Chapter 9 - The Final Reckoning
By 4:00 AM, the rain had stopped, leaving the estate surrounded by a thick, milky fog that hung low over the gardens.
In the center of the courtyard, beneath the shadow of the cypress trees near the old guesthouse, Matteo Vieri sat tied to a wooden chair. His face was battered, his clothes torn, his hands bound tightly behind his back with steel wire.
Lorenzo stood five feet away, wearing a clean white shirt, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. In his hand, he held the tiny pink baby cap that had been placed inside the fake coffin eight months ago—the cap he had kept in his desk drawer every single day.
Matteo lifted his swollen head, looking at Lorenzo through a slit in his bruised eyes.
“Are you going to preach to me, Lorenzo?” Matteo rasped, spitting a mouthful of dark blood onto the gravel. “Tell me how much you trusted me?”
“No,” Lorenzo said quietly. “I’m not going to preach.”
Lorenzo tossed the tiny pink cap into Matteo’s lap.
“I kept that cap on my desk for eight months, Matteo,” Lorenzo said, his voice empty of all anger, leaving only an absolute, hollow silence. “I looked at it every night before I slept. I blamed myself. I thought I failed as a father before I even had the chance to hold my daughter.”
Matteo looked down at the tiny piece of pink cloth resting on his knees. A flicker of genuine shame passed over his features, quickly replaced by a bitter frown.
“I loved her too, Lorenzo,” Matteo whispered. “Isabella. Before you met her, she used to look at me.”
“She never looked at you, Matteo,” Lorenzo replied flatly. “You were just the man who held the umbrella when it rained. You were invisible to her. And that’s what drove you mad.”
Lorenzo turned his back on Matteo, walking toward the mansion steps.
“Antonio,” Lorenzo said without turning around.
Antonio stepped forward from the shadows of the porch, holding a silenced pistol.
“Don't bury him in Greenwood,” Lorenzo added softly. “Put him in the river. Let the water carry him away.”
“Lorenzo!” Matteo screamed as Antonio raised the weapon. “Lorenzo, look at me! Look at me!”
THWIP. THWIP.
May you like
Two suppressed gunshots cut through the morning fog. The screaming stopped instantly.
Lorenzo kept walking, heeding the sound no more than he would the falling of a autumn leaf. He climbed the grand marble steps of his mansion, stepping over the clean, scrubbed floor of the foyer where his staff had already erased every trace of the night's violence.
