Chapter 35 VITTORIO #2
"Brotherhood found out the truth," I said, struggling to breathe as old pain ripped through my chest. "Gabriel was not from Chicago.
He carried an FBI badge from New Jersey.
When your father put the papers in your grandfather's hands, your grandfather did not wait.
He sent Gabriel straight to the family killers. "
Nora took a step forward, hands balled into fists at her sides. "And you could not stop them?"
Hot tears ran down my cheeks as my hands grabbed at my paralyzed legs.
"I begged him. I dropped to my knees in front of my father.
I tried to fight through five armed guards to reach the basement door, screaming Gabriel's name until I had no voice left.
They pinned me to the floor like a dog. I heard the gunshot through the wood, and I could not save him.
They murdered the only good thing I ever had. "
Panic gripped my throat as I jumped to my feet. "He helped our boats move safe for six months. He has not touched any of our money."
My brother picked up the folder. "He was collecting proof to send us all to prison. Father already signed the order. Go home, Vittorio."
The guards held me flat against the cold cellar floor while boots echoed down the stone hall.
A single gunshot cracked through the wood overhead, sharp and final.
Gabriel never pleaded. One of the men told me later that Gabriel only looked down the barrel, asked if his ledger made it out, and gave a quiet nod when they answered.
Years later, my trembling hands pulled his stolen file from the Brotherhood safe.
Two hundred pages of Bellini routes, gun runners, and supply lines lay inside Gabriel's neat folders.
He had gathered nothing on the Morettis.
He took a bullet behind the ear to shield the very family that dragged him into a ditch.
Nine days after they buried him in an unmarked grave, I tore through the cardboard box left at the precinct curb. My thumb slid inside the lining of his wool coat and bumped against metal. I pulled it into the light: a plain gold band with a small, clean diamond catch.
I collapsed against the baseboards of the empty flat, pressing the cool gold into the palm of my hand. No tears came. The dust swirled through the window slats, the sun climbed across the bare floorboards, and twilight swallowed the room before I moved an inch.
"I wanted to destroy everything," I confessed, looking into Luca's cold eyes.
"The Brotherhood. The Bellinis. Our own blood.
I looked at your parents with their happy marriage, their kids, and their easy life, while the man I loved was rotting in the ground.
I hated them for having the life I lost. So I gave Bellini their travel routes.
I sat right next to your father in the car that morning, waiting for the hit. I wanted to die with them."
Matteo gripped the bedpost until his knuckles turned pale. "You bastard."
I pointed down at my blanket, voice raspy and broken.
"The truck rammed us at full speed. They died right away.
But your father... your father saw the glass shatter and threw his own body across mine.
He pressed me flat under his chest, taking the full crushing weight of the metal roof so I could live.
I woke up pinned under crushed metal and his lifeless body, broken from the waist down, left to sit in this chair while you boys grew up with no parents. "
Matteo lunged forward, fists raised in the air. "You sold your own brother to the wolves! You killed my parents, you sick, miserable piece of shit!"
Enzo charged right behind him, his teeth bared in pure venom. "I'll snap your fucking neck in that chair!"
Adrian threw his heavy frame between them, wrapping an arm around Enzo's chest and shoving him back. Luca grabbed Matteo by the front of his jacket, hauling him backward with cold, vicious force, though Luca's own jaw twitched with lethal fury.
"Stand down! Both of you!" Luca ordered, his voice dangerously low as his knuckles whitened against Matteo's coat. "Not like this."
The clinic door swung open hard, hitting the plaster wall. My mother stood in the threshold, her black shawl slipping off one shoulder, Sofia trembling right behind her with tears streaming down her face. My mother's dark eyes were wild, having heard every single confession through the wood.
Before anyone could move, the old woman crossed the floor with shocking speed. Her hand cracked across my cheek with brutal force, the sound echoing off the tiles like a gunshot.
"Traditore!" She wept, her hand cracking across my cheek again, frail fists beating against my chest and shoulders as a lifetime of grief tore free. "You killed my boys! Your father died because of you. You murdered your own blood for nothing! Nothing!"
Sofia covered her mouth, sobbing openly as Enzo reached out to steady his sister. Luca caught my mother gently by the wrists, pulling her back against him as her sobs tore through the quiet room.
Luca slammed the wooden box shut with a sharp crack that silenced the clinic. He turned toward the door. "Leave him." Sofia and Nonna were guided out into the dark hallway, followed by the others, leaving me alone in my room in the cold rain and deafening silence.