Chapter 9 - Ashes of the Rossi Crown
Matteo woke to the sharp, sterile smell of antiseptic and the rhythmic beeping of a cardiac monitor.
He groaned, a wave of agony lancing through his chest and shoulder. He blinked against the harsh fluorescent lights, expecting to see the concrete ceiling of an underground cartel clinic—or the bars of a federal prison ward.
Instead, he saw pale green curtains and a simple pine bedside table.
Sitting in a vinyl armchair beside his bed was Norah.
She was exhausted, dark circles bruised beneath her eyes, holding a sleeping Clara against her chest. She hadn't run to the highway. She hadn't fled to another state.
Matteo’s dry lips parted. "Norah...?"
Norah looked up. Her expression was unreadable, but her eyes were red from crying. "You took two bullets. One shattered your collarbone. The other missed your hepatic artery by three millimeters."
"You... you stayed?" Matteo rasped, trying to sit up, only to be forced down by a wave of nausea.
"Arthur arrived six minutes after the shooting stopped," Norah said quietly. "He wanted to airlift you back to Boston. I told him if he moved you, you’d bleed out over the Rockies. I brought you to a private clinic in Astoria run by a retired doctor my father used to pay. Arthur’s men have the perimeter locked down."
Matteo looked down at his bandaged chest, then across at his daughter. Clara was safe. Unharmed.
"Carmine Lucchese..." Matteo murmured.
"Is dead," Arthur’s voice cut in from the doorway.
Arthur stepped into the room, his suit disheveled, a secure tablet in his hands. "While you were in surgery, Boss, Mrs. Rossi gave the orders."
Matteo frowned, looking at Norah. "What did you do?"
Norah’s voice was as steady as steel. "I called the federal prosecutor’s office in Southern New York using your encrypted link. I didn't give them your files, Matteo. I handed them every single offshore account, shipping manifest, and wire-tap recording belonging to the Lucchese family. By midnight, federal marshals raided Carmine’s compound in Long Island. Carmine tried to shoot his way out. He died on his front lawn. The Lucchese syndicate is extinct."
Matteo stared at his wife in stunned disbelief. In twelve hours, while holding an infant and tending to a dying husband, she had dismantled the most dangerous crime family in North America without firing a single bullet.
"And us?" Matteo whispered, his voice trembling. "What about the Rossi family?"
Norah stood up, walking slowly toward the edge of his bed. She set the secure tablet onto his lap.
"I transferred the remaining eighty percent of your offshore funds into a blind, irrevocable trust for Clara," Norah said. "Arthur has already instructed your capos in Boston that the territory is being surrendered to the minor syndicates under a non-aggression treaty. You are officially dead, Matteo. As far as the FBI, the streets of Boston, and the media are concerned, Don Matteo Rossi was killed in an ambush in the Oregon woods and his body was disposed of at sea."
Matteo looked from the screen up to Norah’s face. "You erased me."
"I saved you," Norah corrected, her voice softening just a fraction. "And I gave you a choice. The empire is gone. The crown is burned to ash. You have no guards, no private jets, no territory, and no power. You are just a man with two bullet scars and an alias."
She looked down at Clara, who stirred softly in her arms.
"If you want to walk away when your shoulder heals, Arthur has fifty thousand dollars and a clean passport waiting for you. You can go anywhere in the world. You will never see us again, but you will live."
Matteo didn't hesitate for a fraction of a second. He reached out with his uninjured right hand, his fingers trembling as he touched the edge of Norah’s sleeve.
"I don't want the empire," he choked out, hot tears slipping down his face. "I don't want Boston. I don't want the money. Norah, I swear on my life... if all I am permitted to do is chop wood outside your fence and watch our daughter grow up from across the yard, that is all I will ever ask for. I just want to earn my place back."
Norah looked down at his desperate, pleading eyes. The arrogance that had once defined him had been completely burned away in the fire of his own ruin.
May you like
She didn't tell him she forgave him. Trust was a house that had to be built brick by single brick. But she slowly lowered Clara down, placing the tiny girl gently onto Matteo’s uninjured chest.
Matteo froze, terrified to move, his hand cupping the baby’s tiny back. Clara let out a soft sigh, nuzzled against his hospital gown, and fell back asleep against her father's beating heart.
