Chapter 8 - The Fall of the House of Romano
The storm outside had reached hurricane strength as Alessandro ascended the rusted iron stairs toward the upper catwalk of the refinery.
Water poured through the shattered skylights fifty feet above, creating a blinding, torrential cascade that soaked through Alessandro’s clothes, washing the dust and gunsmoke from his face.
At the end of the high steel walkway, cornered against the locked emergency exit overlooking the black waters of Newark Bay, stood Vincent Romano and Isabella.
Vincent was wounded.
A ricocheting slug had torn through his left thigh, forcing him to lean heavily against the rusted iron railing, his expensive tuxedo ruined, clutching a gold-inlaid Colt .45 in his trembling right hand.
Beside him, Isabella was on her knees in the rain, sobbing hysterically, her designer dress shredded at the hem, her mascara running in black rivers down her face.
Alessandro walked down the catwalk. His heavy boots made no sound against the wet steel, but with every step he took, Vincent’s breathing grew more frantic, more desperate.
"Stay back, Moretti!" Vincent wheezed, raising the pistol with both hands, aiming directly at Alessandro’s chest. "I’ll drop you! I swear to God I’ll drop you right off this gantry!"
Alessandro didn't raise his shotgun.
He didn't run.
He walked steadily forward until the barrel of Vincent’s gun was pressed directly against the center of his forehead.
The steel was cold against his skin, but Alessandro didn't even blink. His dark eyes bore straight into the soul of the dying Chicago Don with an intensity so absolute, so devoid of fear, that Vincent’s hands began to shake uncontrollably.
"Pull the trigger, Vincent," Alessandro whispered softly.
Vincent swallowed hard, his throat clicking dryly. "You think I won't?"
"I know you won't," Alessandro said, his voice carrying the terrifying weight of thirty years of blood. "Because you are a coward. You have always been a coward. You sent men to plant a bomb in my father's car outside Naples thirty years ago. But you didn't kill my father, did you?"
Vincent’s eyes flared wide with ancient, buried terror. "How... how do you know about Naples?"
"Because Dr. Vane kept the forensic autopsy reports," Alessandro murmured, each word landing like an iron hammer. "The bomb didn't kill Don Antonio Moretti. It killed my mother. It killed Elena. She burned to death on that Italian roadside while you sat in Chicago sipping Chianti."
Isabella let out a strangled, horrified gasp, looking up at her father. "Papa... no..."
"Thirty years, Vincent," Alessandro said, stepping closer, forcing the gun barrel backward against Vincent’s forehead. "My father searched for the man who signed that order until the day he died. He thought it was the Sicilians. He thought it was the Corleonesi. But when Isabella tried to frame Rosa with my mother’s brooch two days ago... when she mentioned the Naples car crash in the hallway... I had Franco pull the Swiss bank records from 1994."
Alessandro reached out with lightning speed.
His left hand seized Vincent’s wrist, twisting the bone with a sickening crack.
Vincent howled in agony, the gold pistol clattering off the steel grating, tumbling fifty feet down into the churning, oily waters of the bay below.
Alessandro grabbed Vincent by the throat, lifting the sixty-two-year-old mobster off his feet, pinning him against the rusted iron railing overlooking the abyss.
"You took my mother from me when I was twelve years old," Alessandro whispered, his face inches from Vincent’s bulging, suffocating eyes. "And tonight, you tried to take my daughter."
"Alessandro... please..." Vincent choked out, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. "The Commission... the rules... you can't murder a boss of the five families..."
"The Commission is dead, Vincent," Alessandro said softly. "I burned it down an hour ago."
He opened his hand.
Vincent Romano did not scream as he fell.
His heavy body plummeted through the dark, cutting through the torrential rain, striking the black water of Newark Bay with a dull, hollow splash before being dragged beneath the surface by the outgoing industrial tide.
The catwalk fell into silence, save for the wailing of the wind and Isabella’s frantic, broken weeping.
She was curled into a ball on the wet steel, clutching Alessandro’s boots with both hands, her fingernails broken and bleeding against the leather.
"Alessandro... please!" she sobbed, looking up at him with wild, pleading eyes. "I didn't know about your mother! I swear on my life I didn't know! My father forced me! He told me he would kill me if I didn't help him! Don't kill me! Please don't throw me over!"
Alessandro looked down at her.
There was no rage in his eyes. There was no hatred.
There was only a cold, profound, absolute emptiness—the look a man gives to a venomous spider that had crawled onto his shoe.
"I am not going to kill you, Isabella," Alessandro said quietly.
Isabella blinked through her tears, a tiny, desperate glimmer of hope flickering in her chest. "You... you aren't?"
"No," Alessandro said, stepping out of her grip, walking toward the stairs. "Death is mercy. And you do not deserve mercy."
He turned his head slightly, looking back over his shoulder.
"The federal marshals and the Southern District prosecutor are waiting at the perimeter gates. Franco handed them your encrypted phone twenty minutes ago. Every offshore transaction, every murder contract, every extortion ledger your family has run for twenty years is on that server."
Isabella’s breath hitched in her throat. "Federal prison?"
May you like
"You will spend the next forty years in a maximum-security cell in Danbury, Connecticut," Alessandro told her, his voice devoid of all human warmth. "You will wear orange polyester. You will eat off plastic trays. And every single morning, when you wake up to scrub the latrines with a plastic brush... you will remember that it was a maid who took your empire away."
He descended the iron stairs, leaving her weeping into the rain, her screams swallowed entirely by the roaring storm.
