Chapter 6 - The Execution on the GlassThe ballroom exploded into absolute, chaotic panic.
Guests shrieked, backing away toward the walls as Dante’s security team swarmed the room with surgical, terrifying precision. The four corrupt captains were disarmed and slammed flat against the marble floor within six seconds, their weapons kicking away across the polished stone.
Victor Moretti, realizing his coup was completely dead, pulled a snub-nosed revolver from his ankle holster, grabbing Teresa Moretti by the arm and pulling his own sister in front of his chest as a human shield.
"Nobody move!" Victor screamed, his eyes wild, bloodshot, and feral. "I'll blow her head off! I swear to God I'll do it! Back off, Dante! Give me a car and clearance to the airfield, or your mother dies tonight!"
Teresa Moretti didn't scream. She didn't flinch. She looked at her brother with a cold, devastating expression of pure disgust.
"You were always a coward, Victor," Teresa said quietly.
On the security monitor downstairs, my heart slammed against my ribs. I stood up from my chair, my hands pressed flat against the glass screen. "Dante..." I whispered, terror gripping my throat.
On the dais, Dante didn't draw a gun. He didn't shout. He slowly stepped off the stage, walking down the marble steps toward his uncle with a terrifying, unhurried stillness.
"You touched my mother, Victor," Dante said, his voice dropping into a low, rumbling baritone that echoed through the silent room like thunder. "You stole from my syndicate. You murdered Miguel Vance. And you crawled through a Prohibition tunnel to scare my housekeeper's five-year-old child in her bed."
"I'll kill her!" Victor shrieked, pressing the gun barrel hard against Teresa’s temple. "I'm taking the money and leaving! Step back!"
Dante didn't step back. He took another deliberate step forward.
"Marco," Dante said into his lapel microphone. "Release the dog."
Downstairs in the security parlor, Marco slammed his hand down on the electronic door release button.
CLICK-WHIRRRR.
The heavy steel doors of the subterranean suite swung open. Bruno didn't wait for a command. The massive black Cane Corso exploded out of the parlor, his heavy paws slamming against the stone stairs as he sprinted up toward the main house like a dark bullet fired from a cannon.
Upstairs, the heavy oak doors of the ballroom burst open with a deafening crash.
Bruno lunged across the polished marble floor, sixty miles an hour of muscle, teeth, and rage, covering thirty feet in a fraction of a second. He didn't target Teresa. He lunged directly over Teresa’s shoulder, his jaws clamping shut with bone-crushing force around Victor's right wrist.
CRACK!
Victor let out a high-pitched, blood-curdling shriek as his gun clattered onto the marble floor. Bruno’s weight slammed Victor backward onto the stone floor, pinning the broad man flat on his back, his massive jaws locked around Victor’s arm, growling with a sound like grinding stone.
Teresa stepped aside calmly, smoothing down her velvet dress, without a single hair out of place.
Dante walked up to his uncle lying on the floor. He didn't pull his gun. He simply looked down at the ruined, screaming man pinned beneath his dog.
"Take him down to the boat house," Dante commanded his security team calmly. "And call the federal prosecutors. Tell them the Moretti Group has thirty million dollars of stolen cartel capital and a full confession to hand over."
The guards dragged the weeping, bleeding Victor Moretti out of the ballroom, while Bruno stood tall over the doorway, his chest heaving, his amber eyes scanning the remaining guests until every single capo in the room dropped their gaze to the floor in absolute, unquestioning surrender.
May you like
Dante turned toward the security camera mounted in the corner of the ceiling. He looked directly into the lens, his gray eyes softening, and offered a single, quiet nod.
"It's over, Elena," he whispered to the camera. "Come home."
