Chapter 3 - The Sixth Toast
The founders’ dinner began at nine the following night.
From the third-floor windows, I watched black cars curve through the gates beneath October trees.
Men stepped out in tuxedos.
Women in silk and diamonds climbed the marble stairs.
Music floated up from the ballroom.
Sophie sat on the carpet feeding Bruno pieces of chicken from her dinner plate.
“You’re not supposed to do that,” I said.
“He’s protecting me.”
“He’s also getting fat.”
Bruno swallowed another piece.
Sophie whispered, “Don’t listen to her.”
I almost smiled.
Almost.
At 10:18, the first toast came.
We could hear the applause through the floor.
At 10:26 came another.
Then another.
I began counting.
Fourth.
Fifth.
Bruno stood.
I looked at the clock.
10:43.
Sophie noticed immediately.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know.”
Bruno faced the bedroom door.
The fur along his shoulders lifted.
A second later, footsteps sounded in the hallway.
Slow.
Unhurried.
I moved Sophie behind me.
The doorknob turned.
Locked.
Then Vincent’s voice came through the wood.
“Elena?”
I said nothing.
“Elena, sweetheart, open up.”
Bruno growled.
Vincent laughed softly.
“What’s wrong with the dog?”
My heart pounded.
“Dante said no one comes upstairs.”
A pause.
“Dante sent me.”
That was the wrong answer.
Dante had promised he would send no one.
I grabbed Sophie’s shoulders and pushed her toward the bathroom.
“Go inside.”
“Mama—”
“Now.”
She ran.
“Lock the door. Count to fifty and don’t stop until I say.”
The bathroom door closed.
The lock clicked.
Vincent tried the knob again.
“Elena.”
I backed toward the nightstand.
There was a paring knife inside the drawer.
Pathetic against a gun.
But it was something.
The bedroom lock snapped.
The door opened.
Vincent stepped inside.
His dinner jacket was white.
His silver hair perfectly combed.
He looked almost kind.
Bruno positioned himself between us.
Vincent stopped.
“Call off the dog.”
“He’s not mine.”
Vincent looked toward the bathroom.
“Where’s Sophie?”
“Sleeping.”
“Don’t make this ugly.”
My hand found the knife.
“Three years ago,” I said, “did you kill my husband?”
Something changed in his face.
Not shock.
Annoyance.
As if I had asked about an unpaid bill.
“You should be grateful.”
My fingers tightened around the knife.
“For what?”
“That you and your daughter were taken care of.”
The answer told me everything.
My knees nearly buckled.
Vincent sighed.
“Your husband saw paperwork he should never have seen. He became frightened. Frightened men talk.”
“You murdered him.”
“I corrected a risk.”
Behind the bathroom door, Sophie’s tiny voice counted.
“Twenty-seven… twenty-eight…”
Vincent heard her.
He reached under his jacket.
Bruno moved.
Vincent drew a pistol.
Everything happened at once.
Bruno launched forward.
Vincent fired.
The shot slammed into the ceiling.
Plaster rained down.
Bruno hit Vincent at chest height.
Both crashed to the floor.
Vincent screamed as Bruno locked onto his gun arm.
The pistol skidded toward me.
I picked it up.
I had never held a gun before.
It felt much lighter than the damage it could do.
Vincent lay on the rug, white jacket torn, Bruno’s teeth buried in his forearm.
“Shoot him!” Vincent yelled.
I pointed the gun.
Not at Bruno.
At him.
His face changed.
“Elena.”
Thirty-eight.
Thirty-nine.
Sophie kept counting behind the bathroom door.
I thought of Miguel lying outside the bakery.
I thought of every night I had blamed fate.
I thought of every time Sophie asked why her father lived only in photographs.
My finger touched the trigger.
Vincent’s eyes widened.
“Elena, don’t.”
I could kill him.
For one terrible second, I wanted to.
Then Dante appeared in the doorway.
He looked at Vincent.
At Bruno.
At the gun in my hands.
“Elena.”
“Don’t come closer.”
He stopped.
“He killed Miguel.”
“I know.”
“He admitted it.”
“I heard enough.”
Dante’s voice remained calm.
“Give me the gun.”
“No.”
Vincent groaned.
Bruno tightened his grip.
“Give it to me,” Dante repeated.
“So you can kill him?”
“No.”
That answer stunned both Vincent and me.
Dante looked at his uncle.
“For years, men in my family solved betrayal with funerals. That is how we became this.”
He looked at me.
“I’m trying to become something else.”
My arms trembled.
Dante took one slow step closer.
“If you shoot him, Elena, Miguel does not come home.”
Tears blurred everything.
“He deserves it.”
“Yes.”
“Then why shouldn’t I?”
“Because Sophie is behind that door learning what her mother does when someone hurts her.”
Forty-seven.
Forty-eight.
I broke.
Not loudly.
My whole body simply gave way at once.
I turned the gun sideways and handed it to Dante.
He clicked on the safety and placed it on a table.
He did not use it.
Then he called his men.
Vincent was pulled from the room alive.
Bruno released him only when Sophie opened the bathroom door and whispered his name.
The dog immediately crossed the room and sat beside her.
Blood stained his muzzle.
Sophie touched his head.
“Are you hurt?”
He wasn’t.
She hugged him anyway.
Downstairs, the sixth toast never happened the way Vincent planned.
Instead, Dante walked into the ballroom with his uncle under guard.
I did not see it.
I learned later what he said.
He raised a glass.
He told every person in that room that Vincent Moretti had betrayed his family, murdered an innocent mechanic, and tried to kill a five-year-old witness.
Then Dante said something no one expected.
“This ends with him.”
Not a war.
Not retaliation.
Not another body disappearing into water.
Evidence from Vincent’s safe, the tunnel, the accounts, and Miguel’s vehicle records was turned over to prosecutors through Dante’s attorneys.
Several men fled the state.
May you like
Several were arrested.
Others abandoned Vincent so quickly that Dante later said betrayal had never looked so much like rats hearing rain.
