Chapter 7 - The Grand Inquisition
The grand ballroom of the Moretti estate had once hosted governors, foreign dignitaries, and the most powerful crime syndicates in the western hemisphere. Tonight, it served as a court of blood.
Outside, the blizzard screamed against the towering glass arched windows, trapping everyone within the fortress of stone and slate. Inside, the massive crystal chandelier cast a stark, unforgiving light over the room.
The entire household staff—thirty-two maids, scullions, footmen, and groundskeepers—knelt in two neat rows across the polished parquetry floor. Four armed men in black tactical gear stood behind them, their automatic weapons held at low ready.
At the far end of the room, sitting in a velvet armchair brought down from the library, was Don Giovanni Moretti.
He was wrapped in a thick wool blanket, but he sat upright. The fire in his dark eyes was so intense that none of the kneeling servants dared to look up. Beside him stood Marco, his arms crossed over his chest, his face an emotionless mask.
In the center of the room, on her knees before Giovanni, was Mrs. Gable.
Her arrogance had completely vanished, replaced by a frantic, weeping hysteria. Her manicured hands were clasped together, shaking uncontrollably.
“Don Giovanni, please,” she wailed, her voice echoing off the high ceilings. “You know me! I’ve run this house for you! I didn't know the girl was sick! She was clumsy, she stole from the larders, she was lazy—”
*SLAP.*
Marco’s backhand struck Mrs. Gable across the face with the force of a wooden plank. She spun sideways, collapsing onto the floor, spitting blood and a broken tooth onto the parquet.
“The Don didn't give you permission to speak,” Marco said flatly, stepping back into position.
The heavy double doors of the ballroom swung open.
Lorenzo Moretti walked in.
He had removed his blood-stained shirt, now wearing a simple black turtleneck with the sleeves rolled up to his forearms. His knuckles were raw, his jaw set in stone. He walked with a steady, lethal cadence until he stood directly over Mrs. Gable.
He looked up at his father first.
“The doctors managed to stop the contractions,” Lorenzo reported, his voice cutting through the silent room like a blade. “She suffered severe hypothermia, acute dehydration, and physical exhaustion. But the baby is alive. Nora is alive.”
A visible shudder of relief passed through Giovanni’s frame. He closed his eyes for a brief moment, then opened them, fixing his gaze upon Mrs. Gable.
Lorenzo looked down at the bleeding housekeeper. He pulled a thick folder from under his arm and tossed it onto the floor before her. Papers spilled out—bank statements, canceled supply invoices, forged medical receipts.
“Three million dollars over two years,” Lorenzo said, his voice terrifyingly calm. “You took three million dollars allocated for my father’s medical care, his food, his physical rehabilitation. You pocketed eighty percent of it and sent the rest to an offshore account in the Caymans under your sister’s name.”
Mrs. Gable sobbed, pressing her forehead against the floorboards. “Mr. Moretti, please... I’ll give it back! Every cent! I have the accounts, I can transfer—”
“Shut up,” Lorenzo said softly.
He crouched down, grabbing Mrs. Gable by her graying hair and forcing her head up so she was forced to look at Giovanni’s face.
“You left my father in a freezing room,” Lorenzo whispered. “You fed him congealed slop while you ate dry-aged beef bought with his money. You let him sit in his own filth because you thought he was a vegetable who couldn't tell me what you were.”
Lorenzo leaned closer, his eyes cold as the blizzard outside.
“And then, a pregnant girl—a girl with nothing, abandoned by the world—walks into this house. She sees a human being where you saw a corpse. She takes her twenty-dollar tips to buy him a blanket so he doesn't freeze to death. And what do you do to her?”
Lorenzo’s grip on her hair tightened until she screamed in agony.
“You drag her down into a flooded cellar and lock the door so she can freeze to death with her unborn child.”
Lorenzo let go of her hair, letting her face crash back down onto the floor. He stood up, wiping his hand with a linen handkerchief, and turned toward the kneeling staff.
“Did any of you speak up?” Lorenzo asked the room.
Silence answered him. Several of the maids began to weep quietly, their shoulders shaking with dread.
“Did a single one of you bring my father a glass of water without being ordered?” Lorenzo continued. “Did any of you tell Marco when he visited that the old man was being starved?”
No one moved.
Lorenzo turned to Marco. “The entire staff is terminated. Every single one of them. Take their phones, their identification, and their bags. When the storm clears tomorrow afternoon, drive them fifty miles north into the mountains and leave them on the highway without coats. Let them walk back to civilization. Let them feel what three hours in the cold feels like.”
The ballroom erupted into desperate pleas and cries for mercy, but Marco’s men moved efficiently, dragging the weeping servants out of the hall through the service exits.
Soon, only Mrs. Gable remained, weeping on the floor.
Lorenzo walked over to his father’s chair, leaning down beside the old Don. “What do you want done with her, Dad?”
Giovanni looked at Mrs. Gable.
For five years, he had been silent. For five years, he had been powerless.
Slowly, Giovanni raised his right arm. His index finger pointed toward the large, iron-barred meat locker located in the deep recesses of the estate’s wine cellars—a room that maintained a constant temperature of twenty-eight degrees.
Then, Giovanni spoke his second word of the night.
“Lock,” the old Don rasped, his voice deep, gravelly, and absolute. “Her. In.”
Lorenzo smiled—a cold, terrifying smile that did not reach his eyes.
“You heard the Don,” Lorenzo said to Marco. “Put her in the meat locker. Turn off the interior lights. Let her spend the night exactly where she left Nora.”
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Mrs. Gable shrieked, clawing at the floor as two large guards seized her by the arms and dragged her kicking and screaming down the corridor, her frantic cries fading into the vast, hollow silence of the mansion.
***
