Seven Years in Hell: Escaping the Don Chapter 07
Meanwhile, in Manhattan, New York.
Beyond the floor–to–ceiling windows of the penthouse, a raging blizzard was swallowing the city whole.
“The bone is healing well, Boss.” The private physician snipped the final suture on my collarbone, keeping his head bowed and his breathing meticulously shallow. “But the deep–tissue frostbite from the water dungeon is irreversible. On cold, damp days, the pain will be excruciating. You need bed rest for at least another two months.”
The gunshot wound had settled into a jagged, sinister maroon scar against my deathly pale skin.
“I don’t have time to rest.” I pulled up my silk blouse, casually concealing the scar, my voice devoid of any inflection. “Give me the strongest painkillers you have that won’t compromise my
focus. You’re dismissed.”
The doctor’s spine stiffened. He bowed respectfully and
retreated.
The moment the heavy oak door clicked shut, Victor stepped out from the shadows of the marble–clad study. Holding a thick, highly classified leather–bound ledger, he presented it to me
with both hands.
“Boss, legally speaking, you’ve been dead for three weeks,”
Victor reported in a low voice. “The Moretti family held a
funeral of the highest order for you in Italy. Domenico acted as
the lead pallbearer himself. The entire European underworld is
mourning their ‘lost matriarch.“”
I picked up the black coffee beside me and let out a cold scoff, my eyes completely dead.
“Throwing a grand funeral for a dead broodmare. How dignified.
Let him play the role of the devoted, heartbroken widower for his men all he wants.” I flipped open the ledger, trailing my fingertips over the staggering strings of numbers.
The pages were densely packed with records of my father’s former financial lifeblood in North America–the very
territories Domenico had ruthlessly devoured piece by piece over the last seven years while I was feigning insanity in a psychiatric ward.
Seven years. I had survived on a burner phone sewn inside a
mattress, swallowing every heavy psychotropic drug they forced on me, quietly rallying my old loyalists amidst endless
electroshock therapy and humiliation.
In the dead of night, whenever I thought of Mia and Luca being
snatched from me right after birth, whenever I remembered the
absolute revulsion in Leo’s eyes as he pointed a blade at me, my
insides burned as if they were frying in boiling oil.
But I had taken all that agonizing pain and forged it into the
coldest, sharpest blade.
I was done running. I was done begging for anyone’s mercy. In
this brutal world, a mother who doesn’t hold the gun herself doesn’t even possess the right to protect her own flesh and
blood.
“Sever all of the Moretti family’s smuggling routes into North America. Buy off the docks and intercept that arms shipment from Palermo,” I ordered, snapping the heavy ledger shut. The
muffled thud echoed in the cavernous room. “Within forty–eight
hours, I want Domenico’s entire financial chain on the East
Coast bled dry. Anyone who dares to buy up their assets gets
eradicated right alongside them.”
“Understood.” Victor lowered his eyes, masking the profound awe in his gaze.
The next three months were a silent, yet obscenely brutal slaughter.
I sat sleepless at the very pinnacle of Manhattan, a phantom
haunting the ledgers of the Moretti family, systematically and
mercilessly consuming Domenico’s overseas empire.
Until one late night in December, a massive blizzard put New York on total lockdown.
In the furthest corner of my desk, tucked away in the bottom
drawer, an encrypted satellite phone suddenly vibrated
violently. The red notification light flashed frantically in the dim room.
It was a secure point–to–point line. Only one person in the world still had this number.
Victor’s eyes narrowed dangerously, his hand instantly flying to
his holster. “I’ll severe the signal trace immediately.”
I raised a hand to stop him. Swirling the half–glass of whiskey in
my other hand, I calmly pressed the answer button.
“Isabelle.”
It was Vincenzo. The former mafia emperor, a man who used to
dictate life and death with a single word. Yet now, the old Don’s
voice trembled with the frail terror of a dying man backed into a corner.
“Don,” I said, rattling the ice against the glass. My tone was so
detached I could have been talking to a corpse. “Calling in the
middle of the night? Are you trying to verify exactly how much of your territory this ghost has hollowed out?”
“You played a masterful game of chess, my child…” Vincenzo
sucked in a sharp, cold breath, his tone bordering on begging.”
But all those lost assets in North America–the Family will gladly
hand them over to you! I’m not calling about business. It’s
Domenico.”
My finger paused against the rim of the glass.
“He knows the truth.” The old man’s voice broke into a
suffocating sob. “He found out about all of Elena’s lies. He found out about the poisoned wine that sterilized you, and exactly
how she tortured you in that water dungeon! He completely snapped, Isabelle. He severed the tendons in Elena’s wrists and
threw her into the basement alive, but it didn’t help!”
“He’s lost his mind! He spends every night sleeping on the freezing tiles of the morgue, clutching your blood–soaked clothes like a madman. He shoots on sight if anyone dares to get close. He just executed a core captain who had been with him for ten years over a minor slight, and the capos are already conspiring to rebel! He’s going to drag the entire Family to hell
just to bury them with you!”
I leaned back into the leather chair, a very soft, glacial laugh escaping my throat. “Sounds like he’s efficiently cleaning house for you. You really should congratulate him.”
“I am begging you, Isabelle!!” Vincenzo finally shattered,
casting aside every ounce of his pride to wail into the receiver. ”
Name your price! The European territories, the succession
rights to the Family–anything! Just come back. Just let him look
at you once so he knows you’re alive! Save him, please, for the
sake of what you two once shared…”
A deafening silence spread through the air like a creeping
glacier.
I lowered my eyes, my fingertips slowly tracing the hideous scar
on my collarbone.
The freezing water rushing violently into my lungs in that
dungeon, the blinding agony of a bullet ripping through my
flesh, and the cold, indifferent look in his eyes as he stood by
and watched me bleed out–it was all crystal clear.
Belated devotion is cheaper than dirt.
“Don,” I interrupted him softly, my voice echoing with a bone- chilling deadness.
“Yes? I’m here! I’m listening!” A frantic spark of hope flared in
the old man’s voice.
“Remember this,” I said, staring out at the pitch–black blizzard beyond the glass, enunciating every single syllable. “Dead
women don’t care about a murderer’s tears.”
I hung up without a shred of emotion, ruthlessly popped the
battery out of the back, and dropped both pieces straight into my tumbler of whiskey.
Watching the bubbles rise as the expensive metal short-
circuited completely in the amber liquid, I pushed the glass away.
I looked up, my eyes a wasteland of razor–sharp ice.
“Victor, draft the final acquisition documents. Before Friday, I
want every single casino under the Moretti name to go
completely bankrupt.”