Chapter 3 - The Trial of the Bloodline
The noise in the Grand Hall ceased almost immediately as the old capo, Don Calogero, stepped down from the head table. He walked over to Vittorio, took the silver thumb drive from his hand, and walked toward the high-definition display screen mounted on the western wall of the hall—a screen usually reserved for security briefings and logistics overviews.
Vittorio inserted the drive and tapped a key on his tablet.
The massive display flickered to life. The black-and-white footage played before seventy silent, stunned leaders of the Sicilian underworld.
There was no ambiguity.
The screen clearly displayed Marco Moretti using a master key, entering Aleandro’s private study, opening the wall safe behind the oil painting, and retrieving the black velvet box containing The Devil’s Eye. The timestamp at the bottom left read: TUE 22:14:02.
The room seemed to lose all air.
Marco backed away until his spine hit the oak edge of the head table. Sweat glistened on his forehead under the bright light of the chandeliers.
"It... it is a fabrication!" Marco stammered, his voice rising in panic. "A digital fake created by Vittorio! Aleandro wants to consolidate power! He wants to eliminate my branch of the family!"
"Silence!" Don Calogero barked, his old voice echoing with terrible authority. The old man turned to look at Marco with disgust. "The cold server cannot be altered from the outside without triggering an automated alarm across all four regional headquarters. You know the protocols, Marco. We all do."
Don Bernardo stood up next, his face hard as flint. "Where is the stone, Marco?"
Marco swallowed hard, his eyes darting wildly between the seventy men who had, only twenty minutes ago, been cheering his name. He knew the law of the family better than anyone: an enemy from the outside was fought with guns, but a traitor from within was handled without mercy.
"I... I don't have it," Marco whispered, his arrogance finally collapsing into raw terror.
"Where is it?" Aleandro asked again, his tone unchanged, deadly in its absolute calm.
" Antwerp," Marco confessed, his voice breaking. "It was taken to Antwerp yesterday by courier. It is scheduled to be recut and sold tomorrow morning to a private buyer from Dubai."
Aleandro looked at Vittorio. "Call our contacts in Antwerp. Seize the courier and recover the stone before sunrise."
"It is already done, Signor," Vittorio replied quietly. "My men intercepted the buyer at the airport two hours ago. The stone is currently in our vault in Brussels."
A heavy silence descended upon the hall once more.
Marco fell to his knees on the marble floor, his hands trembling as he looked up at Aleandro. "Aleandro... please. We are blood. Our fathers were brothers! We grew up in this house together!"
Aleandro walked slowly over to where Marco knelt. He stood over his cousin, looking down at him not with anger, but with a profound, terrifying pity.
"Blood demands loyalty, Marco," Aleandro said softly. "You broke the code of this house. You stole from your family, you lied to the council, and worst of all, you used your power to terrorize a widow and a helpless child."
Aleandro turned to look at little Emma, who was standing beside her mother near the doorway, watching the scene with wide, curious eyes.
"You thought she was nobody," Aleandro said, pointing toward Emma. "You thought because her mother sweeps our floors and cleans our dishes that they had no voice, no standing, no protection."
Aleandro reached into his vest pocket and drew out the small black phone that had brought him back from Milan. He held it up before the entire assembly.
"This child had the courage to call the head of this house when you were tearing her life apart," Aleandro declared to the room. "She showed more honor, more loyalty, and more bravery than you have shown in forty-two years of life."
Don Calogero stepped forward, pulling a heavy silver coin from his pocket—the traditional marker used by the council to cast a vote on matters of high treason within the bloodline. He dropped the coin onto the marble floor at Marco’s feet with a loud, metallic clatter.
"The council has seen the evidence," Calogero said coldly. "Marco Moretti is stripped of his title, his rank, and his lands. He is banished from Sicily forever. If he ever sets foot on this island again, his life is forfeit."
One by one, the other capos stepped forward, pulling silver coins from their pockets and dropping them onto the floor in front of the kneeling traitor. Within minutes, a pile of thirty silver coins lay scattered around Marco’s knees—the absolute, unanimous verdict of the family.
"Take him away," Aleandro commanded quietly.
Vittorio’s men stepped forward, seized Marco by the arms, and dragged the weeping, broken man out through the side doors of the Grand Hall, his cries for mercy fading into the deep stone corridors of the fortress.
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Aleandro stood alone at the center of the hall. He turned away from the scattered silver coins and walked down the aisle toward the back of the room, stopping directly in front of Sophia and Emma.
The seventy capos watched in complete silence as the most feared man in Sicily knelt down on one knee on the hard marble floor in front of a four-year-old girl.
