Chapter - Luca Moretti
LUCA MORETTI
I pulled Valentina behind me.
I lowered my eyes to Salvatore.
On his knees in the middle of the hall. Two of my men holding his arms. The big suit, the white hair, the whites of his eyes gone yellow, the spotted hands.
This was the man who'd ordered Tonio killed.
Who'd ordered Pasquale killed. Who'd wounded my nonna at the temple.
Who'd locked up his own son for seven years.
Who'd recruited Carlo seven years ago and left me blind inside my own house.
Who'd sent three men to kill Valentina while she had coffee in the green room.
I took the dagger from my jacket.
Salvatore looked at the dagger and recognized it.
"That's Lucia's," he murmured.
"It was her great-grandmother's," I said. "Valentina gave it to me."
The old man laughed. A dry laugh, with no joy in it.
"You were my son's friend," he said. "You ate at my table in Capri when you were boys. I've known you since you were twelve, Moretti."
"And you killed your son," I said. "Faked his death, locked him up for seven years. Showed Valentina a closed casket and let her mourn a brother who was alive. Seven years, Salvatore."
"I gave you my daughter, Moretti." His voice picked up speed. "I stopped the war. I made the deal. I handed you Valentina on a platter, I—"
"You gave me a bomb," I cut in. "You sent her to my house full of hate, wanting her to kill me in bed some night in November. That was your plan. Her hating me, killing me, and you keeping it all."
Salvatore didn't answer, because it was true.
"But she loved me," I went on, lower. "That was your one miscalculation, Salvatore. You sent her to hate me, and she loved me."
I looked back.
Valentina was at the service door, being led out by Matteo. But she'd stopped, she'd turned, and she was looking at me—the green eyes, the pale face, her hand open on her belly without realizing it was there.
I looked at her. She looked at me. And she nodded.
Once, slowly.
Permission.
She wasn't going to kill her father, I wasn't going to let her carry that, and she'd accepted it. But she looked me in the eyes and nodded, and I understood: she wasn't running from the decision.
She was giving it to me. The revenge was hers, and she was handing it to me, the same way she'd handed me the dagger.
Brava, bella mia.
I turned to Salvatore.
"Mors potius macula," I said, low. "Death before dishonor. It's been tattooed on my chest since I was nineteen. I swore to my mother I'd never be the kind of man she hated in my father." I tightened my grip on the ivory handle. "You were the kind of man your wife hated. To the end."
Salvatore opened his mouth to say something.
There wasn't time.
It was fast. It was clean. It was the old way, with the dagger the women of his family carried to defend themselves from their husbands. The three-hundred-year-old Toledo blade did what it had been forged to do.
The man who'd called himself her father fell to the floor of the hall.
The shooting had been over for minutes, and I hadn't even noticed. The whole house silent. Only the Mondello sea hitting the rocks on both sides of the peninsula, outside, the same way it hit when those boys—me, Matteo—ran on the beach back in nineteen-something.
I wiped the dagger on the hem of my own shirt and put it away in my jacket.
I looked at Valentina at the door.
I took care of it, bella mia. For what you're carrying.
I crossed the hall, passed the body without looking down. I reached the door where she was, with Matteo holding her shoulders.
I didn't speak.
I just held her, pressed her against my chest, against the Latin tattoo, with the dead house behind us and the sea hitting outside.
She didn't cry. I didn't cry.
Her hand came up and closed on my shirt, over my heart. And we stayed like that, in the middle of the hall of Villa Salina.