Chapter 11 - THE VERDICT OF BLOOD
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The catacombs fell into a silence so profound that the steady dripping of groundwater against the cobblestones sounded like thunder.
Don Carmine Falcone slowly lifted his gaze from the pine table, his milky eyes narrowing as he examined Elena’s face.
Dario De Luca leaped out of his chair, kicking it backward against the stone wall.
“This is an outrage!” Dario roared, his hand reaching for the pistol beneath his armpit.
“Guards, execute this trespasser immediately!”
Before Dario’s men could clear leather, twenty assault rifles held by Matteo’s soldiers snapped up in perfect unison, their laser sights painting bright red dots across Dario’s chest and forehead.
“Touch that iron, Dario,” Luca Ferraro warned from the shadows, “and you won't live long enough to hear your heartbeat stop.”
Don Falcone slammed his hawk-headed cane against the flagstones with a crack that silenced the entire hall.
“Sit down, Dario!” Falcone commanded, his raspy voice carrying the weight of fifty years of absolute authority.
“Nobody draws blood at this table without my word.”
Dario hesitated, his face turning an ugly shade of mottled crimson, but he slowly sank back onto his bench.
Falcone looked at Elena.
“Who are you, girl?” the old boss asked.
Elena did not flinch under the gaze of the man who had ordered hundreds of executions.
“My name is Elena Isabella De Luca,” she stated, each word ringing with crystal clarity.
Murmurs of shock rippled through the assembled syndicate bosses.
“You dare use that name?” Dario sneered, leaning forward.
“You are the bastard spawn of a runaway cook!”
“You have no proof of lineage!”
“You have no standing before this council!”
“I have more than standing, Dario,” Elena replied coldly.
She unzipped her leather portfolio and pulled out the ancient Cook County Coroner’s toxicology report, accompanied by three independent DNA verification certificates completed four hours earlier by the city’s chief medical examiner.
She tossed the thick stack of documents directly in front of Don Falcone.
“Here is the medical proof confirming that Matteo De Luca is my biological father,” Elena declared.
Falcone adjusted his wire-rimmed spectacles and flipped through the official state-sealed pages.
His weathered hands slowed as he reached the toxicology records from eleven years ago.
“What is this?” Falcone asked, his bushy eyebrows knitting together.
Elena pointed a finger directly at Dario.
“That is the proof that Dario De Luca spent six months poisoning my mother, Isabella Rossi, with thallium sulfate while she lived in Cicero.”
The council bosses gasped.
Falcone looked up, his pale eyes turning into shards of ice.
“Explain,” Falcone growled.
“Twenty-five years ago, Dario convinced Salvatore De Luca that Isabella had stolen from the family vault,” Elena explained, her voice steady and unyielding.
“It was a lie designed to prevent Matteo from producing an heir.”
“Salvatore spared her life on the condition that she disappear forever.”
“But eleven years ago, Dario discovered where she was living.”
Elena stepped closer to the table, her gaze locked onto Dario’s terrified eyes.
“Dario knew that if Matteo ever found out Isabella was alive, the truth of his deceit would come out.”
“So he paid his personal physician, Dr. Jonathan Vance, fifty thousand dollars a month to slip poison into her medication until she died of what looked like cancer.”
Elena pulled the leather-bound journal from her coat and slammed it down beside the medical reports.
“Here are the bank wire receipts.”
“Here is Dr. Vance’s signed confession, delivered to federal authorities three hours ago.”
“And here is my mother’s journal, documenting every agonizing day of her murder.”
Don Falcone read the documents in silence for two full minutes.
The old man’s face darkened with a terrible, ancient fury.
In the Chicago Outfit, territorial wars were permitted; business assassinations were expected.
But the murder of a family member’s sworn woman through cowardly poison was an unpardonable sin against the old Sicilian code.
Falcone slowly closed the folder and looked at Dario.
“Is this true, Dario?” Falcone asked, his voice deathly quiet.
Dario broke into a cold sweat, his eyes darting frantically toward his bodyguards.
“She’s lying!” Dario shrieked, panic cracking his smooth veneer.
“The documents are forgeries!”
“Matteo bought off the medical examiner!”
Matteo stepped forward, his massive frame towering over the table.
“Dr. Vance didn't just confess to the feds, Dario,” Matteo said, his voice terrifyingly calm.
“He’s sitting in a police interrogation room right now, explaining how you ordered the hit on Marco in the ICU on Friday night.”
“The police have already issued warrants for your arrest.”
Dario realized the trap had snapped shut around his throat.
He looked at the four council bosses, but every single man turned their face away from him in disgust.
“You are stripped of your rank, Dario,” Don Falcone announced, rising slowly to his feet.
“You are cast out of the De Luca bloodline.”
“And your life is hereby remanded to the head of your house.”
May you like
Dario saw the execution order in Falcone’s eyes.
With a wild scream of terror, Dario grabbed a concealed pistol from his ankle holster and fired wildly toward Don Falcone.
