My Mother Saved Her First Love and Buried Her Own Son

"Later, I learned that two of those young women had both been keeping private company with the Don."

In the video, Marco paused and let a bitter smile cross his face.

"I don't want to think the worst of any man. But the facts are sitting right there in front of us."

As his words faded, the screen cut to a handful of carefully arranged photographs and intercepted messages.

It froze, at last, on a side-by-side image.

On the left, the associate who'd been kept on. On the right, him.

The caption was only a handful of words:

【Where exactly did I fall short?】

The video had been live less than half an hour before the talk on the street turned vicious.

"No matter how capable you are, you can't beat the right connections."

"Isn't this just the strong crushing the weak?"

"Somebody ought to put the whole Greco operation under a glass."

The associate slammed a hand down on the desk, his face dark with fury.

"This is filth and lies! That woman handled the back rooms, the bookkeeping behind the bookkeeping. She never once touched the Family's real work. What is there to set against him?"

The man who ran our affairs out in the open was sweating, just as rattled.

"Don Greco, the word on the street has swung clean over to their side. Half our partners are sitting on the fence, waiting to see which way the wind cuts. Why don't we put out our own word right now and set the record straight?"

I watched the numbers climb, the city's whisper turning into a roar, and said nothing for a long moment. Then I nodded.

"We'll put out word, yes."

The room let out its breath.

But when they got a clear look at what I'd signed, they all went still.

It wasn't any kind of denial. It was a declaration of vendetta, drawn up clean and legal by my consigliere.

Naming Marco Rossi for spreading poison, for slandering the men who stood at my right hand, for fouling the name of every legitimate house the Greco Family fronted.

The room held its silence for a few seconds.

The associate couldn't help himself. "Don Greco, we're not going to explain ourselves?"

"Why would we explain?"

I set down the pen, my voice even.

"The man who spreads the lie carries no burden of proof, and the man he lies about is expected to scramble in the dirt to clear his own name?"

"Once the judgment comes down, there will be no shortage of mouths eager to explain it for us."

After the notice went out, the Rossi Family was plainly enraged.

That same night, Vittoria reached out personally to the man who controls the city's information channels and issued a public summons.

She wanted me brought before the Commission. A sit-down, the whole of it staged in the open for every Family to witness.

The moment word moved, it raced to the top of every tongue in the territories.

Every outlet she owned picked it up at once.

Everyone was waiting to watch the war between two bloodlines come to a head.

I was just about to answer when the office door pushed open without warning.

Isabella came in fast, her face graver than I'd ever seen it.

"Dominic, don't go."

I looked up at her.

"Why?"

She set an internal file in front of me.

"Vittoria has lined up more than a dozen channels. The arbiter chairing the sit-down, the men seated around the table, nearly all of them are hers." She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and met my eyes without flinching. "Even the order of the proceedings has been settled in advance."

"The second you walk in, every man in that room turns on you at once. Whatever you say, they'll twist it. And the moment it ends, the whisper campaign buries you so deep no one ever digs you out."

I listened to all of it in silence and didn't answer right away.

After a few seconds, I asked:

"The one who controls that room. The staging, the order of who speaks. Can you get it?"

Isabella stalled.

"Control of the room?"

"Mm."

I looked at her.

"Can you get it or not?"

She nodded before she'd finished weighing it.

"If it's only the staging, the way the night unfolds, I can arrange that." Then her steadiness wavered. "But why are you asking?"

I smiled, slow.

"That's enough."

"As long as I hold the room, that's all I need."

With that, I picked up my phone and sent Vittoria a single line.

"I'll be there."

Once it sent, I set the phone on the desk, turned, and walked into the side room.

It was very quiet in there.

The man in the mirror wore a dark gray suit, shoulders and back straight, his expression hard and cold.

No longer the boy who'd been driven out of his blood twenty years ago, with nowhere left in the world to run.

I looked at the man in the glass.

And my mind, against my will, drifted back to that rainy night.

The corridor outside the room had been a glaring, sickly white.

My father knelt at the doors, holding my barely breathing sister, begging them over and over to save her. Begging for the help that had been turned away on purpose.

And I stood out in the rain, watching them carried off with my own eyes.

Twenty years.

From that night on, I learned like my life depended on it, built like my life depended on it, clawed my way up through every man who stood between me and the top.

Not to stand above others.

Not for the empire and the name I carried now.

I only wanted to wait for one chance.

A chance to lay the truth bare before every Family in this city.

And now, that chance had finally come.

I gazed at myself in the mirror, slowly raised a hand, and wiped away the mist that had gathered on the glass.

Then I spoke softly:

"Papà."

"This day. I've finally waited for it."