Chapter 48 - The Grand Banquet of Reckoning
From the catwalk behind Lorenzo, Alessandro dropped from the overhead steel girders like a fallen angel. His first strike disarmed the guard to Lorenzo’s right, throwing the man over the railing into the boiling waters of the cooling tanks twenty feet below. His second shot took out the sniper on the opposite gantry.
"Alessandro!" Lorenzo snarled, spinning around and raising his wolf-headed cane. He twisted the grip, drawing a sixteen-inch concealed rapier of hardened Damascus steel from the cane’s hollow shaft. "You ungrateful whelp! I pulled you from the gutter and made you my heir!"
"You made me a weapon," Alessandro said cold, parrying Lorenzo's blade with the steel slide of his empty sidearm. Sparks showered in the gloom. "And you forgot that weapons have no loyalty to a rotting master."
Below them, Lily lunged through the white smoke straight at Dr. Vance. The chemist attempted to draw a sidearm, but Lily slammed one of the heavy glass antidote bottles directly across his wrist, shattering the glass and showering his skin with the neutralizing oil. Vance screamed in agony, clutching his wrist as Lily shoved him hard against the control console, smashing the emergency shutdown lever downward with the full weight of her body.
The deafening roar of the municipal pumps died instantly.
The intake valves slammed shut with an earth-shaking metallic clang that reverberated through the foundation of the facility. The secondary feed was locked. The water of Rome was safe.
On the catwalk above, the steel blades clashed in a furious, blinding flurry. Despite his age, Lorenzo fought with the savage, cornered ferocity of an old wolf, slashing at Alessandro's face with precision born of decades of blood sport. But Alessandro was faster, younger, and fueled by a lifetime of silent vengeance.
With a brutal, sweeping kick, Alessandro shattered Lorenzo’s right knee.
The old patriarch collapsed to the metal grating with a sickening crunch, his rapier clattering away across the steel mesh. He gasped for air, clutching his ruined leg, his tailored clothes soaked in grease and white neutralizing powder.
Alessandro stood over him, the barrel of his freshly reloaded Beretta resting squarely between Lorenzo Moretti’s eyes.
Below them, Lily stepped onto the iron stairs, ascending slowly until she stood beside Alessandro. She looked down at the man who had ordered her grandmother's ruin, the man who had burned her flesh, the man who had terrorized the underworld for half a century.
Lorenzo looked up at her, blood bubbling at the corner of his lips, his storm-grey eyes burning with venomous, unrepentant hatred.
"You think this is over?" Lorenzo wheezed, his fingers clawing at the metal floor. "You think stopping one pump saves you? The Council... the surviving delegates... they will never accept a baker's bastard and a traitorous captain! My network spans across the continent. My offshore vaults hold the debts of every minister in Rome!"
"They held your debts, Lorenzo," Lily said, pulling the leather-bound ledger from her jacket and tossing it onto his bleeding chest. "Until tonight. While we were on the road to Ostia, Alessandro’s men transmitted Dr. Vance's delivery manifests, your bank account access codes, and the complete recording of your speech at Palazzo Colonna to every surviving syndicate boss from Naples to Berlin."
May you like
Lorenzo’s face turned an ashen, translucent white. "You didn't."
"You are no longer the founder of the Five Families, Don Lorenzo," Alessandro said coldly. "You are an outcast with a price on your head that exceeds the national debt."
