Chapter 3 - The Broken Trust
Twenty minutes later, Elena returned to the conservatory. She slid through the glass door quietly, holding the small black leather notebook beneath a folded stack of clean white towels.
She handed the notebook to Dominic.
“No one saw me, Mr. Moretti,” she whispered. “Mr. Ricardo was in the grand parlor talking on his phone.”
“What was he talking about?” Dominic asked, taking the book.
“He was talking about shipping manifests,” Elena said, her voice barely audible. “He mentioned Pier Twelve in Newark. He said... he said the cargo would be moved on Saturday night, with or without your signature.”
Dominic’s jaw tightened.
Pier Twelve was the primary import dock for Moretti Maritime. It was where high-value industrial machinery arrived from Europe. It was also the primary route for the family’s off-the-books operations.
Dominic opened the black leather notebook.
This was not a legal corporate register. This was the hidden ledger—a private, encrypted record of every bribe, every kickback, every secret account, and every internal loyalty payment made within the Moretti family for fifteen years. Dominic’s father had handed it to him on his deathbed.
Only three people in the world knew this ledger existed: Dominic, his late father, and his father’s old consigliere, who had retired to Sicily four years ago.
Ricardo did not know about it.
Dominic flipped through the pages of thin, gold-rimmed paper. His eyes scanned the coded entries, the bank account routing numbers in Zurich and the Cayman Islands, and the names of union officials who received monthly stipends.
Then he stopped.
On page forty-two, under an entry dated two weeks before the ambush in the Manhattan garage, was a series of wire transfers totaling four million dollars.
The funds had been drawn from a dormant holding company in Panama—a company that was supposed to be controlled exclusively by the Moretti executive board.
The receiving account belonged to a private shell corporation registered in Delray Beach, Florida.
Dominic pulled his phone from his coat pocket and tapped out a short, encrypted text message to a private forensic accountant in Chicago who owed him his life.
Trace routing number 884-Panama to account 902-Florida. Find the beneficial owner.
Five minutes later, his phone buzzed with a reply.
The beneficial owner of the Florida shell company was a woman named Marcus-Bellandi Investments.
Dominic staring at the glowing screen, his blood turning to liquid ice.
The Bellandi family.
The same family that had tried to cut into Moretti territory for five years. The same family whose underboss had died in the turf war.
And the four million dollars transferred to the Bellandis from the Moretti holding account had been authorized using a private digital security key that was stored in only one place: the safe in Ricardo Moretti’s private office at the Long Island estate.
Dominic leaned his head back against the leather headrest of his wheelchair, closing his eyes.
The ambush in the parking garage hadn't been an unfortunate accident. It hadn't been an unpredictable strike by a rogue rival gang.
It had been an execution order paid for with his own family's money.
His uncle—the man who had carried him out of his bedroom when he was ten years old, the man who had brought him mushroom risotto last night, the man who was asking him to sign over his voting proxies—had sold him out to the Bellandis.
Dominic’s chest heaved. A dark, terrifying rage surged through his veins, hotter and more lethal than any pain he had felt in his spine.
“Mr. Moretti?” Elena’s voice broke through his thoughts. She was watching him, her hazel eyes filled with deep concern. “Are you okay?”
Dominic opened his eyes. The vulnerability, the despair, the numb helplessness that had consumed him for eleven weeks vanished completely.
In their place sat the Don of the Moretti family—a man who had survived three syndicate wars and built an empire out of blood and steel.
“Elena,” Dominic said, his voice terrifyingly calm.
“Yes, sir?”
“Does your daughter still have that clay fish?”
May you like
Elena blinked, confused. “Yes... she’s playing with it by the garden door.”
“Tell her,” Dominic said, a cold, sharp smile touching his lips for the first time in months, “that we are going to fix the sail on her boat. And then... you and I are going to change how this house is run.”
