Chapter 8 - The Price of Treason
The private airfield on the southern outskirts of Cook County was blanketed in a thick, gray pre-dawn fog. A sleek Gulfstream IV jet sat on the tarmac, its turbine engines winding up with a rising, high-pitched whine.
Antonio Bellini stood beside the boarding stairs, frantically barking orders to three surviving mercenaries who were loading heavy aluminum luggage into the cargo hold. Beside him, Vanessa sat inside an idling black sedan, clutching an ice pack to her bruised face, trembling violently.
“Hurry up, you idiots!” Antonio screamed, checking his gold Rolex. “The Moretti perimeter fell apart, but that lunatic won't stop until he tracks this tail number! Get the engines hot!”
Suddenly, the floodlights illuminating the tarmac violently shattered, bursting into showers of sparks.
The tarmac plunged into pitch blackness.
The whine of the jet engines abruptly choked out as two heavy caliber sniper rounds punched through the turbine casings from a mile away, metal grinding against metal in a screech of catastrophic mechanical failure.
From the fog surrounding the runway, four heavy black Escalades roared forward, tires screaming against the asphalt, boxing the private jet in from every conceivable angle. Their high-beam halogen lights flared to life simultaneously, blinding Antonio and his men in a cage of white brilliance.
“Drop the weapons!” Daniel’s voice boomed through a megaphone from behind the armored vehicles.
The three mercenaries looked at the ruined jet, looked at the dozen red laser dots dancing across their chests, and immediately threw their rifles to the tarmac, kneeling with their hands behind their heads.
“Cowards!” Antonio shrieked, drawing a nickel-plated revolver from his coat. “I am Antonio Bellini! You can’t touch me! The Commission will destroy you!”
A single gunshot cracked through the fog.
The revolver flew from Antonio’s hand, his fingers mangled by a precision round. He collapsed to his knees, howling in agony, clutching his bleeding wrist against his silk tie.
The front door of the center Escalade opened.
Luca Moretti stepped out into the glare of the headlights.
He was dressed in a long, dark wool overcoat, his hands clad in black leather gloves. He walked toward the kneeling Don with the measured, inevitable pace of an executioner.
Vanessa scrambled out of the sedan, falling onto her hands and knees on the cold tarmac, weeping hysterically. “Luca! Luca, please! It was my father! He forced me! He said if I didn't help him take Lily, he would disown me! He’s the monster, Luca! Not me! I love you!”
Luca didn't even look at her. He stepped past her reaching hands as if she were a puddle of dirty water, stopping two feet in front of Antonio Bellini.
Luca crouched down, meeting the old man’s terrified gaze.
“You wanted my shipping routes, Antonio?” Luca asked softly.
“Luca… listen to reason,” Antonio wheezed, blood dripping between his fingers. “We can settle this. I have accounts in Panama… twelve million dollars… it’s yours. All of it. Just let us get on a plane. We’ll never return to the States. I swear to you on the Holy Mother.”
Luca reached inside his coat and pulled out a manila folder, tossing it onto the wet tarmac between Antonio’s knees.
“What is this?” Antonio stammered.
“Those are the ownership deeds to every warehouse, every restaurant, and every dock slip the Bellini family owns,” Luca said calmly. “Signed by your underboss thirty minutes ago in exchange for his life. You have no money, Antonio. You have no family. You have no syndicate.”
Antonio’s face went completely gray. “The Commission… they won't allow this unprovoked slaughter…”
“The Commission gave me their blessing an hour ago,” Luca whispered, leaning in close, his voice chillingly intimate. “When I sent them the audio recordings of your daughter admitting to planning an international child kidnapping on American soil. Even the old men in New York have rules about children, Antonio. You broke them. You are an outcast.”
Luca stood up, turning his back on the broken old man.
“Daniel,” Luca said quietly.
“Yes, boss?”
“Vanessa goes to the federal authorities. Hand over all the forgery evidence, the offshore wire transfers, and the human trafficking documentation Mercier signed. Let her spend the next thirty years in a federal penitentiary in West Virginia, scrubbing latrines for twenty cents an hour.”
Vanessa let out a piercing shriek of horror, clawing at the asphalt as two Moretti soldiers hauled her roughly to her feet. “No! Luca! Kill me! Just shoot me! Don’t put me in a cage!”
Luca ignored her screams, his eyes settling back on Antonio Bellini.
“And him?” Daniel asked.
Luca looked up at the gray morning sky, watching the first pale light of dawn pierce through the Chicago smog.
“Take him to the docks,” Luca commanded cold and clear. “Let him see his burning warehouses one last time before he takes a permanent swim in Lake Michigan.”
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Without looking back, Luca stepped back into the Escalade, closing the heavy armored door, leaving the ruins of the Bellini dynasty behind him forever.
***
