Chapter 54
Chapter fifty-four
Bruno De Luca and Salvatore Moretti.
The men who were second fathers to me are my killers.
They stand before us. Masks off. Faces carved in stone.
Two men I bled for.
Two men who held me during my father’s funeral.
Two men who toasted my victories, shielded my secrets, and watched me rise to power.
Two men I would’ve taken a bullet for.
But now they’re the ones behind the gun.
My breath catches in my throat.
I can’t move.
I can’t think.
I just stand there, frozen, while my heart breaks under the weight of betrayal.
Lucia speaks first. “Bruno? Salvatore? What are you doing here?”
Silence.
Bruno’s face is unreadable. His eyes are cold like he doesn’t know us anymore.
Salvatore’s jaw is clenched and his fingers tighten around the grip of the gun.
“They’re behind this…they did this.” I can barely get the words out.
“What?” Hurt fills Lucia’s eyes. “No. They were victims too.”
I shake my head. “No. They did it. They worked with Madeline and Elio.”
“No. They would never do that.” Lucia gasps. “Bruno and Sal, they were supposed to protect us.” She turns toward them and steps forward.
They raise their guns and I yank her back.
“This isn’t about us, Lucia.” I whisper. “It’s about my father.”
Bruno clears his throat. “We protected you for as long as we could. You were a child when your father made his choices. You don’t know what really happened.”
“Don’t feed me that bullshit,” I spit. “I know exactly what happened. My father wrote me a note the night you killed him.” My gaze locks on Salvatore. “You were in love with Francesca. When she chose my father, you lost your goddam mind.”
Salvatore’s face hardens. “Your father didn’t deserve her. He got her killed. If she had chosen me, she’d still be alive.”
“You and my father were best friends!” I shout. “You held me when I buried him and the whole time you were planning this?”
“I did what I had to do,” he replies. “This isn’t personal.”
“Bullshit.” My eyes flick to the chessboard, resting on the queen piece mutilated by the blade.
Salvatore’s voice is low and dangerous. “You were never in control, Cipriani. Your father wasn’t a king. He was a liar and a thief who took everything from me.”
“He took a girl who didn’t even want you, and you’re punishing me for it?”
“You carry his name. His legacy. His throne.” Salvatore steps closer. “So yes. You get the consequences.”
I want to scream. Tears prick the back of my eyes, but I won’t give them the satisfaction. My hands itch to smash the chessboard into a thousand pieces.
“Why now?” I whisper.
Salvatore’s eyes narrow. “It was always going to come to this.”
He steps forward.
“Yes. I love Francesca. Yes, your father and I were best friends since we were boys. I thought nothing could break that until he met Francesca.
His eyes glaze over as if he’s lost in his own thoughts.
“I knew her longer than he did. I’m not a Capuano.
I’m a Moretti after all. My family had always been close with the Marconis.
We attended church with them every Sunday.
When Francesca was away at boarding school we wrote letters.
When she came back home after graduation I thought for sure we’d be together until Vincenzo came into the picture. ”
Disgust crosses his face. “He told me he liked her and I laughed. After all, the Capuanos and Marconis were sworn enemies. I thought she’d never give him the time of day.
But she did. It was a year later that I found out they had been dating behind my back.
Then Francesca confided in me that she was pregnant and they were going to run away together. ”
Lucia glances at me, then back at Salvatore whose eyes have turned cold.
“I couldn’t let that happen.” He continues. “I couldn’t lose my Francesca. So I gave Aldo a little information, thinking he would stop her. I never thought he’d kill her.” Sadness flickers across his face for a moment and disappears.
“You let a woman come between you two,” I hiss.
“The love of my life died. After that, so did I, but your father never knew I loved her. We were both never the same. When Vincenzo made me consigliere, I swore I’d make him pay and I did.”
“You waited almost twenty years after Francesca’s death to kill him,” I cry.
Salvatore smirks. “Oh, Cipi, you know as well as I do that karma doesn’t have a time limit. We had to build trust so we would never be suspected. After all, anything worth doing right can take decades. But the end result is the sweetest.”
“You’re a traitor,” I spit. “How does Bruno fit into all this?”
He takes a step closer. “I’ve known Bruno for years.
After Francesca died, we made a plan. Bruno changed his identity and I brought him on as head of security.
But we needed others to carry out our vendetta.
Madeline Toma was always money hungry. I paid her to bring over muffins and leave.
When your father stepped outside to make a phone call, we injected only his muffin with cyanide.
We knew he never ate when we were working, he’d eat later.
So we ate our muffins in front of him so he wouldn’t suspect a thing. ”
Rage fills me and I want to kill him.
Lucia’s voice breaks the silence. She glares at Bruno. “How could you, Bruno?”
He shrugs. “My name isn’t Bruno De Luca, Lucia.
It’s Adriano Bruno Marconi. I’m a Marconi.
Francesca was my cousin. My favorite cousin.
Vincenzo should’ve left her alone but instead he caused her death.
That wasn’t all he took.” He extends his arms out, gesturing to the space around us.
“This factory used to be ours. Marconi territory. Until your father slaughtered my family in one night and then claimed our land for himself.”
“You survived the massacre?” Lucia gasps.
“Yes. I was one of the only ones. I lost everything and I swore I’d take it back.”
I square my shoulders and look them both dead in the face. “You got what you wanted. My father is dead. Why wait fifteen more years? Why come after us?”
Salvatore sneers. “Because revenge is so much sweeter when you never see it coming.”
“We didn’t want to hurt you. We thought you would fail,” Bruno adds.
“And we had to let time pass so there would be no connection back to us. Heck, once we found out Vincenzo only had daughters as heirs, we figured this would be a piece of cake. Matteo could be easily eliminated. Then the empire would be turned over to Salvatore and we would be in charge. However, you decided to step up and be capo. We went along with it thinking you’d quit.
When it became obvious you were in it for the long haul, we knew we had to take action. ”
“You came up with this sick game to torture me?” I yell.
“No, not at first. Our plan was to kill you and pin it on Valerio,” Salvatore explains. “When I hired the catering company I made sure that one of the servers hired was Paul Williams.”
I think back to my conversation with Valerio. “He said that he told his mistress to cause a commotion so Paul could sneak out and give him money.”
Salvatore scoffs, “and you believed that Cipi. We both know Valerio would never go pick up money on his own. He has men to do that. He came because Paul Williams is his son.”
“What?”
“Yeah. You know how Valerio has always had a lot of mistresses. Well one of them ended up getting pregnant years ago. Now Paul is a grown man and wants nothing to do with his father’s lifestyle.
He knew working a party for a rival family would send him over the roof.
Valerio came because he wanted to get him and bring him home.
We knew one camera would pick up Valerio and then everyone would assume he had hired Paul to kill you.
This would start a war and everyone would destroy each other. Then we would take it all.”
“Who shot me?” I ask.
“While the commotion happened, I left the window open for Elio to climb up the side of the house, then enter the balcony and shoot you,” Bruno explains.
“But Elio was next to Madeline when I got shot.”
Bruno shakes his head. “No. He wasn’t. That’s what I told you.
You never watched those tapes because they were too much for you.
You believed what I said because you trusted me.
However, our plan failed because Elio lied and turned out to not be the sharpshooter he told us he was.
That was our first mistake bringing him and his stupid grandmother on board.
They were such money hungry people. When you survived, we figured we would turn this into a game.
Vincenzo, Salvatore, and I always played chess together and Vincenzo would always beat us. This time we would finally beat him.”
“You took Dad’s chess board.”
“Yes. It was easy to get. After all, we were always welcome at your mother’s house,” Salvatore smirks. “The chess board was sitting in your father’s study, forgotten, no one ever went in there. No one ever noticed it was gone until we started sending the pieces.”
“But you had someone point a gun to your head and almost shot you.” Lucia yells. She turns to Bruno, “and you got shot in the head.”
Bruno reaches up and removes the bandage around his head.
It drops to the floor revealing no stitches, no scars, and no bullet wound.
Lucia gasps. “You’re not injured.”
“Of course not.” Bruno touches the spot on his head. “Salvatore found me first. It was all an act. Even the doctor was in on it. It’s amazing what people will do when you pay them money.”
“But there was blood!” I cry.
“Fake blood. Jesus, Cipi, how do you think they do it in the movies,” Bruno scowls. “If you know the right people you can make anything look real.”
I turn to Salvatore. “That’s why you killed the man on the docks before I could question him. You didn’t want me to find out the truth.”
Salvatore shrugs. “He was a hit man for hire, he wasn’t worth shit.
How else were we going to throw suspicion off of us if we didn’t get injured ourselves.
” He glares at me. “I would have thought after the first few attempts on your family members’ lives you would quit, Cipriani. But you didn’t quit.”
“We even hoped bringing your ex into the picture would make you want to leave the empire, but it didn’t work.” Bruno folds his arms.
My heart drops. “Dominic was in on it?”
“No. We would never hire that jackass. We were both shocked as hell when you brought him up. Then we figured it was the perfect plan. He would be a great distraction for you, but it turns out he was smarter than we gave him credit for.” Bruno takes another step forward.
His gun pointed straight, the barrel aimed at my chest. “You were never supposed to make it this far, Cipriani,” he declares. “But you won’t make it any farther.”
My pulse pounds in my ears as I force myself to meet their stares.
That’s when I see a shadow flicker across the grimy window on the far wall behind them.
Someone is outside on the fire escape.
The shadow steps into the light.
It’s Dominic!
He runs over to the window. Placing his gun next to him, he works the latch.
I bite the inside of my cheek to keep my face neutral.
If they see where I’m looking, he’s dead.
Lucia spots him too, her eyes widening.
I step in front of her, forcing myself to laugh to keep their attention on me. “You really think you’ve beaten me? After all this?”
I tap the pipe behind us with the heel of my boot.
The latch clicks open, the noise is drowned out by my tapping.
“Stop doing that!” Salvatore snarls, lifting his gun. “You’re already beaten, Farfalla. You just don’t know it yet.”
The window eases open.
Dominic slips inside like a ghost, his gun drawn.
“If you think I’m going to beg,” My eyes locked on theirs, “you’re dead wrong.”
Bruno scoffs and points his gun at us. “Any last words?”
“You’re a monster!” Lucia spits. “We trusted you. You were family!”
I grab her arm to quiet her.
“Actually, I do have some last words.” I fold my arms and glare at them.
“For fucks sake, Cipi, give it up.” Bruno snarls.
Salvatore sighs, “Very well, Farfalla, what is it?”
Dominic sneaks up behind them.
I grin. “Checkmate.”