Chapter 26 - The Unstitched Secret
The Moretti family’s private surgical bay beneath the shipping warehouses was sterile, white, and suffocatingly quiet. The only sound was the rhythmic, rhythmic beep of the cardiac monitor tracking Arthur’s vital signs.
A top mob surgeon had just finished setting Arthur's broken ribs and stitching the lacerations on his face and shoulders. "He suffered blunt force trauma and severe dehydration, Don Moretti," the doctor reported quietly, peeling off his bloody latex gloves. "He has a mild concussion, but there is no intracranial bleeding. He’s heavily sedated. He will live."
"Good," Luca replied without turning around. "Post four armed men at every doorway. If anyone approaches this corridor without my explicit clearance, shoot them through the eyes."
The doctor bowed his head and quickly exited, leaving Luca and me alone in the dimly lit recovery room.
On the stainless-steel table between us lay the old Army jacket.
I stood there, still covered in soot and dried blood, staring at the faded canvas. The Silver Star gleamed under the fluorescent lights, untouched, innocent.
"The lining of the right sleeve," I repeated Arthur’s fading words, my voice hollow in the cold room. "Luca, Julian was willing to die to get this jacket. He knew Vito’s secret. What did your father hide in here?"
Luca walked over to the table. His hands, usually so steady, hovered for a second over the fabric. This jacket was the only piece of his father he had left—the sacred relic that had made him stop our engagement dinner, the garment his former fiancée had tried to toss into the trash like common garbage.
Slowly, Luca drew the pearl-handled dagger from my sheath. With surgical delicacy, he slid the sharp tip into the heavy thread along the inner seam of the right cuff.
*Rip. Rip. Rip.*
The vintage olive stitching separated. Luca pushed his fingers deep into the heavy cotton batting of the sleeve lining.
His brow furrowed. "There’s something rigid inside. Flat. Bound in wax paper."
He pulled it out.
It wasn't a map. It wasn't a microchip or a ledger of syndicate bank accounts.
It was a faded, black-and-white photograph, folded in half, accompanied by a heavy, tarnished brass key marked with an ornate number: *777*.
Luca unfolded the photograph. I leaned over his shoulder, my breath catching in my throat.
The photo had been taken thirty years ago, on the steps of the old City Hall. Standing together in tailored suits, laughing with glasses of champagne in their hands, were three men.
On the left was Vito Moretti, young, fierce, and regal.
In the middle was my father, Arthur Reed, holding a rolled set of architectural blueprints under his arm.
And on the right, his arm slung familiarly over Vito’s shoulder, was a man with cold, piercing gray eyes and a distinct, jagged scar across his chin.
Luca’s breath hitched. His fingers tightened around the edge of the photograph so violently the paper tore.
"Luca?" I asked, alarmed by the sudden, terrifying expression on his face. "Who is that? Who is the third man?"
Luca looked up at me, his eyes wide with a horrifying revelation that seemed to shake the very foundations of his reality.
"That's Victor Vance," Luca whispered, his voice trembling with a rage deeper than anything I had ever heard. "Julian's father. And the man my father told me he executed for treason thirty years ago."
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He flipped the photograph over. On the back, written in Vito Moretti’s unmistakable, sharp handwriting, was a single sentence:
*“We three built the cage. If I fall, Julian’s father holds the master key. Trust no one, not even the Architect.”*
