Chapter 11 - The Confrontation at Dawn
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The iron door of the east wine cellar creaked open with a chilling groan.
The air down in the stone foundation was freezing, smelling of damp earth and aged oak barrels.
Michael sat on a wooden crate in the center of the vault, his expensive dress shirt torn and filthy.
When he heard the heavy footsteps approaching, he looked up, expecting to see Marco with a plate of food.
Instead, two shadows fell across the stone floor.
Michael’s jaw dropped in absolute horror as he recognized the man walking beside Luca.
“No,” Michael whimpered, backing his crate away until his spine hit the cold stone wall.
“You’re dead.”
“Salvatore told me you were dead in Maine!”
Dante stopped five paces away, his arms folded across his chest, his expression carved from stone.
“Salvatore Bellini lied to you, little brother.”
“Just like he lied when he promised you would sit in Luca’s chair.”
Michael scrambled to his feet, holding his hands up defensively.
“Dante, listen to me!”
“It was Vanessa!”
“She set the whole thing up with her father!”
“They threatened to kill me if I didn’t get Mom to sign over the Lake Geneva property!”
Luca stepped into the dim light of the hanging bulb, his voice devoid of any warmth.
“Stop lying, Michael.”
“We opened your private safe in the study twenty minutes ago.”
Michael went completely white.
“You have offshore accounts registered under your name dating back seven years,” Luca said coldly.
“You were skimming three percent off our father’s port revenue before Dante even graduated from college.”
“You didn’t sell us out because you were afraid of the Bellinis.”
“You sold us out because you were greedy, weak, and pathetic.”
Michael looked between his two older brothers, realizing that there was no corner left to hide in.
His terrified expression suddenly twisted into a mask of pure, venomous spite.
“Pathetic?” Michael spat, blood flecking his teeth.
“Father never looked at me!”
“It was always Luca the Don, and Dante the Soldier!”
“I was the one who balanced the books!”
“I was the one who made sure the politicians stayed paid!”
“And you treated me like an errand boy!”
“We treated you like a brother,” Dante said, his voice dropping an octave, heavy with sorrow.
“I took the blame for your theft five years ago so Father wouldn't put a bullet in your head on his deathbed.”
Michael froze, his venomous rant choking in his throat.
“What?”
“I knew it was you who took the money, Michael,” Dante revealed quietly.
“I found the wire transfers.”
“I let Father banish me because I thought you were just young and stupid.”
“I thought giving you room to breathe would make you realize what family meant.”
“Instead, you tried to put our mother in a cage so you could buy more silk suits.”
Tears of cowardly humiliation began streaming down Michael’s dirty cheeks.
“Luca, please,” Michael begged, dropping to his knees on the damp cellar floor.
“Don’t kill me.”
“I’m your brother.”
“We have the same blood.”
Luca stared down at him with an expression of cold, absolute finality.
“You stopped being my brother the moment you made my mother cry in front of forty strangers.”
Luca turned toward the heavy iron door where Marco stood waiting.
“Take him to the private airstrip.”
“Put him on a cargo transport to our contacts in South America.”
“If he ever sets foot on North American soil again, treat him as an enemy combatant.”
Michael began screaming and thrashing as Marco’s men dragged him out of the cellar, his fingernails clawing at the stone floor.
Luca did not look back once.
May you like
He turned to Dante, his jaw set in grim determination.
“Now we finish the Bellinis.”
