Chapter 6
The thirty guests on the lawn had completely ceased moving. The capos who had raised their glasses minutes earlier stood frozen, their faces drained of color, realizing that every second they remained on this grass was a gamble with their lives.
Valeria turned her gaze toward the crowd.
Her cold grey eyes swept across the faces of the men who had toasted her father’s humiliation. She raised a single finger, pointing at a heavyset man in a charcoal suit standing near the champagne fountain.
"Gianni," Valeria called out.
The man flinched, stepping forward with trembling knees. "Yes, Don Valeria?"
"You laughed when Arthur hit the turf," she said, her voice dropping into that chilling, quiet cadence. "You raised your glass to his fall. Tell me, Gianni... who paid for your daughter’s heart surgery in Zurich four years ago?"
Gianni swallowed hard, breaking into a cold sweat. "Don Arthur did. The family foundation."
"And who signed the approval for your mortgage in Scarsdale when the banks denied you?"
"You did, Don Valeria," Gianni whispered, his voice cracking with shame.
"Then why did you raise your glass, Gianni?"
Gianni dropped to his knees on the manicured grass, bowing his head until his forehead nearly touched the soil. "Forgive me, Boss! I thought... I thought Luca was taking over. Declan told us the transition was sanctioned by the elders! We were told you were stepping aside!"
"In this family, Gianni, transitions are announced by me, not by a Rourke," Valeria said coldly. She looked at her two head bodyguards. "Strip Gianni of his territory on the west side. Give the accounts to his second-in-command. He has until midnight to clear his desk and leave New York."
"Thank you, Boss! Thank you for your mercy!" Gianni gasped, scrambling backward toward the driveway like a man granted a reprieve from the electric chair.
Valeria looked across the remaining guests. "Does anyone else wish to tell me that my father is finished?"
Not a single soul moved. Grown men who had run rackets and enforcement crews for decades looked at their shoes in absolute, terrified submission.
Luca watched the scene unfold with rising, suffocating dread. His entire network—the capos he had courted, the alliances he had forged, the promises he had traded—had dissolved in less than fifteen minutes beneath the unyielding weight of his mother's authority.
"Mother," Luca pleaded, taking a cautious step toward her, his voice dropping to a desperate whisper. "Please. I made a mistake. I was trying to expand our borders. I was trying to make you proud."
Valeria turned to her son, her expression an unreadable mask of chiseled stone.
"You do not make me proud by feeding your grandfather to wolves, Luca," she said softly. "You make yourself a traitor. And traitors do not inherit thrones."
She reached out and took hold of the gold signet ring on his pinky finger—the ring she had gifted him on his twenty-fifth birthday, bearing the crest of the DeLuca line.
"Take it off," Valeria commanded.
May you like
Luca’s breath hitched. "Mother... no. Not the ring. It’s my birthright!"
"You surrendered your birthright when you watched him fall," Valeria whispered, her fingers tightening around his hand with crushing pressure. "Take it off, Luca. Or I will have Marco take the finger."
