Chapter 19
As the sun began to set, casting a bloody, orange glow across the East River, Don Moretti sat alone in his fortified office. The phones had been ringing incessantly all afternoon—panicked capos reporting frozen accounts, mercenaries abandoning their posts, and finally, the news that federal agents were raiding their primary warehouses.
The empire he had built over forty years had been completely dismantled in a single afternoon by a man sitting in a corporate boardroom.
The heavy doors to his office suddenly swung open.
Moretti expected to see the FBI, but instead, Lorenzo Ravelli stepped into the room. He was alone, unarmed, radiating a cold, overwhelming danger that instantly sucked the air out of the room.
"You," Moretti rasped, his hand trembling as he reached for the heavy revolver in his desk drawer.
"I wouldn't," Lorenzo advised softly, his handsome, bearded face set in stone. "My men disabled the security cameras in your building thirty minutes ago. Your loyalists are gone, Moretti. They abandoned you the moment their paychecks bounced."
Moretti stopped, his hand hovering over the drawer. He looked at the man who had destroyed him, realizing the profound depth of his miscalculation.
"You took everything," Moretti whispered, his frail body shaking with defeat.
"You tried to take my blood," Lorenzo corrected, his American accent smooth but carrying a lethal weight. "You tried to steal a child from a mother's arms to satisfy your obsession with legacy."
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Lorenzo walked slowly to the massive, carved wooden crest hanging behind Moretti's desk—the symbol of the Moretti family. He reached up, effortlessly ripping the heavy crest off the wall.
"I made a promise to your lieutenant," Lorenzo said, turning back to the broken old man. "I intend to keep it."
