Chapter Six – The Sound of a Broken Oath
To take back the throne, I had to spill the blood of the ones who built it.
Starting with Antonetti.
He ran his side of the business like a machine—quiet routes through Jersey ports, small crews, no noise. That's how Antonetti survived this long. He kept his hands clean by paying other people to do the dirty work.
Tonight, that was going to change.
Mercy got me the location: a private warehouse just past the bay, shielded behind two shell companies and a crooked union contract.
I brought Gio with me—not because I trusted him.
Because I wanted him to see it.
We arrived in silence, black SUV rolling slow past rows of forgotten steel and old dock chains. No streetlights. Just fog and the smell of salt and rust.
"You sure you want to do this here?" Giovanni asked.
"No," I said. "But I'm doing it anyway."
Antonetti was inside—white shirt, sleeves rolled, talking into a burner phone and pacing like a man who didn't know the gun was already pointed at his head.
We burst in fast. Two guards. Two shots. Clean.
He turned and froze.
"Luca…" he started.
I pistol-whipped him before the second syllable. Blood sprayed across a stack of ledgers. He collapsed, coughing.
I knelt beside him.
"Your account just got a ten-million-dollar injection from Berlin."
He blinked, dazed. "What? I—I don't know what you're talking about—"
"Don't insult me." I gripped his collar. "You don't get that kind of money unless you sell something big. You sold me. Or the family. Which one?"
He spat blood. Shook his head. "You think this is about you? This isn't about some vendetta. This is business."
I slammed his head into the concrete.
"Business doesn't put bullets near my skull."
"No, Luca," he growled. "Loyalty does that. You left. You ran. You turned your back on us. You think they'd let you come back and sit at the fucking top like nothing happened?"
I stood slowly.
"So you handed the family over to outsiders?"
"Better that than watching it die under your name."
Giovanni flinched beside me.
I nodded. Cold. Controlled.
Then I shot Antonetti in the knee.
He screamed—ugly, raw, echoing off concrete.
"Tell whoever wired that money this is your down payment," I said, crouching beside him. "Next time I find out a captain sold my name, I don't aim for the knee."
I shoved his bloody face into the dirt and stood.
Giovanni didn't speak the whole ride back.
Mercy was waiting at the compound. Wet hair. Black jacket. Pistol tucked at her back.
"You did it," she said.
"He screamed like a child," I muttered. "It didn't help."
She watched me carefully.
"You think it was him alone?"
"No. I think he's just the mouthpiece. Someone else is pulling the strings."
"Europe?"
I nodded.
"Then you're out of time."
She handed me a flash drive.
"Encrypted comms between Antonetti and a client listed only as A.E. He started receiving messages two months ago. Patterned language. Military phrasing. Not mafia."
"Ex-intel?"
"That's my guess. And if I'm right… you're not just fighting traitors anymore. You're fighting professionals."
I pocketed the drive. My voice came cold.
"Then it's time they met a professional of their own."
That night, I stared at the old family photo on my wall.
My father. Me. Giovanni. And another boy.
I touched the frame.
The forgotten brother.
Adriano.
Dead… or so I'd been told.
But that name…
A.E.
A chill slid down my spine.
If he was alive…
If he was the one pulling strings from the other side of the Atlantic…
This wasn't a coup.
It was a resurrection.
The knife in my back has a family crest on the handle.
And I think I know whose initials are carved into the blade.