Chapter 7 - The Trap is Set
By 8:00 a.m. the following morning, the Torrio estate echoed with screams.
Leah sat in the dark, cramped trunk of Teresa’s sedan, tucked away in an underground garage two miles from the mansion. She listened to the radio frequency Teresa had hooked up to her earpiece, monitoring the comms from inside the house.
“He’s dead! Don Viktor is losing his mind!” a guard’s panicked voice crackled over the radio. “The girl was found non-responsive in her room! She’s gone!”
Leah held her breath in the darkness, her chest aching. She hated putting Viktor through this grief—she had seen the genuine pain in his eyes at the diner—but Teresa was right. Hector was a cancer that had to be cut out completely, or no one would ever be safe.
Over the radio, she heard Hector’s voice—smooth, dripping with fake sorrow.
“It is a tragedy, Viktor. A absolute tragedy. The girl’s heart must have been weak. The shock of this environment was too much for her. Come, my nephew, let us step into the study. We must handle the arrangements… and discuss the leadership of the family going forward.”
“Get out of my face, Hector,” Viktor’s voice came through, sounding hollow, dead, and infinitely dangerous.
“Viktor, be reasonable,” Hector urged, his tone shifting, becoming more cold and demanding. “You are unstable. You’ve been unstable since Mariana died. Bringing a random street girl here… it shows the Capos that you are no longer fit to lead the Syndicate. The Council of Capos is arriving at the estate in two hours. I have called an emergency vote to transfer executive authority to me.”
A pause hung on the line.
Then came Viktor’s response: “You called the Capos?”
“I did,” Hector said triumphantly. “It is time to put an end to these ghosts, Viktor. The Torrio family needs a strong hand, not a broken man weeping over dead women.”
In the trunk of the car, Teresa’s voice sounded in Leah’s earpiece via a secondary comm. “Did you hear that, Leah? Hector just walked right into it. He called the entire leadership council to the house to steal the crown.”
“Are we going back?” Leah whispered into her collar mic.
“We’re already on our way,” Teresa replied as the engine roared to life. “I have the original hospital records from County General, the doctor’s deathbed confession about Hector paying him off, and the DNA results we rushed through a private lab last night. We’re going to crash his party.”
Twenty minutes later, Teresa’s sedan tore through the gates of the Torrio estate, tire rubber burning against the driveway.
Inside the grand dining hall, twelve men in dark suits—the Capos of the city's largest crime families—sat around a massive oak table. Hector stood at the head of the table, holding a glass of scotch, a document in his hand. Viktor sat at the far end, silent, staring down at his mother's signet ring on his own hand, looking like a man waiting for his execution.
May you like
“Gentlemen,” Hector announced, raising his glass. “We vote today to restore order to our family. Don Viktor is stepping down due to emotional incapacity—”
The heavy oak doors of the dining hall were slammed open with a deafening crash.
