Chapter 5 - Ghosts of San Pietro
Moreva didn't drop his father. He adjusted Vittorio’s weight with one arm, his free hand hovering an inch above his holstered sidearm. His jaw was set like iron, but Clara could see the faint pulse fluttering at the base of his throat.
Julian stood ten paces away.
He was thinner than the portraits hanging in the upper gallery, his face mapped with surgical scars and his left eye clouded with a milky cataract, but the cruel curvature of his mouth was unmistakable. He wore black tactical gear, pristine and untainted by the blood being spilled upstairs.
"Julian," Moreva said, his tone entirely level.
Clara gasped, pressing her back against the cold damp stone of the cellar door. Her hands instinctively flew to her stomach. "You... you were in the car. The dental records—"
"A homeless addict from the docks, dressed in my suit with my watch on his wrist," Julian chuckled, though there was no humor in his voice. "Cost me twenty grand and half an hour of dental work. Amazing what money can buy when you want to disappear from a dying empire."
"You abandoned her," Moreva said, his eyes flicking toward Clara, then back to Julian’s weapon. "You left a pregnant girl to be beaten by servants and poisoned your own father."
"I left an expendable pawn where she belonged," Julian spat, his scarred face twisting with sudden venom. "Father was going to name you the Don, Moreva. Always you. The legitimate prodigal son returning from Sicily while I ran the dirty supply lines in the gutter. The old man wouldn't sign over the offshore trust funds unless I gave him an heir. So, I took a pretty maid from the kitchens, bought a priest for twenty minutes, and knocked her up."
Clara felt the floor tilt beneath her feet. The coldness that seeped into her chest was far sharper than the winter drafts through the broken manor windows. "Julian... you swore to me. You said we were leaving."
"I left," Julian sneered, raising the barrel of the gun directly at Clara’s heart. "And now I'm back to collect the bearer bonds from the vault behind that door. Once the old man's dead, the trusts activate under my name. No one cares about a dead brother's maid or a bastard child."
Don Vittorio began to convulse with soundless, racking sobs against Moreva's shoulder, tears soaking into the wool of his eldest son's coat.
"You made a mistake, Julian," Moreva said quietly.
Julian raised an eyebrow, his finger tightening on the trigger. "Did I? I have fifty men upstairs systematically executing your loyalists. You have an old cripple on your back and a pregnant girl who can barely walk."
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"Your mistake," Moreva whispered, "was thinking I needed a gun to kill you."
Moreva shifted his weight, and Clara caught the slight flicker of his eyes toward the overhead pipe.
