Chapter 7 - A Stolen Deed in the Magnolia VaultMarco Bellini sprang from his chair, his palms slamming against the walnut table with a loud crack.
“This is an insult! An outrage! You bring a scullery girl from your kitchen into the sacred council of the five families and accuse me of treason based on swamp gossip?”
Luca didn’t flinch. He didn’t blink.
He opened the cypress chest, pulled out the leather-bound diary of his father, and tossed it into the center of the table. Beside it, he laid the stack of yellowed bank transfer slips from the First Merchants Bank.
“Read them, gentlemen,” Luca commanded the room without looking away from Marco.
Vito Carbone, the oldest capo in the territory, a man who had sworn blood oaths alongside Luca’s grandfather, reached forward and picked up the top bank slip.
His weathered eyes narrowed behind his wire-rimmed glasses.
“Account #4409,” Vito read aloud, his raspy voice filling the silent chamber. “Authorized by Marco Bellini. Wire transfer to Falcone Logistics, Freeport, Bahamas. Date: December 4, 1974. Purpose noted: Clearing northern landing at Houma.”
Vito slowly raised his head, staring at Marco with pure, icy contempt.
“That was the night Don Antonio Moretti was ambushed on the river road,” Vito whispered. “Four of my cousins died in that motorcade, Marco.”
A deadly, suffocating silence descended on the council.
Marco’s breathing turned shallow and fast. He looked around the table, searching for an ally among the fourteen men he had shared meals with for thirty years.
Every single man averted his gaze.
In the Gulf Coast syndicate, business rivalries were handled with steel and fire, but betraying your own bloodline to an enemy syndicate during active warfare was a crime that carried an irrevocable death penalty.
“You forged the land deed three weeks later,” I spoke up, my voice calm, steady, and unyielding across the table. “You bribed the parish registrar in Houma with ten thousand dollars to register a fake bill of sale dated two days before my grandfather was murdered in that fire.”
Marco turned his venomous glare onto me, his teeth bared in cornered desperation.
“You worthless little gutter rat! You think because you found an old book you can bring down the Bellini family?”
He reached into his jacket with sudden, violent speed.
Before his fingers could even touch the grip of his concealed weapon, Dante was on him.
With a sickening crunch of bone, Dante slammed Marco’s arm against the edge of the walnut table, twisting his wrist until a snub-nosed .38 revolver clattered harmlessly onto the polished floor.
Marco groaned in agony, forced down onto his knees beside his chair.
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Luca leaned down until his face was inches from the broken patriarch.
“You called her a scullery girl, Marco,” Luca whispered, each word dropping like liquid nitrogen. “Her grandfather was ten times the man you will ever be. And starting today, every terminal, every barge, and every square foot of land bearing the Bellini name belongs to Nora Reed.”
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