Chapter 2 - Dead Men Tell Tales
I viciously kicked the rusted basement door completely off its rotting hinges before my stunned brain could fully process the absolute impossibility of the situation.
My heavy pistol was leveled straight at the chest of the man who shared my exact bloodline, my finger perfectly rigid against the trigger.
Matteo did not even flinch at the explosive noise, his dark eyes locking onto mine with a chilling, predatory calmness that I remembered perfectly from our childhood.
Beatrice let out a high-pitched, terrified gasp, her knees instantly buckling as she dropped to the damp concrete floor in sheer panic.
I aggressively demanded to know how a dead man whose lavish funeral I had funded was currently standing and breathing in front of me.
Matteo slowly lowered his heavy revolver, a bitter, twisted smile crossing his heavily scarred face as he looked at my shaking hands.
He calmly told me that the expensive mahogany casket I had wept over was actually filled with heavy paving bricks and a nameless stranger's cremated ashes.
Twelve years ago, the very syndicate we had bled to build had secretly ordered a ruthless hit on him because he had uncovered a massive internal betrayal.
I furiously shook my head and refused to believe it, fiercely insisting that our powerful criminal family was built on a foundation of absolute, unbreakable loyalty.
Beatrice suddenly interrupted our tense standoff, her voice trembling violently as she confessed that she had been secretly hiding and feeding him in this abandoned building for the past four months.
She explained through her tears that she owed Matteo her entire life because he had brutally dismantled a human trafficking ring to save her shortly before his supposed assassination.
I lowered my gun just a fraction of an inch, my mind spinning dangerously out of control as the very foundation of my twelve-year empire crumbled into dust.
I stepped closer and demanded that Matteo tell me the exact name of the traitor who had ordered his execution.
He opened his mouth to finally reveal the deeply buried truth, but the shattered basement window suddenly exploded into a terrifying shower of glass shrapnel.
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A bright, piercing red laser sight danced erratically across the dark fabric of Matteo's winter jacket before settling squarely over his heart.
Lorenzo's heavily amplified voice boomed aggressively through a police megaphone outside, brutally ordering his heavily armed mercenaries to burn the entire building to the ground with all of us trapped inside.
