Chapter 5 - The Glass Shatters
The silence that fell over the conservatory was so profound you could hear the wind rustling the dead leaves outside the glass panels.
Clara gasped, her hand flying to her mouth, immediately pulling Lily behind her legs. “Lily! Hush! I am so sorry, Mr. Moretti, she slipped away while I was setting the pantry—”
“It’s alright, Clara,” I said gently, not breaking eye contact with the woman sitting to my right. “Lily is exactly where she needs to be.”
Uncle Silvio looked from the laboratory sheet to Julianna, then down at the three-year-old child standing in the doorway. Silvio was a ruthless man—he had run shipping lines through dock strikes, federal probes, and gang wars for forty years—but he was a traditionalist. In the Moretti family, blood was holy. Kin-slaying was the one sin that had no absolution.
“Julianna,” Silvio said, his voice dropping into a low, menacing growl. “Take off the ring.”
Julianna didn't move. Her posture remained rigid, but her green eyes were darting toward the terrace doors behind her.
“You’re listening to a toddler?” Julianna hissed, her voice cracking with hysteria. “A cleaning woman’s bastard child? Gabriel has coached her! He’s using a child to frame me because he knows the board is voting to remove him on Wednesday!”
“Take off the ring, Julianna,” Silvio repeated, stepping around the table, his heavy hand coming down on the back of her chair like a vice. “Or I will have Leo break your fingers to take it off for you.”
Julianna knew Leo. She knew the men who guarded this compound didn't answer to the board, didn't answer to the foundation, and didn't answer to the police. They answered to me.
With trembling, furious fingers, she pulled the heavy Baltic amber cabochon from her finger and threw it onto the table.
It bounced across the linen, striking a silver butter dish before coming to a stop in front of me.
I picked it up.
I examined the dark, pitted black gold of the band. On the side of the bezel, almost invisible to the naked eye, was a tiny mechanical catch. I pressed it with the tip of my silver butter knife.
Click.
The amber cabochon swung open on a miniature hinge.
Inside the hollow chamber beneath the stone was a fine, pale residue of white powder.
Uncle Silvio closed his eyes. A ragged, heavy breath escaped his chest, his head sinking forward. “God forgive us... Marco’s wife.”
Julianna let out a sudden, bitter laugh that echoed off the glass walls—a manic, mocking sound that stripped away every remaining illusion of sanity.
“Marco?” she spat, turning her glare on Silvio. “You think Marco was a saint? Marco was a coward! He spent his entire life bowing to Gabriel! Everything went to Gabriel—the shipping lines, the holding companies, the name! Marco built the Mediterranean routes, and what did he get? A junior partnership and an allowance!”
“Marco was my brother,” I said quietly, the rage inside me freezing into an unyielding block of ice. “I gave him forty percent of the operating equity the day he married you.”
“And you kept the voting shares!” Julianna screamed, slamming her palms onto the mahogany table. “He died in that river because of you! He was driving to your emergency meeting in the middle of a blizzard because you commanded it! He died in the dark while you sat in this warm palace counting your containers!”
“The brake lines on Marco’s Mercedes were severed, Julianna,” a voice came from the conservatory entrance.
Leo stepped into the room, followed by two armed security officers. In his hand, Leo held a blue legal folder.
“We reopened the state police vehicle inspection report this morning,” Leo said, his face carved from stone. “The mechanical report was signed off three years ago by an independent mechanic named Thomas Kelly in Queens. Kelly received a cashier's check for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars from The Alabaster Foundation forty-eight hours before Marco’s car went through the barrier on the Tappan Zee.”
The room went completely airless.
Julianna’s eyes widened in sheer, naked terror.
She hadn't just tried to murder me.
She had executed her own husband. She had orchestrated Marco’s death to inherit his forty percent, then spent three years slowly poisoning me so she could assume sole executive control of the entire Moretti empire as the surviving matriarch.
“You killed your own husband,” Silvio whispered, looking at her with an expression of revulsion so deep he stepped back as if she were carrying the plague.
Julianna didn't answer.
She lunged.
Not toward me.
She lunged toward the open terrace doors, her crimson slippers tearing across the marble, reaching into her pocket for a small silver key fob to override the perimeter gates.
She never made it to the glass.
Leo moved with the terrifying speed of an experienced enforcer. He caught her by the shoulder, spun her around, and pinned her face-first against the reinforced glass pane with enough force to rattle the brass frames. Handcuffs clicked shut around her wrists with brutal, metallic finality.
“Get her out of my sight,” Silvio commanded, his voice trembling with disgust. “Take her to the cellar. Call the district attorney. Call the feds. I don't care if the Moretti name is dragged through every tabloid in America—that monster dies in a concrete cell.”
“No,” I said.
Silvio turned, stunned. “Gabriel? She murdered your brother! She spent three years torturing you into madness!”
I stood up from the head of the table. I walked over to where Julianna was pinned against the glass, her hair disheveled, tears of rage and humiliation streaming down her cheeks.
May you like
I looked at the amber ring resting on the white linen, then down into her eyes.
“Calling the police is what an honest family does, Silvio,” I said, my voice dead level, devoid of any mercy. “And Julianna made sure three years ago that this family is anything but honest.”
