Chapter 6
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Capo Sal, who had previously tried to mediate, stood with his fists clenched, his face flushed with pure, unadulterated disgust. "Treason. In front of our own blood. Under the old laws of this syndicate, Antonio... this calls for total erasure."
"Sal is right," Marco spoke up, his voice trembling with righteous fury. "They planned to exile the Don's only son to Chicago to save their own skin. That isn't family business. That is high treason against the bloodline."
Antonio raised a single gloved finger. The room silenced instantly.
He walked over to where Damian knelt on the floorboards. Antonio looked down at his cousin, the muscle along his sharp jawline ticking once with absolute, immovable resolve.
"Stand up, Damian," Antonio commanded quietly.
Damian scrambled to his feet, swaying slightly, his hands raised in a pathetic, defensive gesture. "Antonio... please. We are cousins. Our fathers built this territory together on the docks. You can't execute me in front of our family!"
"I am not going to execute you in this dining room, Damian," Antonio replied, his words smooth as silk, yet vibrating with the lethal finality of a drawn hammer. "Execution is for soldiers who fail on the battlefield. For a coward who starves a child and sells his blood to Chicago, there is only total dispossession."
Antonio reached out. His gloved hand caught the gold family capo pin on Damian’s lapel. With a slow, deliberate twist, Antonio ripped the gold crest from the fabric, tearing the expensive wool of Damian’s jacket.
He dropped the broken pin onto the floor, crushing it beneath the sole of his polished leather shoe with a sharp, metallic crunch.
"Your rank as capo is revoked," Antonio declared, every word carved from stone. "Your shares in the Atlantic shipping lines are forfeited and transferred directly into Lucas’s trust fund. Your properties in Manhattan, the Hamptons, and Miami are seized under the sovereign charter of this syndicate."
"No! Antonio, no!" Damian shrieked, falling back to his knees and clawing at Antonio’s trousers. "You can't leave me with nothing! I gave twenty years to this organization!"
"You gave twenty years to your own ambition, Damian," Antonio said, stepping back with effortless disdain.
He turned his cold slate-grey eyes onto Lavinia, who stood trembling beside her chair, clutching her throat.
"And you, Aunt Lavinia," Antonio continued, his voice dropping an octave into an arctic void. "You will surrender the family signet ring your brother gave you forty years ago. You will surrender the keys to the estate's north wing. And you will vacate this property before midnight."
Lavinia gasped, her eyes bulging in pure, aristocratic horror. "Vacate?! This is my home! I am the matriarch of the Bellaforte house! Where am I supposed to go?!"
"You have a small cottage in upstate New York, purchased under your shell company three years ago," Antonio answered coldly. "You will live there under the supervision of four armed guards. You will have no staff, no telephone, and no access to syndicate funds. You will receive an allowance of two thousand dollars a month. And if you ever set foot south of Westchester County, my soldiers will not ask for your identification. They will put a bullet in your head."
Lavinia’s knees buckled. She collapsed into her banquet chair, weeping bitterly into her hands, stripped of forty years of untouchable matriarchal power in less than ten minutes.
Antonio looked at Dante.
May you like
"Take Damian to the sub-level holding cells beneath the wine cellar," Antonio ordered. "Put him in zip-ties. He will remain there until my business with Chicago is concluded."
Two guards seized Damian by his arms, dragging him backward across the hardwood floor, his desperate screams echoing down the corridor until the heavy steel doors slammed shut with concussive finality.
