Chapter 10 - The Architect of Ruin
Adrian stopped ten paces from his father, his gun aimed directly at the old man’s heart.
Seeing Arthur alive in the flesh was an entirely different torment than watching a grainy video screen.
His father smelled of the same expensive sandalwood cologne he had worn to Adrian’s university graduation.
His voice carried the same effortless authority that had once silenced rooms of international bankers.
"Untie Victor," Adrian commanded, his voice shaking with a terrible, icy fury.
Arthur glanced at his younger brother with mild disgust.
"Victor was weak, Adrian."
"He had the family name, but he possessed the spine of a parish priest."
"He cried when I told him what needed to happen to Luca."
"He wept like an infant instead of understanding the brutal arithmetic of legacy."
Victor Moretti lifted his bruised head from his chest, his eyes bloodshot and swollen.
"Adrian..." Victor gasped through split lips.
"Don't listen to him... he's lost his mind... he's spent seven years rotting in this tomb..."
"Silence, Victor," Arthur snapped without raising his voice.
He turned back to face Adrian, folding his hands behind his back.
"You think I took joy in putting a bullet into your brother?"
"You executed him like a stray dog in a ditch!" Adrian screamed, taking two violent strides forward.
"He was twenty-four years old!"
"He was my brother, and he was your son!"
"He was a traitor to this bloodline," Arthur said, his eyes turning cold and dead.
"Luca spent six months photocopying our accounts to hand them to a federal prosecutor in Chicago."
"Do you have any concept of what would have happened to Moretti Holdings?"
"The Department of Justice would have frozen our maritime assets from Rotterdam to Singapore."
"The family name would have been dragged through congressional subcommittees for a decade."
"You would have spent your adult life answering grand jury questions instead of running the largest private shipping firm on the continent."
"I gave Luca three separate opportunities to burn those ledgers."
"He looked me in the eyes and called me a criminal."
"He forgot whose money paid for his sports cars, his Ivy League diplomas, and his lavish lifestyle."
"He chose the law over his own blood."
"And when a branch of the family tree rots, Adrian, you do not prune the leaf."
"You cut the branch at the trunk before it poisons the root."
Adrian stared at the monster who had raised him.
"So you cut his brakes."
"I gave Samuel an order to neutralize the car," Arthur said, glancing contemptuously at Ward.
"Samuel bungled the sabotage, as he bungled everything else toward the end of his service."
"Luca managed to drive the vehicle through the rain until he crashed."
"And when I arrived at that embankment, the boy was still clinging to life, spitting defiance into the mud."
"He told me that Uncle Victor was going to help him put me in a federal penitentiary."
"He looked at me with pure hatred."
"So I solved the problem."
"Just as I built this family from nothing, I removed the obstacle that threatened to destroy it."
Ethan stepped forward, leveling the twelve-gauge barrel at Arthur’s forehead.
"You murdered a boy who couldn't even stand up on his broken legs."
Arthur looked at Ethan with utter indifference, as if observing a speck of dust on his polished mahogany floor.
"You should have stayed in Kenosha, Mr. Cole."
"I left you alive out of professional courtesy because Ward assured me you were an insignificant coward."
"You crawled out of the gutter to deliver a broken watch to my son, and now you will die on an island that doesn't exist on standard civilian maps."
Arthur slipped his hand into his smoking jacket pocket.
Marcus immediately raised his rifle.
"Hands out of the pocket! Right now!"
Arthur pulled out a small black ceramic detonation switch, his thumb resting lightly on the red toggle.
"Do you truly believe I spent forty million dollars building this estate without an insurance policy?"
"Underneath this floor sits five tons of industrial mining explosive wired directly into the bedrock."
"If my thumb releases this spring, this entire bluff collapses into the freezing depths of Lake Superior."
"No bodies."
"No records."
"Only another tragic, unexplainable disappearance for the Moretti family archives."
Victor screamed from his chair, thrashing against the heavy zip-ties.
"Arthur, don't do it!"
Arthur looked past Marcus and Ethan, locking his dark eyes exclusively on Adrian.
May you like
"Drop your weapons, Adrian."
"Drop them, or we all go down into the dark together right now."
