Chapter 4 - The Widow’s Gambit
|
Lorenzo hung up the receiver without a word and strode to the tall arched window overlooking the north driveway.
Down below, cutting through the swirling gray Hudson River fog, four black armored Cadillacs had just rolled past the iron gatehouse. Standing on the gravel courtyard beside Marcus Gallo to greet them was Genevieve—draped in her customary black mink coat over silk mourning attire—alongside Don Vittorio Drago, the seventy-year-old head of the Brooklyn syndicate and Lorenzo’s dead father’s oldest rival on the Commission.
Twelve heavily armed men stepped out of the Cadillacs, fanning out across the lower lawn to surround the main house. Noticeably absent were the twelve estate guards on Lorenzo’s payroll—Marcus had clearly sent two-thirds of the morning shift off-property or locked them in the barracks before Lorenzo’s helicopter had even touched down at six a.m.
"Who is down there?" Clara asked, struggling to sit up against the pillows as she heard the low rumble of V8 engines echoing up the stone facade.
"Vittorio Drago," Lorenzo said coldly, letting the velvet curtain fall back into place and walking straight to the concealed gun vault behind the oil painting above the fireplace. He spun the combination dial, pulled out a matte-black Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun alongside two spare 9mm magazines for his sidearm, and tossed a Kevlar vest onto the bed. "And my dear stepmother, who apparently decided forty percent of my father’s legitimate real estate portfolio wasn't a generous enough widow’s pension."
"Drago?" Clara’s eyes widened, sudden comprehension flashing across her pale face. "Wait—six years ago, the man Chiara was seeing before her brakes were cut... she never told me his first name, only that he drove a car with Brooklyn plates and gave her a gold bracelet with a dragon clasp!"
Lorenzo froze with a magazine halfway into the well of his pistol.
The dragon clasp. The personal family crest of the Drago crime family—specifically worn by Vittorio Drago’s only son and heir, Dante Drago, who had been gunned down in a Little Italy restaurant shootout five years ago.
The pieces slammed together with blinding clarity.
If Chiara Vance had been pregnant with Dante Drago’s child six years ago, then little Lily sleeping at the foot of this bed wasn't just Sofia Bellini’s granddaughter.
She was the sole surviving blood heir to both the Bellini and Drago empires.
"Genevieve didn't cut your sister’s brakes because of my mother," Lorenzo said, his voice dropping an octave as the full scale of the conspiracy came into focus. "Six years ago, Genevieve was barren. She knew when my father died, ninety percent of the Bellini empire would pass to me. So she has spent the last five years secretly colluding with Vittorio Drago to merge our territories once my father’s heart gave out—and when she found out Chiara had given birth to Dante Drago’s illegitimate daughter, she tried to erase the child before old man Drago ever found out he had a granddaughter."
"Wait—if Genevieve tried to kill Chiara and Lily to keep Drago from finding out he had an heir," Clara gasped, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed despite the IV line taped to her forearm, "why is Drago standing down in the courtyard with her right now?!"
"Because Genevieve didn't tell Drago who Lily is," Lorenzo said grimly. "She told Drago what she found behind the cellar wall on Tuesday—the Geneva bank key you’re holding right now."
Clara looked down at the rusted brass key in her palm. "What is in Geneva?"
"In 1998, right before my mother disappeared, sixty million dollars in bearer bonds and the original land deeds to the Brooklyn waterfront vanished from the Commission’s joint reserve," Lorenzo said, strapping a backup holster to his ankle. "My father blamed Vittorio Drago’s brother and started a war that killed forty men. If Sofia hid that key in the cellar wall before my father killed her, then my father lied to the entire Commission for twenty-eight years—and Drago now has the legal right under Commission law to execute me and seize this estate."
Downstairs, the heavy oak front doors of the mansion boomed open.
May you like
Through the intercom speaker on the bedroom wall, Marcus Gallo’s voice echoed throughout the house:
"Lorenzo! Don Vittorio and Miss Genevieve are waiting in the library. Bring the Geneva key and the housekeeper down in five minutes—or we burn the third floor out with the kid inside."
