Chapter 7 - Dawn at Teterboro Airport
-7-
The pale, bruised light of dawn was breaking over the frozen tarmac of Teterboro Airport in New Jersey as a sleek, twin-engine Gulfstream G650 taxied toward the private runway.
Inside the wood-paneled cabin of the jet, Bianca Romano sat clutching a glass of champagne so tightly her knuckles were white. Her makeup was slightly smeared, her designer trench coat wrinkled from a sleepless night spent in a VIP holding lounge surrounded by Moretti enforcers who hadn't let her leave her sight.
The heavy cabin door hissed open, and a blast of freezing morning air swept inside.
Dante Romano—having flown in from Boston on an emergency flight just hours earlier—strode up the carpeted steps, his face dark with suppressed fury. He slammed the cabin door shut behind him and marched straight toward his sister.
“Are you completely insane?!” Dante hissed, grabbing Bianca by her trench coat lapel and jerking her forward so violently her champagne glass spilled over the leather seat. “Pop sent you to New York to undermine the Moretti marriage, and you managed to trigger a full-scale federal asset freeze and get yourself thrown out of a hospital lobby by Lucian himself?!”
“Get your hands off me, you brute!” Bianca shrieked, shoving her brother away and smoothing down her coat with trembling hands. “You don't understand what happened! Serena Moretti isn't some naive housewife—she’s a federal prosecutor’s daughter who has been quietly weaponizing her family’s real estate trust against the syndicate for years! She trapped us, Dante! She trapped all of us!”
Dante snarled, pacing the length of the narrow cabin like a caged animal. “Pop is furious. The Boston accounts are already showing flagged transactions from the federal banking commission. If the Moretti ledgers go public, our entire shipping pipeline is finished.”
“Then we don't let them go public,” a cold, smooth voice echoed from the doorway of the private cabin.
Both Dante and Bianca froze, whipping their heads around.
Standing in the doorway, framed by the harsh morning light of the runway, was Mateo. He wasn't alone. Two heavy-set Moretti enforcers stood behind him, each carrying a heavy canvas duffel bag that clicked with the heavy, unmistakable metallic weight of specialized weaponry.
“Mateo,” Dante said, his hand sliding instinctively toward the concealed pistol beneath his suit jacket. “You’re a long way from Manhattan. And you’re standing on Romano territory.”
“I don't care about territory anymore, Dante,” Mateo said calmly, walking down the aisle of the jet with slow, heavy strides. He stopped three feet away from the siblings, his scarred face completely devoid of expression. “My boss’s wife just took control of every municipal bribe, shell corporation, and bank routing key the Moretti family has operated for decades. Lucian is finished. The old regime is dead.”
Bianca’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “If Lucian is finished, why are you here? Why aren't you helping him pack his bags for federal prison?”
“Because some of us know how to read the writing on the wall,” Mateo replied, opening one of the canvas duffel bags and tipping it slightly forward.
Dante and Bianca stared down into the bag. It wasn't filled with guns. It was filled with encrypted hard drives, paper bearer bonds, and bearer certificates representing over forty million dollars in unallocated syndicate slush funds—funds that Lucian didn't even know existed.
“What is this?” Dante asked, his voice dropping into a greedy whisper.
“This is our retirement fund,” Mateo said smoothly. “Serena Moretti wants the syndicate dismantled, the old bosses ruined, and her husband broken. But she didn't ask about the off-the-books reserves stashed in the Cayman accounts under my name. If you and your father want to survive the federal tsunami that’s about to hit New York, you’re going to help me execute one final maneuver.”
Bianca looked up at Mateo, a slow, dangerous smile creeping back across her face. “What kind of maneuver?”
“We let Serena think she’s won,” Mateo said, his eyes gleaming with cold ambition. “We let her sign the divorce papers, take the penthouse, and assume she’s dismantled the empire. And while she’s busy celebrating her newborn son and her new kingdom... we take the forty million, leave Lucian to rot in federal prison, and rebuild the syndicate from the ground up under a new flag.”
Dante stared at the duffel bag, then up at Mateo. A slow, ugly grin stretched across his scarred face.
“Deal,” Dante said, extending his hand.
May you like
Mateo didn't shake it. He just zipped the duffel bag shut, turned his back on them, and walked toward the jet’s exit.
“Just remember,” Mateo tossed over his shoulder as he descended the steps into the freezing morning air. “Serena Moretti is smarter than all of us combined. If she catches us before this bird takes off, we’re all dead men.”
