Chapter 13 - The Matriarch’s Judgment
Lorenzo stepped forward.
"What is your judgment, Donna Maria?"
The room waited with bated breath.
A capo’s execution in the Southern Syndicate was usually swift and bloody.
Donna Maria looked toward the window where two unmarked black sedans waited.
"A bullet is too quick. And too merciful."
She turned to her son.
"Hand her over to the federal prosecutors in Chicago. Let her spend the next
forty years in a concrete cell, scrubbing toilets with her own hands."
Bianca gasped in horror.
For a woman whose entire existence was vanity, wealth, and high-society parties,
an anonymous lifetime in a federal penitentiary was worse than death.
"No! Lorenzo, please! Shoot me! Don't send me there!" Bianca shrieked.
Lorenzo gave a slight nod.
Matteo and two guards hauled Bianca to her feet, dragging her kicking and
screaming down the grand corridor.
The heavy front doors slammed shut behind her.
Her screams faded into the morning breeze.
Donna Maria closed her eyes, releasing a long, quiet breath.
Then she looked up at Lorenzo.
"Now, my son. We settle our debts."
Lorenzo pulled a thick leather-bound ledger from the mahogany desk.
The ledger of family debts and oaths.
He opened it to the page bearing the name: Thomas Cross.
My father.
Lorenzo drew a heavy gold fountain pen.
Across the three-hundred-thousand-dollar balance, he wrote in bold black
strokes:
PAID IN FULL. BY BLOOD AND HONOR.
He tore the page from the binding.
He walked over and handed the parchment to me.
"Your family owes nothing, Evelyn," Lorenzo said softly.
"Not to me. Not to this city. Never again."
My hands shook as I held the paper.
A crushing weight that had suffocated my life for ten years dissolved into
nothing.
Tears burned my eyes.
"Thank you, Mr. Moretti."
"Not Mr. Moretti," Donna Maria said with a soft, affectionate smile from her
May you like
chair.
"Lorenzo."
