Chapter 6 - The Council of Elders
By noon, the high-backed leather chairs of the ancestral dining hall were filled by the five surviving elders of the Moretti commission—men whose gray hair, weathered hands, and decades of silent influence commanded absolute obedience across the entire eastern seaboard.
At the center of the grand mahogany table sat Adrian Moretti.
He looked decades younger than he had twenty-four hours ago. The sharp, tailored black suit, the perfect posture, and the calm, unshakeable authority radiating from him made the elders murmur among themselves in quiet awe. Rumors of his failing health had swirled through the underworld for months; looking at him now, those rumors felt like ghost stories.
To Adrian’s right sat Vinnie Gallo, holding a heavy leather briefcase containing the complete forensic audit, bank records, confession transcripts, and video logs of Dominic’s treason.
The heavy doors at the end of the hall swung open, and two armed guards dragged a broken, disheveled Dominic Moretti into the room. His Brioni suit was ruined, his face bruised from the night in the archive, his eyes hollow and bloodshot from lack of sleep. They forced him down into a hard wooden chair at the far end of the table.
Don Salvatore Rossi, the eighty-year-old patriarch of the commission, leaned forward, resting his gnarled hands on his silver-headed cane. He looked slowly from Adrian to Dominic, his gaze like cold flint.
“We were summoned here on an emergency writ, Adrian,” Don Salvatore said, his voice gravelly and slow. “You claim treason within your own blood. You claim an attempt on the head of the Moretti family.”
Adrian didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to. The absolute quiet in the room was heavier than any shout.
“Open the files, Vinnie,” Adrian instructed quietly.
Vinnie stepped forward, distributing thick dossiers to each of the five elders. For ten minutes, the only sound in the grand dining hall was the rustle of turning pages, the scratching of financial ledgers, and the occasional sharp intake of breath as the elders read the details of the neurotoxin, the offshore skimming, the DEA sell-outs, and the partnership with the Russian Bratva.
Don Salvatore closed his dossier. His face had gone dark as a thunderhead. He turned his cold, ancient eyes toward Dominic.
“Is this true, boy?” the old man asked softly.
Dominic slumped in his chair, staring blankly at the polished floorboards. He didn't deny it. He couldn't. The evidence was an airtight coffin nailed shut by his own corporate greed.
“I wanted… I wanted to modernize the family,” Dominic whispered, his voice cracking pathetically. “Adrian was stuck in the past. He was dying anyway—the doctors said his heart—”
“The doctors said my heart was failing because your poison was killing me,” Adrian interrupted smoothly.
Don Salvatore slammed his cane against the marble floor with a sharp, explosive crack that made everyone in the room jump.
“For fifty years, I have seen men betray their partners, their friends, and their city,” Don Salvatore said, his voice trembling with righteous fury. “But poisoning the brother who raised you? Siphoning the blood of the family that fed you? That is the act of a rat, not a Moretti.”
The other elders nodded in grim, unanimous agreement.
“What is your judgment, Adrian?” Don Salvatore asked, looking directly at the head of the table. “By ancient law, family blood can be spared the blade. But exile or worse… the choice is yours.”
Adrian looked at his younger brother for a long, silent moment. He remembered the little boy he had protected after their father died, the brother he had sent to the best schools, the partner he had trusted implicitly. And then he remembered the cold instant soup, the bleeding surgical stitches of a mother left to starve, and a tiny three-year-old girl in yellow lion pajamas holding a battered gray rabbit in a dark room.
“He doesn't die,” Adrian said clearly.
Dominic’s head snapped up, a pathetic flicker of hope sparking in his bloodshot eyes.
“He doesn't die,” Adrian repeated, “because death is too quick, too clean for a coward. Strip him of the Moretti name. Freeze every single asset, account, and property registered to his social security number. Revoke his citizenship within our syndicate ports from Boston to Miami. And put him on a commercial cargo freighter bound for a non-extradition labor camp in South America tonight with fifty dollars in his pocket and the clothes on his back.”
Dominic let out a choked, terrified sob, trying to lunge forward out of the chair. “No! Adrian, please! Not South America! They’ll kill me! Just put a bullet in my head—please!”
May you like
The guards grabbed Dominic by the shoulders, wrenching him backward and hauling him out of the dining hall as his screams echoed down the vaulted stone corridors until the heavy oak doors slammed shut behind him.
Don Salvatore nodded slowly, approvingly. “A harsher sentence than a bullet, and far more fitting. The house is yours, Adrian. Undisputed.”
