Chapter 8 - The Voice from the Past
Captain Rossi stared down at the tiny piece of black plastic resting beside his water glass.
He looked up at Salvatore Moretti.
The old Don’s face had not lost an inch of its icy composure, but his fingers were gripping the handle of his ebony cane so tightly that the knuckles looked like white stones.
“Pick it up, Rossi,” Salvatore said softly, his voice dripping with venomous calm.
“Do not let a delusional boy and a kitchen maid disrupt the order of this family with foreign trash.”
“I will play it,” Rossi muttered, his loyalty to the old days warring with the cold certainty in Luca’s eyes.
Rossi picked up the microSD card, stood up slowly, and walked over to the AV control console mounted against the ballroom wall.
He slid the chip into the adapter port and hit the master audio sync button.
The ballroom’s state-of-the-art surround sound system hummed to life.
Then came the heavy static of the vintage analog intercom line.
Followed instantly by the sound of shattering porcelain and my voice, ragged and terrified, echoing off the gilded moldings:
“Vanessa, please! Stop! I didn't see anything!”
A heavy, suffocating silence dropped over the ballroom.
Every capo at the table froze.
The sound of Vanessa’s cold, sadistic voice filled the room:
“You saw plenty, you little gutter rat. You saw where the ledger was hidden...”
Then came the sickening sizzle of flesh, the hiss of the branding iron, and my scream of absolute agony tearing through the speakers.
Captain Rossi’s head snapped up.
His eyes, wide and bloodshot, fixed directly on Vanessa Bellini.
Vanessa’s painted composure dissolved into absolute terror.
She grabbed the edge of the mahogany table, her knuckles turning white.
“It’s a deepfake!” she shrieked, her voice cracking.
“He’s using AI audio technology to frame us!”
“That’s not my voice! That’s a digital fabrication!”
Before Rossi could respond, the recording continued.
The heavy, deliberate footsteps of Salvatore Moretti approached the microphone.
“Take the maid’s phone and smash the internal logic board... before she can transmit the image to my son.”
“What about the girl?” Vanessa’s voice asked.
“Let her finish the dinner service,” Salvatore’s unmistakable, gravelly voice echoed through the grand hall.
“After the engagement dinner, when everyone is asleep, have the cleaner from the docks take her out through the cellar exit. A tragic hit-and-run on the highway outside the gates...”
The audio system fell silent with a sharp click.
For five seconds, nobody in the grand ballroom breathed.
Then, Captain Rossi slowly turned around from the console.
His face was dark, mottled with a rage that transcended generations.
He looked past Luca, past me, and fixed his lethal, unblinking gaze directly on the old man sitting at the head of the table.
“Salvatore,” Rossi whispered, his voice trembling with disbelief and fury.
“Is that your voice?”
“Or is our Don Emeritus going to claim that seventy years of knowing him was also an AI fabrication?”
Salvatore Moretti did not flinch.
He slowly stood up from his chair, leaning his full weight on the silver skull of his cane.
He looked around the table at the twelve capos who had followed him through blood and war for four decades.
Not a single one of them met his eyes with warmth anymore.
They saw a man who had plotted to murder his own flesh and blood to retain control of an empire that had already outgrown him.
“You are all fools,” Salvatore said, his voice rising with cold, ancient pride.
“You think Luca is leading you into a golden age of peace with the federal government and union contracts?”
“He is selling out the family!”
“He gave our shipping lanes to the feds!”
“He negotiated with the union thugs we should have buried in concrete ten years ago!”
“I built this syndicate with my bare hands when most of you were still stealing cars in Sicily!”
“And I will burn it to the ground before I let a soft, sentimental boy hand it over to federal prosecutors!”
Salvatore suddenly reached inside his houndstooth coat with his left hand.
Before Marcus could even raise his weapon, the old man pulled a nickel-plated snub-nosed revolver and leveled it straight across the table.
May you like
Not at Luca.
At me.
