Chapter 7 - The Poison in the Wine and the Hand That Pushed Me
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The tension inside the Drake’s Crystal Ballroom did not dissipate with Vanessa’s arrival; it mutated into something far more volatile.
"Luca, wait!"
The voice came from the far left corner of the room, near the banquet bar.
A woman stepped forward from the shadows of the velvet draperies. She was tall, impeccably coiffed in a sharp charcoal pantsuit, with silver-streaked dark hair pulled back into a severe chignon.
Elena Moretti.
Luca’s older sister.
I had only seen Elena twice during my eleven months working at the estate. She ran the family’s international import-export logistics out of New York and rarely involved herself in the street operations of Chicago. But her presence here, standing beside the council elders with a chilled glass of white wine in her hand, caused an immediate shift in the room's energy.
Luca’s eyes narrowed as his sister approached the head table.
"Elena," Luca said, his tone lacking any fraternal warmth. "I didn't expect you until Saturday morning."
"When my brother begins dismantling forty years of syndicate treaties forty-eight hours before his wedding, I take the earliest private flight from JFK," Elena replied smoothly. Her heels clicked with sharp, rhythmic authority against the parquet.
She stopped beside the chair where Vanessa knelt weeping on the floor. Elena didn't look down at the disgraced bride. Her cold, hazel eyes—identical to Luca’s in their predatory intensity—were fixed entirely on me.
"And who is this?" Elena asked, raising an eyebrow with delicate, cutting condescension. "The girl from the domestic staff who apparently brought down the house of Bellini with a split lip?"
"Her name is Emily Dawson," Luca said, taking half a step between us, his posture subtly defensive. "And she is under my personal protection."
"Is she?" Elena asked, letting out a dry, musical laugh. "How chivalrous of you, little brother. Our father dies of a coronary, Michael’s car is pulled from a swamp, and instead of calling an emergency meeting of the Five Families to secure our supply lines, you are playing white knight to a maid whose father can’t pay his medical bills."
"Elena," Sal Rossi warned from the table, his hand resting on the recovered ledger. "Mind your tongue. You haven't read what Antonio did."
Elena turned her head toward the old underboss. There was no surprise in her expression. No shock.
Only a cold, calculating amusement that sent a violent shiver down my spine.
"I don't need to read Antonio's letters, Sal," Elena said softly. "I typed them."
The entire ballroom seemed to stop breathing.
Luca froze. The air between him and his sister became so dense it felt as if a single spark would ignite an explosion.
"What did you say?" Luca whispered.
Elena took a slow, deliberate sip from her crystal wine glass. She swirled the pale liquid, watching the legs cling to the glass, before setting it down on the linen cloth directly beside Michael’s waterlogged document pouch.
"Michael was an idealist, Luca," Elena said, her voice dropping into a conversational tone that was horrifying in its banality. "He was nineteen. He thought our father was a king who could do no wrong. When he found out that Dad was moving unregistered shipments through the Falcone docks to bypass the federal tariffs, he threatened to go to the U.S. Attorney."
She shook her head, as if recounting a child’s silly mistake.
"Michael wasn't just going to ruin the Bellinis. He was going to put our father, Sal, and every capo in this room into federal penitentiaries for the rest of their natural lives. He was going to destroy the Moretti name."
Luca stepped toward her. His fists were clenched so hard that the seams of his tailored jacket strained across his broad back.
"So you helped Dad kill him?" Luca rasped. "Your own brother?"
"I helped Dad protect this empire!" Elena fired back, her voice suddenly rising with venomous authority. "You were twenty-two, Luca! You were in Europe, playing polo and racing sports cars on our money while Michael was falling apart and Dad’s heart was failing! Someone had to make the hard decisions! Someone had to keep the wolves from tearing this family apart!"
She pointed a manicured finger toward Vanessa, who looked up through her tears, trembling.
"Vanessa’s family did what was necessary," Elena continued. "They took the risk. They took the blame. In exchange, Dad promised them twenty percent of the shipping revenues. And when Dad died, the only way to ensure the Bellinis kept their mouths shut forever was to bind them to us by blood. That’s why I arranged your marriage to Vanessa, Luca! Not for love! For silence!"
I sat frozen in the bride's chair, my hands gripping the armrests so tightly the carved wood bit into my palms.
The entire tragedy—nine years of grief, Isabella Moretti's dying tears, Samuel Bennett's terror in the chapel—had not been the rogue act of an ambitious syndicate rival.
It was an inside execution. A fratricide orchestrated by the daughter of the house to preserve her own inheritance.
Luca stood in front of his sister. He didn't draw his gun. He didn't raise his hand.
Instead, a profound, terrifying stillness settled over him.
"You knew," Luca said, his voice barely louder than a whisper, but vibrating with a fury so deep it shook the crystals on the chandelier above us. "When Mama was crying in that hospital bed... when she couldn't breathe because the cancer had reached her lungs... you sat beside her and held her hand."
Elena’s face flickered with a brief, defensive twitch. "Mama was weak. She never understood what it took to run this city."
"She asked you if Michael was cold," Luca continued, his voice cracking with nine years of suppressed agony. "She told you she had a nightmare that Michael was drowning in freezing water, and you kissed her cheek and told her Michael was safe in California. You lied to our mother on her deathbed."
Elena raised her chin, refusing to break eye contact. "I spared her the truth. Just as I spared you. But you couldn't leave it alone, could you? You had to let a senile church organist and this... this peasant girl drag our family's secrets into the light."
Elena reached out toward the table, picking up the bottle of vintage 1982 Barolo that had been opened for the celebration.
She tilted the bottle, pouring dark, heavy crimson wine into two fresh crystal glasses.
"The Bellinis are finished," Elena said coldly, glancing down at Vanessa with open disdain. "Their name is toxic. But you and I, Luca... we are the last Morettis. The council stands behind the bloodline. We eliminate the Bellini traitors tonight at the docks, we seal Michael's remains in the family crypt, and we bury this forever."
She pushed one of the filled glasses toward Luca.
"Drink with me, brother. Reaffirm the oath to the Moretti name. And let this girl go back to the gutter where she belongs."
Luca looked down at the glass of wine. The deep red liquid mirrored the amber glow of the chandeliers.
He didn't reach for it.
Instead, my eyes caught something subtle—a tiny, imperceptible smear of white powder along the interior rim of the glass Elena had pushed toward him.
A memory flashed through my mind with violent clarity: three months ago, while dusting the high shelves of Elena’s private suite in the east wing during her brief Christmas visit, I had found an antique silver pillbox engraved with her initials, containing small glass ampoules of clear liquid and crushed white sedatives used for "cardiac emergencies."
My heart leaped into my throat.
"Luca, don't!" I shouted, leaping up from the chair.
Before anyone could react, I lunged forward and slapped the crystal glass from the table.
*SMASH!*
The glass shattered against the parquet floor. The dark wine splashed across the white tablecloth and the cuffs of Luca’s trousers.
Elena’s face twisted into pure, murderous rage.
"You insolent little bitch!" Elena screamed.
With shocking, lightning speed, Elena drew a small, pearl-handled .22 caliber pistol from the inner pocket of her tailored trousers. She didn't aim at Luca.
She aimed directly at my chest.
"Emily, down!" Luca roared.
He moved to shield me, but Elena was already pulling the trigger.
Desperate to survive, I threw my weight sideways against the banquet table, tipping the heavy mahogany surface upward.
*BANG!*
The gunshot was a sharp, deafening crack inside the enclosed ballroom.
The bullet tore through the heavy damask linen, splintering the mahogany edge right where my shoulder had been a millisecond prior. The impact sent a spray of wood fragments across my neck, reopening the cut along my jaw.
Before Elena could chamber a second round, Sal Rossi lunged from the side. His massive, sixty-eight-year-old frame slammed into Elena’s arm, knocking the pearl-handled weapon spinning across the floor toward the bar.
Luca was on her in the next heartbeat.
He caught his sister by the lapels of her suit, his face contorted in a rage so terrifying that two capos reflexively crossed themselves. He slammed her back against the marble pillars supporting the ballroom balcony, the stone cracking behind her head.
"You tried to shoot her in front of me?" Luca growled, his voice a guttural roar.
Elena gasped for air, her feet dangling two inches off the floor as Luca held her against the pillar by her throat.
"She... she saw the rim..." Elena wheezed, her eyes bulging, blood trickling from her scalp where it had struck the marble. "She’s a witness, Luca... she has to die... they all have to die..."
Luca lowered her slowly until her heels touched the floor, but his hand never left her throat.
He looked toward Sal Rossi.
"Check the remaining wine in that bottle," Luca ordered.
Sal Rossi picked up the vintage Barolo, brought the neck to his nose, and then dabbed a single drop onto the tip of his pocketknife, touching it with the tip of his tongue.
The old underboss spat onto the carpet immediately, his face darkening with disgust.
"Potassium cyanide," Sal growled, looking at Elena with utter revulsion. "A lethal dose. Enough to stop a man’s heart in four minutes and mimic a massive coronary. Just like the one that killed Don Antonio in his sleep two years ago."
The ballroom went completely frozen.
Luca stared into his sister’s bulging, terrified eyes. The final, horrifying puzzle piece clicked into place.
"You didn't just kill Michael," Luca whispered, his voice shaking with a heartbreak so profound it was sickening to behold. "You poisoned Dad, too."
Elena didn't deny it. A twisted, dying smile stretched across her purple lips.
"He was getting soft, Luca..." she whispered hoarsely. "He was talking about confessing... about dredging the quarry... he was going to give everything away to the church to buy his way out of hell. I had to save the empire."
Luca slowly closed his eyes.
When he opened them, the last shred of familial love had been extinguished forever.
"Dante," Luca said calmly.
"Yes, Boss?"
"Strip her of the Moretti ring. Lock her in the private holding suite on the thirty-fourth floor under twenty-four-hour guard. If she speaks, gag her. If she moves toward a window, break her legs."
He released her throat. Elena collapsed against the base of the pillar, coughing violently, gasping for oxygen as two enforcers dragged her away through the service doors.
Luca turned toward me.
I was sitting on the floor behind the overturned table, clutching my bruised shoulder, trembling from head to toe as the adrenaline drained from my body.
Luca dropped to one knee beside me. He didn't care about the sixty capos watching him. He reached out with both hands, gently framing my face, his thumbs wiping away the cold sweat and the fresh bead of blood from my torn lip.
"Are you hit?" he asked, his voice raw, frantic with concern. "Emily, look at me. Did the bullet touch you?"
"No," I gasped, leaning into the warmth of his hands, unable to stop the tears that poured down my cheeks. "No... it hit the table. I’m okay... I’m okay."
Luca let out a long, ragged breath, pulling my head gently against his broad chest. His arms wrapped around me like steel bands, shielding me from the stares of the underworld kings in the room.
"You saved my life, Emily," he whispered into my hair. "Again."
He lifted me into his arms, carrying me effortlessly past the overturned tables and the shattered crystal.
He looked at Sal Rossi.
May you like
"The council is adjourned until midnight," Luca declared over his shoulder. "Gather every loyal soldier at the Calumet River docks. Tonight, we settle all accounts."
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