If you breathe a word, Mr. Moretti, we both die before we hit the floor.
It was nine o’clock on the same evening. The rain had finally stopped, leaving the Brooklyn streets slick and gleaming under the city lights. I sat alone on the wide front porch of my estate, the newly bequeathed Catholic children’s charity property. The house was dark, silent, and felt profoundly empty.
I held a warm cup of coffee in my hands, the steam curling into the cool night air. The bitter taste matched the hollowness in my gut. Salvatore was gone, his empire dissolved. Marco and Gianna were safe. Elena and Brody had gone back to their lives, their mission accomplished. I had won. Everything Clara had planned had come to fruition.
But I was alone.
My phone buzzed on the cold stone table beside me, startling me. It was the burner phone Elena had given me. A text message. From Marco.
I picked it up, my fingers almost numb.
“I’m taking my sister to Chicago tonight,” the message read. “Don’t look for us, Uncle Vince. Live your life.”
The words were a final, clean cut, severing the last tie to my old world, to the family I had sworn to protect. Marco, freed from Salvatore’s grasp, was choosing a new life, a life far away from the shadows I had always inhabited. He wasn’t asking for my blessing; he was stating his departure.
I set the phone down carefully on the cold stone table. The screen went dark, reflecting my own desolate image. I gazed out over the silent city skyline, the distant lights twinkling against the dark expanse. My wealth was intact, my life was safe, but the victory had come at a price I had never anticipated. I spent thirty years building an empire of concrete and fear, only to learn that silence is the heaviest thing a man can hold.
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