Chapter 8 - The Truth of the Car Bomb
By six o’clock the next morning, the storm had passed, leaving behind a clear, crisp dawn over the Atlantic Ocean.
The Long Island estate was cleared of the hit squad. Eighteen Moretti hitmen were dead, their bodies removed in unmarked vans, while Mateo’s men secured the perimeter with heavy artillery.
In the basement interrogation suite beneath the wine cellar, one surviving hitman—the lead captain of the squad—was strapped to a steel chair under a single hanging lightbulb.
Lorenzo stood in the shadows, his sleeves rolled up, holding a heavy silver revolver.
Beside him stood Mateo, carrying a laptop connected to federal wiretap databases that Lorenzo’s lawyers had purchased from corrupt agents in D.C.
“I won't talk, Rossi,” the hitman spat, blood dripping from his broken mouth onto his chest. “Don Carmine will rip your family apart!”
Lorenzo didn't waste time with torture. He simply nodded to Mateo.
Mateo pressed play on the laptop.
An audio recording played through the room—a phone call recorded six hours before the car bomb had exploded outside the St. Regis three months ago.
> “Is the device planted?” Don Carmine Moretti’s voice asked over the speaker.
> “Yes, Don Carmine,” a smooth, familiar voice replied from the other end. “Sophia is in the car now. The bomb will detonate the moment she reaches the corner of 5th Avenue.”
> “Good,” Carmine replied. “And what about my payment?”
> “Five million dollars, transferred to your Swiss account,” the familiar voice said. “Once Sophia and the baby are dead, Lorenzo will be broken. My faction will take control of the Rossi council.”
Hunter, who was standing near the reinforced glass observation window outside the room, gasped sharply.
The voice on the phone wasn't an enemy.
It was Uncle Silas Rossi—Lorenzo’s own senior consigliere, his father’s younger brother, the man who had sat at Lorenzo’s right hand for twenty years.
Inside the room, Lorenzo didn't move. He didn't shout.
He slowly closed his eyes as the realization of the ultimate betrayal washed over him. His own uncle had hired the Morettis to murder his pregnant wife so he could seize control of the two-billion-dollar Rossi empire.
When Leo had survived, Silas had paid Nurse Clara to poison the baby’s formula so the heir would starve slowly, making it look like a natural medical failure, avoiding suspicion.
And Hunter’s unexpected arrival—her miracle milk—had destroyed Silas’s entire plot.
Lorenzo opened his eyes. They were cold as glacial ice.
He walked out of the interrogation room, stepping into the corridor where Hunter was waiting.
He looked at her, his face dark with an ancient, terrifying grief.
“It was my uncle,” Lorenzo whispered softly. “My own blood.”
Hunter stepped forward, putting her hands on his chest, looking up into his eyes with fierce compassion. “Lorenzo... you aren't like him. You protect your blood. He destroyed his.”
Lorenzo grabbed her hands, pressing them against his heart.
“Stay here with Leo,” Lorenzo commanded softly. “I have to clean my house.”
At ten o’clock that morning, Uncle Silas Rossi was summoned to a private meeting at the docks in Newark, expecting to receive a progress report on the Moretti hit squad.
Instead, he walked into a warehouse surrounded by forty of Lorenzo’s most loyal capos.
Silas didn't even have time to pull his gun.
Mateo forced him to his knees on the concrete floor in front of Lorenzo.
Lorenzo didn't say a word. He didn't offer a trial. He pulled the audio recording device from his pocket, set it on a wooden crate in front of his uncle, and played the tape.
Silas’s face turned ghastly grey. “Lorenzo... nephew... please! Carmine forced me! He threatened my family!”
“You killed my wife, Silas,” Lorenzo said quietly, drawing his Beretta. “And you tried to starve my son.”
BANG.
Justice was swift, cold, and absolute.
By noon, the Moretti family headquarters in Brooklyn was raided by federal authorities acting on an anonymous tip provided by Lorenzo’s legal team—a tip that contained every financial record, every wiretap, and every murder contract Don Carmine had ever signed.
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Don Carmine Moretti and his son Marco were arrested on federal RICO charges, facing three consecutive life sentences without parole.
The war that had plagued New York for thirty years was over in a single afternoon.
