Chapter 4 - The Fall of Victor Moretti"Amelia...?!" Victor Moretti gasped, his face turning an ugly, paper-white shade of shock as he stumbled up from his chair at the head table. "What the hell is she doing here?! The intelligence reports said she left the country!"
Julian didn't draw a weapon. He walked slowly down the carpeted central aisle, stopping three feet from Moretti, setting an encrypted tablet flat onto the mahogany podium.
With a single tap of his thumb, the massive projection screen above the stage illuminated with high-definition digital text and audio files.
The red numbers lit up the ballroom:
FEDERAL RICO INDICTMENTS: CASE #9942-NY — Issued at 6:00 PM today by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
CHARGES: High Extortion, Corporate Espionage, Attempted Assassination, and Wire Fraud against Victor Moretti & Lena Ward.
SEIZURE OF ASSETS: Total federal forfeiture of Moretti Syndicate maritime accounts, returning sixty-five percent of disputed shipping equity directly to The Amelia Cross Protection Trust.
Moretti let out a guttural, furious roar, reaching for a sidearm inside his coat. "YOU TRAITOROUS BASTARDS!"
THWIP!
Before Moretti’s finger could touch the trigger, a high-velocity suppressed round fired by Enzo from the secondary balcony punched cleanly through Moretti’s right shoulder, knocking him flat onto the carpeted floorboards.
"ARGH!" Moretti groaned in agony, clutching his bloody arm.
BOOM!
The heavy side doors of the ballroom were thrown open as forty fully armed Federal Marshals and NYPD tactical officers swept into the room, their weapons trained directly on the remaining Moretti lieutenants.
"DROP YOUR WEAPONS! FEDERAL AGENTS!" the lead marshal bellowed.
Lena Ward—wearing a gray prison jumpsuit, her hands bound in steel handcuffs—was led into the room by two female marshals, her head bowed in total, groveling defeat as she identified Victor Moretti as the mastermind behind the eleven-month conspiracy.
CLICK. CLICK.
Heavy steel restraints locked around Victor Moretti’s wrists as he thrashed against the floor, dragged out through the high brass doors in chains to face lifetime federal imprisonment without parole.
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Julian stepped up to the master microphone, wrapping his broad arm around my waist, pulling my body flush against his solid chest, looking out over the sea of New York's corporate and syndicate elite.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Julian announced flatly. His thunderous baritone echoed through the speakers with absolute, unyielding authority. "My wife, Donna Amelia Cross, remains the sole, undisputed matriarch of the Cross family empire. Anyone who ever threatens my wife again... will answer to me."
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