Chapter 8 - Cold Earth and Midnight Reckoning
The cold November wind tears through Victoria’s thin red silk gown like thousands of icy needles.
Her high-heeled shoes snap on the uneven gravel of the driveway, forcing her to kick them off into the bushes.
She runs barefoot across the frosted grass, her breath coming in ragged, burning gasps.
Behind her, deep within the dark estate woods, the terrifying, low baying of Dobermans begins.
The estate is surrounded by twelve-foot wrought-iron fencing topped with razor wire.
She knows there is only one way out: the south service gate where the delivery trucks enter.
She sprints toward the treeline, branches lashing across her bare arms and tearing at her face.
Mud and frozen slush seep between her toes, numbing her feet until she can barely feel the ground.
Ahead, through the dense oaks, the lights of the south gatehouse glow like two yellow eyes.
"Open the gate!" she screams at the top of her lungs, stumbling out of the tree line.
"Open the damn gate! I'll pay you fifty thousand dollars right now!"
The heavy iron gate remains completely shut, its massive motorized hinges silent and unmoving.
Standing beneath the security floodlights is not a bribable guard, but Marco, the consigliere.
Beside him sit two massive black Dobermans, panting quietly in the cold air, their eyes fixed on her throat.
Victoria skids to a halt on the wet asphalt, clutching her shivering ribs.
"Marco... please," she wheezes, dropping to her knees in the wet gravel.
"You know how much money I have hidden in Panama... I can give you half... ten million dollars..."
"Your accounts were frozen forty minutes ago, Victoria," Marco replies in a calm, indifferent monotone.
"Mr. Moretti’s financial team moved through the federal courts while you were serving dessert."
Footsteps approach from behind her on the gravel path.
Slow, heavy, deliberate footsteps that crunch with terrifying precision.
Victoria turns around on her hands and knees, shivering uncontrollably as her body begins to go into shock.
Luca Moretti walks out of the darkness, wearing a heavy charcoal wool overcoat over his waistcoat.
He stops five feet away from her, looking down at her the way an exterminator looks at a trapped roach.
"Get up," Luca says quietly.
"Please, Luca... please don't kill me," she sobs, tears streaming through her smeared mascara.
"I didn't kill Julian with my own hands... he slipped... he hit his head on the railing, I swear it!"
"You watched him drown," Luca says, his voice flat and merciless.
"You stood on the deck of that yacht and watched a boy who loved you beg for a life preserver."
"Just like you watched Martha freeze in that basement."
"Just like you kicked Natalie down concrete steps because she had the decency you lack."
"I'm begging you!" she screams, throwing herself forward to clutch at the hem of his dark coat.
Luca steps back with cold disgust, letting her face hit the freezing gravel.
"I don't murder unarmed women on my driveway, Victoria," Luca says.
"That would be far too quick, and far too clean for what you've done."
He gestures toward the tree line, where two black sedans with government plates quietly idle.
Four men in dark windbreakers bearing federal insignias step out into the beam of the headlights.
"Detective Miller from Chicago Homicide," Luca introduces casually.
"And Special Agent Torres from the Federal Bureau of Investigation."
"They have an unsealed federal indictment for the murder of Julian Vance, interstate wire fraud, and grand larceny."
Victoria looks up at the agents with wild, disbelieving eyes.
"You... you called the feds?" she stammers, completely bewildered. "You're a mafia boss!"
"I am a businessman who protects his family," Luca corrects her coldly.
"And I find that a life sentence inside a federal penitentiary in West Virginia is far colder than my basement."
The agents move forward quickly, clicking heavy steel handcuffs around Victoria's bruised, shivering wrists.
As they haul her toward the backseat of the sedan, she thrashes violently, screaming profanities into the night.
Luca doesn't watch them drive away.
May you like
He turns on his heel and begins the long walk back toward the mansion.
He has a promise to keep on the third floor.
