Chapter 36 NORA
NORA
The metal gates groaned shut behind our convoy of black SUVs, locking the night behind us.
We had just driven straight back from the private sanatorium where the truth had torn everything apart.
When the heavy front doors slammed shut behind the family, the entire entryway felt like the inside of a tomb.
Twenty years of lies sat between these walls, choking out whatever trust had held this family together. Vittorio had traded them all away, leaving the family with graves to visit and a paralyzed ghost to pity.
The great room looked like a bomb had exploded in it.
Enzo sat slumped against the massive stone hearth, his head buried between his knees, his broad shoulders heaving beneath his leather jacket.
His knuckles were split open, blood smearing against his torn denim where he had clearly pounded his fists into the marble.
Matteo stood dead in his tracks beside me, his usual cocky dimples and easy swagger evaporating into thin air as his fingers went limp against his sleeve.
Enzo choked on his words, his voice ripping straight down the center as his head snapped up toward the ceiling.
"He traded us. He let Mom and Dad get butchered on that highway.
He sat in that clinic like a statue for twenty years, letting us visit him, letting us cry over him while he never said a word! "
Matteo flinched as if a physical blow had caught his chin, his Adam's apple bobbing.
He stared down at the Persian rug with trembling hands.
"He barely even looked at us. We went every single month just to sit in silence with him, thinking the trauma broke his voice, and the entire time he was just hiding what he did. "
Luca stood locked under the archway. No shout, no flinch. His jaw hardened into a white ridge under dark stubble, his knuckles white against his sides. His stare pinned the floorboards across the hall, dead and unblinking.
"Basta!" Nonna Lucia roared, the crack of her heavy cane slamming against the parquet floor like a gunshot. The sound rang through the rafters, cutting through the weeping and the groaning like a straight razor.
The old woman stood framed in the double doors of the dining room.
Her delicate lace shawl hung crooked over her black wool dress, her frail chest rising and falling in shallow, shuddering gasps.
But beneath the stoic mask of the family matriarch, her face was completely destroyed.
The wrinkles around her mouth twisted in an agony so pure it made my own chest ache.
Her son Vittorio, her youngest boy, had betrayed his own bloodline for decades.
Two clear tears cut through the powder on her wrinkled cheeks.
"Get off the floor, Enzo," she commanded, her aged voice shaking with a terrifying mixture of fury and despair.
"You roll in the dirt like a dog while our enemies gather outside our valley?
His name is finished. Vittorio is no longer a Moretti.
Strike him from our family, forget he ever drew breath, and leave him in that clinic to choke on his regrets.
God will deal with his soul, but you will not dig your own graves in my house! "
She pressed a trembling palm to her chest, fighting for breath as her fingers clutched the silver handle of her cane until her knuckles turned translucent.
"Do you think my heart does not bleed?" she whispered, the raw crack in her voice silencing the entire room.
"He was my son. I nursed him. I held his hand when he was a boy.
And he poisoned us all. But we are the Moretti name. We do not die on our knees."
Sofia curled into a tight ball on the deep velvet sofa in the far corner, her small hands pressed over her ears as though she could block out the truth by sheer force of will.
Wet, muffled sobs racked her body, shaking the cushions.
Adrian knelt right beside the sofa, his rigid guard dropping away completely.
He pulled Sofia gently against his chest, wrapping his strong arms around her shuddering frame and murmuring quiet words of comfort into her hair while she wept into his shoulder.
Enzo suddenly let out an animal roar of pure agony and grabbed a heavy tumbler from the low side table.
He hurled it across the room with all his might, the glass exploding against the stone bricks and spraying bourbon and razor-sharp crystal shards across the rug.
He dropped his head into his hands, his breath coming in ragged, ugly gasps that rattled through his ribs.
Enzo scrubbed his bloody knuckles across his eyes. "Twenty years. We spent twenty years driving out to that sanitarium every Sunday. We sat by his wheelchair, played cards with him, wheeled him through the gardens like he was our wounded saint while he kept quiet about everything!"
Enzo’s chest rose and fell in jagged spasms against the stone hearth.
Matteo’s hands trembled against his trousers, his dimples gone, staring blankly at the floorboards while Sofia buried her face in Adrian’s coat, sobs shaking the entire sofa.
Nonna gripped her silver cane with pale, bloodless knuckles, two streaks of wet powder cutting down her face.
I locked my knees and forced my breathing to level out. Fire was eating through the walls, and nobody was holding a hose. In a boardroom, panic like this took down entire companies in under an hour. Here, it meant body bags before dawn.
I took a firm step toward the middle of the room, squaring my shoulders against the chill. I leveled the flat, steady tone at Enzo that I used whenever billionaire executives were ready to jump out of high-rise windows. "Enzo, look at me. Snap out of it. Right now."
Enzo blinked at me with dull, glassy eyes, like he couldn't grasp why an outsider was shouting in his foyer.
I closed the distance between us. "Stop staring at me like a statue.
Get your head in the game. You want to have an existential breakdown?
You want to cry over the uncle who betrayed you at that clinic?
Fine. Do it tomorrow. Because if Don Vincenzo Bellini finds out your house is falling apart after what happened tonight, none of you are going to see sunrise. "
He swallowed hard, his chest hitching. For three seconds he just looked at me, then he gave a single, ragged nod and scrubbed both hands hard across his face, trying to drag the shock out of his skin.
Matteo rubbed his temples, his shoulders shaking under his jacket. "He was our blood, Nora. We brought Sofia to read books on his lap every weekend. We brought him home-cooked food. We loved him while he was rotting us from the inside."
"Then be angry at him when you're alive to spit on his memory.
" I turned away from him and swept my gaze across the hall.
I walked directly to the sofa where Sofia was drowning in tears, grabbed a throw blanket from the arm of the chair, snapped it open, and draped it firmly around her shaking shoulders.
Sofia looked up at me, her red, swollen eyes wide with confusion as she gripped the fabric like a lifeline.
I rested a hand on the blanket. "Breathe. Do not look at the broken glass. Just count your breaths in and out. Four seconds in. Four seconds out." I shifted my gaze toward Adrian. "Adrian, stay with her, but get someone to bring her a glass of water with sugar."
Adrian nodded without letting Sofia go, tightening his grip protectively as he signaled one of the guards at the door to fetch the water.
Next, I turned on Enzo, who was still slumped against the fireplace looking ready to rip someone's throat out.
I pointed a sharp finger right at his bruised nose.
"Stop crying and stop throwing furniture like a toddler.
Your grandmother is standing right there on her feet while you sit on the floor feeling sorry for yourself.
Pick yourself up, go wash the blood off your hands, and check the perimeter sensors.
You want revenge? You don't get it by bleeding on an antique rug. "
Enzo wiped his face with his dirty sleeve, his jaw hardening as he glared at me. For a second, I thought he might pull a gun on me. Instead, he scrambled to his feet, gave Nonna Lucia a tight, apologetic bow of his head, and bolted out the side doors to secure the grounds.
That left Luca.
Luca stood carved out of granite beside the oak sideboard, glaring at the mortar seams in the stone chimney. His chest barely moved. The color had drained from his face, leaving only the hard white edge of his jaw clamped shut.
His hand dropped to the crystal decanter on the sideboard. His knuckles popped as his grip tightened around the neck, amber bourbon sloshing hard against the cut glass. His veins corded up his arm as he drew the heavy bottle back, aimed straight for the stones.
I stepped right into his space, planting my boots inches from his and clamping my hand over his forearm with every ounce of strength I had left. "Luca. Don't."
He froze. The crystal hovered midair. Slowly, his dark, hollow eyes drifted down from the wall to lock onto mine.
They were wild, feral, and rimmed with red, burning with a pain so vast it made my throat tighten.
The terrifying mask had slipped completely, exposing the wounded eleven-one-year-old orphan who had shouldered an impossible war alone.
"Do not waste your energy on glass," I whispered, my voice softening just enough for only him to hear.
My hand remained firm on his sleeve, anchoring him to the room.
"Your sister is terrified. Your grandmother is barely holding herself up.
And your brother needs someone to follow.
You can fall apart later, Luca. In private, behind closed doors, where nobody can see.
But right now, this house needs its Don.
Put the bottle down and lead your family. "
Luca's chest heaved once, twice, a ragged breath rattling through his teeth.
For a heartbeat, the tension between us stretched so taut I thought he might snap it.
Then, with agonizing slowness, the iron in his spine locked back into place.
His fingers unclenched from the crystal neck, setting the decanter down on the polished wood without a single sound.
Luca turned his back to the table. He met Nonna's stare across the rug, gave her one short nod, and buttoned his jacket.