Don’s body has already been transferred to our private family facility for preparation and cremation, in accordance with his personal wishes," Santino lied smoothly.
"There will be no public spectacle, and there will be no desecration of his remains by state medical examiners."
"Marco, escort Miss DeLuca back to her residence in Westchester."
"Ensure that she has round-the-clock security for her own protection until this transition is finalized."
Marco stepped forward, resting his massive hand on Sofia’s shoulder with unmistakable, threatening pressure.
"Take your hands off me," Sofia snarled, shaking off his grip with aristocratic disdain.
"You won't get away with this, Santino."
"The DeLuca bloodline does not bow to treacherous snakes, and the truth has a way of rising from the dirt."
Sofia turned on her heel and stormed out of the boardroom, her heels clicking in furious rhythm against the marble foyer.
Santino watched her leave, his jaw tightening as he turned back to address the silent, intimidated capos around the table.
Before he could speak, his private encrypted satellite phone vibrated violently against the mahogany wood.
Santino picked up the phone, expecting to hear confirmation from the New Jersey crematorium that the job was finished.
Instead, the panicked, breathless voice of Dr. Julian Vance came through the speaker.
"Santino, we have a catastrophic situation," Vance whispered, his voice trembling so violently that he could barely articulate words.
"What the hell are you talking about?" Santino hissed, keeping his voice low so the table couldn't hear.
"The transport van arrived at the estate service dock twenty minutes ago to collect the body," Vance stammered.
"We unlocked the cold preservation vault in the east wing."
"The gurney is empty, Santino."
"There is no corpse."
Santino’s knuckles turned bone-white as his fingers dug into the armrest of Matteo’s executive chair.
"What do you mean, there is no corpse?" Santino spat, his heart stopping in his chest.
"Someone took him," Vance cried, on the verge of complete hysteria.
"The sheet was stuffed with bags of melting ice to mimic his body weight from the exterior window."
"And Bruno was found unconscious in the maintenance corridor with a fractured jaw."
"One of the domestic staff is missing—the little Bell girl who cleans the east wing."
"Santino... Matteo was alive when they took him out of this building."
Santino slammed the satellite phone down onto the table with enough force to crack the protective glass screen.
His eyes wild, his breath coming in ragged, terrified gasps, the usurper realized that his nightmare had only just begun.
The king was not dead.
May you like
And the king was coming back for his throne.
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