Seven Years in Hell: Escaping the Don Chapter 08
The next forty–eight hours were nothing short of a merciless slaughter.
By dawn on Friday, the Moretti family’s last casino on the East Coast had been brought to its knees.
I leaned back in my leather chair, preparing to give the final kill order, when Victor burst into the study.
“Boss, Domenico has left Europe. No security detail. No backup.” Victor’s face was grim as he slammed an encrypted tablet onto the mahogany desk.
The screen displayed a live feed.
It was a military–grade fallout shelter on the outskirts of New York. Six–year–old Leo was clinging desperately to three–year- old Mia. On a metal surgical table beside them, baby Luca was screaming, crying uncontrollably from hunger.
There were no guards in sight. A single line of text flashed at the bottom of the screen: [Two hours of oxygen left. Come in alone,
or watch them suffocate.]
I shattered the wine glass in my grip. Shards pierced my palm, and warm blood dripped onto the desk.
Domenico, that absolute lunatic. He knew money and power couldn’t force my hand, so he hadn’t hesitated to use the lives of his own flesh and blood as leverage.
He had banked on the fact that no matter how cold–blooded I
played at being, I would never leave my own children to die.
“Get the car.” I wrapped a towel carelessly around my bleeding hand and racked the slide of my Glock. “We’re going to the
outskirts.”
Forty minutes later, I stepped into the underground bunker alone.
The moment I crossed the threshold, a deafening crash echoed
behind me. The ten–ton titanium blast door slammed shut,
severing me entirely from Victor and the outside world.
The resounding echo of the metal locks engaging made my ears
ring in the cavernous space.
From the depths of the darkness came a heavy, ragged
breathing, like that of a walking corpse.
Domenico stepped slowly into the pale, harsh light.
In just a few months, the once–invincible mafia tyrant looked as
though his very soul had been hollowed out. He was gaunt to the
point of being unrecognizable. His custom–tailored overcoat hung loosely on a skeletal frame, and his bloodshot eyes burned with the fanatical gleam of a dying man.
“I knew it… I knew you were still alive.”
His shattered voice trembled. As he reached me, the legs of the
great Moretti godfather simply gave out. He dropped heavily to
his knees on the freezing concrete.
With shaking hands, he drew out a stack of bloodstained
documents, holding them up as if offering a perverse sacrifice.
“I know everything,” Domenico choked out, tears spilling from
his bloodshot eyes and hitting the floor. “The poisoned wine
seven years ago, the order to weld the water cell shut, using you as a human shield when the bullets flew… I was blind. I drove you to your death with my own two hands.”
He pulled his lips back in a sick, broken smile. “I slashed Elena’s tendons. I threw her into the icy water under the estate, cut the heat, and watched her freeze to death. Ever since you died, every single night, I’ve slept on a cold steel slab in the morgue, reliving your suffocation every single second.”
He stared up at me, his gaze filled with a desperate, cornered pleading. “I’ll give you my life. I’ll give you absolute control of
the family. The kids are here, not a scratch on them. You can take a pound of flesh from me every day, just… please, give me a chance to make it right.”
Staring at his agonizing, tear–drenched state, the hand holding my gun didn’t waver a fraction of an inch.
In the face of his self–mutilating attempts at atonement, my
heart felt absolutely nothing. Even the thrill of vengeance had
completely burned out. All that remained was a profound, absolute ice.
He had used the lives of three children to set this fatal trap. He
didn’t understand love at all. He was simply, pathologically incapable of accepting that a possession had slipped from his
control.
I let out a soft sneer, shifting my gaze away from him. My tone
was as flat as if I were inspecting a corpse.
“Domenico, you owe me a great deal in this life. If you have even a shred of feeling left for me… let me go.”
“Walking away and never looking back–that’s the best ending
we get.”
The words acted like a slicing blade, instantly obliterating the
last flicker of light in his eyes.
Domenico froze. He stared into my dead, unmoving eyes and finally realized the horrifying truth: not only did I not love him,
I didn’t even care enough to hate him anymore.
At the absolute limits of despair, his long–suppressed madness completely tore through his facade.
Like a rabid dog backed into a corner, Domenico violently lunged up from the floor.
Completely ignoring the muzzle of the gun I pressed right between his eyes, he locked his fingers around my wrist in an iron grip. A twisted, extreme obsession erupted in his eyes.
“Impossible!”
He roared hysterically, his free hand slamming down on the red lockdown panel on the wall.
The surrounding ventilation ducts hissed, followed by the heavy,
metallic clank of deadbolts engaging. The last remaining air gaps to the outside world were sealed tight.
He yanked me brutally against his chest, entirely indifferent to the fact that my gun was now pressed directly against his heart.
He buried his face in my hair, inhaling greedily.
When he spoke, his trembling voice was laced with a terrifying,
suffocating need for control:
“I finally found you, and I am NEVER letting you go!”