Chapter 6 - THE TRAITOR UNMASKED
"Matteo, this is crazy!" Julian shouted, raising his trembling hands in the air. "You're losing your mind! Someone is playing you! Sal! Paulie! Tell him! I've been loyal to the Rossi family for thirty years!"
Sal and Paulie immediately stood up, backing away from the table, their hands hovering near their holsters, staring at Julian in shock.
"Is this true, Julian?" Paulie growled, his deep voice shaking with rage. "Did you touch the Don’s family?"
"I didn't do anything!" Julian screamed, sweat pouring down his forehead, ruining his slicked-back hair. "Matteo, listen to me! The Morettis set this up! They're trying to destroy us from beyond the grave!"
"The Morettis were muscle, Julian," I said, opening a manila folder on the table and sliding the Swiss bank statements across the wood. "They were hired guns. The wire transfers that paid for Elena’s ambush came from Rossi Logistics. From your private account."
Julian looked down at the paper. The paper trail was undeniable. The account numbers, the dates, the signatures—it was all there in black and white.
His frantic posture slowly collapsed. The desperate, pleading expression on his face faded away, replaced by a cold, bitter sneer I had never seen on his face before.
He slowly lowered his hands, leaning back into his chair despite the gun barrels pressed against his neck.
"You always were too sentimental, Matteo," Julian spat, pulling a silk handkerchief from his pocket to wipe the sweat from his eyes. "You ruled this city like a poet, not a king. Elena was interfering with the expansion! She found out about the Apex Pharmaceutical merger! She was going to go to the federal prosecutors!"
"She was my wife!" I roared, standing up so fast my heavy leather chair flipped backward onto the concrete floor.
"She was going to destroy the empire!" Julian screamed back, his eyes wild. "Apex offered us fifty million dollars a year to use our shipping lanes to distribute their synthetic narcotics across the East Coast! Elena was going to block the contract! She was weak, Matteo! Just like you!"
"And Isabella?" I whispered, my voice shaking with a terrifying rage. "She was four years old, Julian! She was your goddaughter!"
Julian scoffed, a dark, wicked grin spreading across his face. "She saw me in Elena’s office the night before the crash! She saw me taking the ledger! I couldn't kill her—you would have burnt the entire state down searching for a murderer. So I gave her the Apex nerve blocker. It kept her quiet, didn't it? It kept her trapped in that fucking wheelchair where she couldn't point her little finger at me!"
Paulie swore loudly, pulling his pistol and aiming it straight at Julian’s forehead. "Let me blow his brain out right now, Don Matteo!"
"No," I commanded, stepping around the table until I was standing inches from Julian. "Shooting him is too easy."
I picked up the tin of boutique tea Julian had brought for my daughter.
May you like
I flipped the lid open. The scent of lavender and sweet chamomile filled the air.
"Since you insist this tea is so good for healing nerve damage, Julian," I said, grabbing him by the jaw and forcing his head back, "you won't mind drinking the whole tin."
