Chapter 2 - The Severing of All Ties
The ballroom had gone completely quiet by the time Luca’s feet touched the bottom step.
I was standing at the upper banister, watching through the balusters as ordered, my fingers gripping the mahogany rail so hard the wood bit into my skin. Behind me, Teresa’s bedroom door was locked. She was safe for the moment, but downstairs, the tension was thick enough to choke on.
Vanessa took two steps toward Luca, her scarlet silk dress rippling around her ankles. She reached for his arm with the practiced intimacy of a woman who believed she had already won the ultimate prize.
"Darling, what took you so long? You look so grim," she murmured, lowering her voice just enough for the surrounding circle to hear her affectionate tone. "Is your mother all right? I told you, she’s getting to that age where even a simple dinner party overwhelms her."
Luca didn't take her hand. He didn't look at her face.
He reached into his breast pocket, pulled out the manila folder, and dropped it onto the glass table beside them. It hit with a heavy *thwack* that made several women flinch.
"What's this?" Silvio Bellini asked, stepping forward with his brow furrowed, a thick cigar between his fingers. "Luca? What's going on here?"
"Read it, Silvio," Luca said. His voice wasn't raised, but it carried to every corner of the room, bouncing off the limestone walls. "Since your daughter seems to have developed an interest in commercial real estate."
Vanessa’s eyes flicked to the folder. For the fraction of a second, the mask slipped. Her throat worked beneath the heavy diamond necklace Luca had given her for Christmas.
"Luca," she said, letting out a breathy, patronizing laugh. "I don't think tonight is the time for business—"
"Open it," Luca commanded.
Silvio reached out, his heavy gold rings catching the light, and flipped open the cover. He scanned the top sheet. His eyes widened slightly. "Pine Ridge Manor? An assisted living facility in Rockford? What the hell is this?"
"It’s a five-thousand-dollar-a-month memory-care ward," Luca said, his eyes finally fixing on Vanessa. "Two hours past the city limits. One visiting day every two weeks. Restricted phone access."
The room murmured. A few of the older capos exchanged uneasy glances. In the Moretti family, loyalty to blood was not an abstract virtue; it was the foundation upon which their entire empire stood. An insult to an elder was an insult to the family name.
"Luca, let’s talk about this privately," Vanessa hissed, her voice dropping into a razor-sharp whisper as she stepped closer. "Your mother cannot live with us once we’re married. She wanders around the halls, she can't hear half of what is said to her, and she makes our guests uncomfortable! You’re the head of the syndicate. You need a modern household, not an old woman dropping soup on herself while we host foreign delegates!"
"She dropped soup on herself once," Luca said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "Three years ago, when she had the flu. You’ve brought it up eleven times since."
"I was trying to solve a problem for you!" Vanessa snapped, her patience fraying under the scrutiny of thirty pairs of eyes. "You’re too soft on her because she’s your mother! A real leader knows when to prune dead branches from the tree!"
Silvio winced. Even he knew his daughter had gone too far. "Vanessa, shut your mouth," the old man growled under his breath.
"No, let her speak," Luca said. He reached into his side pocket.
He pulled his hand out, palm flat. Sitting in his palm were the two hearing aids, dripping a slow, steady trickle of murky water onto his pristine cuffs.
"She took these from my mother’s ears at four o'clock," Luca announced to the room. "She told my mother they were unsightly for the photographer. Then she dropped them in a sink, ran the tap, and told my mother that I was disgusted by her disability."
Gasps rippled through the gathering. One of the older women, the wife of an underboss who had grown up alongside Teresa in Little Italy, pressed a hand to her mouth in genuine horror.
"I didn't say that!" Vanessa spat, her cheeks flushing crimson to match her dress. "The woman is losing her mind! She’s senile, Luca! She heard whatever she wanted to hear because her brain is turning to mush!"
"My mother is not senile," Luca whispered. He closed his fingers around the ruined devices, crushing the delicate plastic until the tiny casing cracked beneath his grip. "She spent twenty-four hours a day caring for my father while he died of lung cancer in that very room upstairs. She scrubbed floors on Taylor Street so I could go to private school. She took a bullet in her shoulder during the eighty-nine war and never complained once."
He took a step forward. Vanessa instinctively took a step back, her heel catching on the hem of her dress.
"And you," Luca said, his eyes boring into hers, "thought you could make her sit in silence at my table, convinced that her own son despised her, so that you could steal this house from under her feet."
"Luca, please," Silvio intervened, stepping between them, his posture defensive. "She’s young. She made an error in judgment. We can handle this between families—"
"Take the ring off, Vanessa," Luca said.
The silence that followed was absolute.
Vanessa froze. Her eyes went wild. "What did you say?"
"You heard me," Luca replied. "Take it off."
"We signed an agreement!" Silvio barked, his face darkening with anger. "The docks, the distribution routes—you can't break this over an old woman’s hearing aids!"
Luca turned his head slowly toward the older man. The air around him seemed to drop ten degrees.
May you like
"Silvio," Luca said softly, "if you refer to my mother as 'an old woman' one more time in my house, you will not walk out of that front door on your own two legs. The alliance is dead. The wedding is canceled. And you have five minutes to get your daughter and your people off my property before I consider your presence a hostile invasion."
***