Chapter 8 - The Cornered Rats of the Syndicate
Camilla did not answer. She could not. Her chest heaved in violent, arrhythmic spasms as the fabric of her cream silk gown tore along the side seam, soaked with her own blood from the porcelain cuts on her knees. She looked like a bird caught in the jaws of an iron trap.
"ANSWER ME!" Domenico roared.
The sound was not human. It was a concussive blast of absolute, sovereign fury that vibrated through the floorboards, rattling the crystal prisms of the chandeliers fifty feet above. The heavy silver vases on the side tables hummed in sympathetic resonance.
Marco scrambled upright on the couch, gasping for air, holding up his hands in a frantic, weeping plea.
"It was Maria!" Marco cried out, his voice cracking hysterically. "Maria Moretti! In Palermo! She had the child out of wedlock with an American soldier... she was going to drown the baby in the canal, Domenico! We saved her! We bought the child from the midwife!"
"You bought her?" Domenico stepped toward Marco, his silhouette blotting out the afternoon sun, casting the trembling cousin into absolute darkness. "Why?"
"The inheritance!" Camilla screamed from the floor, her composure completely shattered into raw, venomous hatred. "Because your father’s will was ironclad! Don Vittorio left seventy percent of the private trusts, the overseas shipping docks, and the estate in Tuscany to Leonardo’s firstborn child! If Leonardo died without an heir, the entire syndicate defaulted to you!"
Camilla looked up, her bloodshot eyes glittering with madness through her tears.
"We were next in line after Leonardo!" she shrieked. "Marco gave twenty years of his life to your father! He ran the docks in Newark! He took the federal subpoenas! And your father treated him like a dog, leaving everything to Leonardo's unborn seed! When Leonardo died in the crash, we realized the entire empire was going to slip into your hands! Unless Leonardo had an heir."
Domenico stared at her, the pieces of the puzzle falling into place with sickening, mathematical precision.
"So you bought a newborn in Palermo," Domenico murmured, his voice deadly still. "You forged the baptismal records. You bribed the local coroner to state that Elena had given birth twenty-four hours before the car went over the cliff. And you brought the child to New York as Leonardo’s orphan."
"We were going to adopt her!" Marco wept, tears streaming down his flushed, bruised face. "We were going to petition the family council for legal guardianship! Once we had custody of the heir, we would control the trusts! We would control the votes on the Commission!"
"And then I took her," Domenico said softly.
Marco swallowed hard, unable to speak.
"The day you brought her through the gates of this estate," Domenico continued, his gaze drifting to Sofia, who was watching him with wide, solemn eyes, "I looked at her face, and I told the family council that Leonardo’s daughter would be raised under my roof. I took the guardianship myself."
Camilla let out a bitter, weeping laugh from the floor. "And you locked us out! You put her in the nursery, you hired the private guards, and you put every single dollar of the Vittorio trust into an irrevocable escrow account that neither Marco nor I could touch until she turned twenty-one!"
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She slammed her bloody fist onto the marble floor.
"We had to look at that little bastard every day!" Camilla screamed, pointing a trembling, accusing finger at Sofia. "A street child from Palermo! Eating off our family’s silver! Living in our family’s palace! While Marco and I were left begging you for quarterly allowances like common employees! She ruined our lives! The moment she was born, she became our prison!"
