Chapter 9 - The Reckoning
The trial of the Moretti Syndicate began six months later, in the dead of the Chicago winter.
The courtroom was a massive, windowless space lined with dark walnut paneling and the official seals of the federal court. The gallery was packed with journalists, legal scholars, and residents from the South Side who wanted to see the man who had kept his own brother in a cage for twelve years.
Nora Carter sat in the front row, her hand resting over the round swell of her stomach, her husband Frank beside her. They had come to watch the final accounting, not out of revenge, but out of a deep, historical respect for the memory of Richard Carter, whose original ledgers had started the first cracks in the family’s shield.
The prosecutor played the audio files Elena had recorded inside the linen closet.
The voice of Victor Moretti—cold, loud, and completely untroubled by the violence he was planning—filled the silent courtroom, making the jurors flinch with visible disgust. Then came the testimony of Dr. Hale, who described the calcified rings around Luca’s ankle and the damp aggregate of the wall where Elena had been bricked alive.
When the jury returned after less than an hour of deliberation, the verdict was a formality: GUILTY ON ALL COUNTS OF RACKETEERING, EXTORTION, ATTEMPTED MURDER, AND KIDNAPPING.
Victor was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole at the federal supermax facility in Florence, Colorado. Silvio Rossi was given twelve years for financial complicity, his private accounts stripped to pay the back taxes and pension restitutions to the dock workers' cooperative.
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As Victor was led away in his orange jumpsuit, he looked at the front row where Adrian sat beside his brother Luca. Luca was wearing a clean gray suit, his hair cut short, his posture straight despite the heavy metal brace on his left leg.
Luca didn't look at his cousin with anger. He looked at him with the quiet, cold indifference of a man who had already stepped out of the grave and had no intention of looking back.
