Chapter 7 - The Final ChoiceThree days later, the war for New York’s underworld was over before the police even realized it had begun.
We dismantled the Russian operation with surgical, brutal efficiency. Marcus traced the leak to a disloyal underboss named Salvatore, who was currently sleeping with the fishes at the bottom of the East River, serving as a permanent warning to anyone else foolish enough to sell out the Moretti family. The docks in Red Hook were secured, our shipping lanes were expanded, and the rival crime families sent formal, trembling messages of submission to my office.
On paper, Dominic Moretti had never been more powerful.
In reality, the victory tasted like ash.
I sat behind the massive mahogany desk in my penthouse office, looking out over the panoramic skyline of Manhattan as the golden afternoon sun dipped below the horizon, painting the clouds in shades of purple and orange. On the desk lay a single, simple object: a worn, red-covered composition notebook I had quietly retrieved from Amelia’s apartment through a trusted courier.
I opened it to the first page. Inside, written in neat, elegant cursive, were lines of poetry, lesson plans for high school seniors... and a single margin note scrawled in the corner, dated from November 2011:
“The man at the coffee shop gave me a cinnamon roll today and told me tomorrow is a clean slate. I hope he finds his way out of the dark one day.”
I closed the notebook.
For twenty years, I had believed that power meant control. I had believed that protecting people meant keeping them at arm's length, building a fortress so high that no one could ever reach my heart to break it again.
But as I looked at the empty chair across from my desk—a chair that had been occupied by fear, by greed, by sycophants, and by ghosts—I realized Amelia was right.
I wasn't living. I was just surviving.
I stood up so fast my leather chair rolled backward and hit the wall. I didn't call my driver. I didn't check in with my captains. I grabbed my car keys off the marble credenza, strode out of the office, and took the private elevator down to the subterranean garage alone.
Forty minutes later, my black Maybach pulled up to the curb outside a quiet, unassuming brick apartment building in Brooklyn.
The neighborhood was peaceful. Children were playing stickball down the street. The distant scent of autumn leaves and Italian bakery bread drifted on the cool evening breeze. It was a world away from the neon-lit excess of Manhattan, the guarded safehouses, and the bloody corridors of the underworld.
I walked up the stone steps of the apartment building, found Apartment 4B, and raised my hand to knock.
Before my knuckles could touch the wood, the door clicked open.
Amelia stood on the other side. She was wearing an oversized knit sweater and comfortable jeans, her chestnut hair pulled back into a messy ponytail. She stopped dead in her tracks, staring up at me with wide, disbelieving green eyes.
For a long moment, neither of us spoke. The sounds of the Brooklyn street faded away, leaving only the steady rhythm of our breathing.
“You found me,” she whispered.
“It’s my job to find things,” I replied, my voice rough, stripped of all the arrogance, the titles, and the terrifying reputation that ruled the city. “Though I think... for the first time in my life, I was the one who needed to be found.”
Amelia’s lips parted, and slowly, a soft, radiant smile bloomed across her face—complete with the tiny dimple in her right cheek that I had remembered across fifteen years of blood and shadow.
May you like
“Well, Dominic Moretti,” she said, stepping aside and opening the door wide, welcoming the most feared mafia boss in New York into her simple, quiet world. “You’re late. But I suppose I can forgive you... for now.”
I stepped across the threshold, pulled the door closed behind me, and for the first time in twenty years, I didn't look back.
