Chapter 5
The bright, cinematic colors of the ballroom seemed to strobe as the adrenaline in the room spiked. Marcus, realizing that his confession had just sealed his death warrant, succumbed entirely to the primal, cornered instinct of a trapped animal. He needed to get the cufflink. He needed to destroy the evidence, as if erasing the physical object could somehow erase the crime.
Marcus let out a guttural, panicked yell. He vaulted violently around the edge of the heavy mahogany table, his polished leather shoes tearing against the imported carpet.
As he lunged blindly toward Dante, three-year-old Ava stepped slightly out from behind her father’s legs, terrified by her uncle's sudden screaming.
"Get out of my way!" Marcus roared.
Without a shred of hesitation or humanity, Marcus violently shoved the three-year-old child aside. Ava let out a sharp cry as the forceful push sent her stumbling backward, her tiny flats skidding on the floor before she fell hard onto the carpet.
The assault on his daughter was the spark that ignited the apocalypse.
Dante moved with blinding, explosive speed. The veteran Mafia boss intercepted his brother’s desperate lunge with terrifying, flawless precision. He stepped directly into Marcus's path, planting his feet firmly into the ground. Utilizing the immense, deeply masculine power of his broad shoulders, Dante drove one catastrophic, explosive punch straight into Marcus’s upper body.
The heavy gold family signet ring on Dante’s right hand connected squarely with the center of Marcus’s chest with a sickening, deafening crack.
The sheer kinetic force of the blow was absolute. It lifted the forty-eight-year-old capo completely out of his shoes. All the air detonated from Marcus’s lungs in a violent, wet spray. His eyes rolled back in his head instantly as he spun violently backward, entirely out of control.
Marcus hurtled backward across the dining room, his arms flailing uselessly. He crashed heavily onto the carpet, skidding several feet before slamming into the base of a decorative stone pillar. He lay in a tangled, groaning heap, his tailored suit ruined, desperately clutching his shattered chest as he struggled to draw a single breath.
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There was no dialogue. The overwhelming, brutal reality of the violence silenced every single person in the room.
The estate’s security apparatus responded with instantaneous, military precision. Half a dozen massive, white American bodyguards in dark suits stepped forward from the perimeter. They moved swiftly, entirely surrounding the groaning Marcus and the weeping Celeste, forming an impenetrable, threatening wall of muscle and firearms around the two traitors. The trap was sprung, and there was no escape.
