Chapter 8 - The Ghost of the Past
Midnight arrived at the Moretti family cliffside estate with the calm after a historic storm.
In the grand library—lined with thousands of leather-bound volumes and illuminated by a roaring stone hearth—Dominic, Lorenzo, Dante, Matteo, Leo, and I sat in heavy leather wingback chairs.
A butler entered, bowing low. "Lord Dominic. Richard Cole has arrived. He is alone, as requested."
Dominic nodded once. "Bring him in."
Richard Cole was wheeled into the room by our estate security. Without his son, without his wealth, and without the illusion of his high-society prestige, the old man looked like a hollow shell. His hands shook continuously under his blanket, his breath wheezing through his lungs.
The security guard backed out of the room, closing the heavy oak doors, leaving the patriarch of the Cole family alone with the five Moretti siblings.
Richard looked around the room, his eyes landing on each of my brothers before settling on me.
"Elena," Richard whispered, his voice trembling with genuine despair. "I didn't come to beg for Adrian. He’s gone. He’s going to spend twenty years in a federal penitentiary, and... God forgive me, but he deserves it. He is a monster."
"You made him one, Richard," I said coldly from my chair. "You taught him that power was an entitlement. You watched him humiliate me for six years, and you said nothing because you thought my family had abandoned me."
"I thought your father was dead!" Richard cried out, a sudden spark of agonizing grief piercing his withered face. "I thought when Antonio Moretti died twenty-two years ago, the debt died with him! I didn't know he had left the ledger to Dominic!"
Dominic leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his gray eyes piercing Richard’s soul.
"The debt of money was business, Richard," Dominic said in a terrifyingly quiet tone. "We would have eventually bought your company and absorbed your assets without violence. But that wasn't the real secret you were hiding, was it?"
Richard froze.
The color drained from his face so fast I thought he was having another stroke. His jaw dropped, his trembling hands clutching the armrests of his wheelchair so hard the leather groaned.
"You... you know?" Richard gasped, his voice cracking into a silent scream.
I leaned forward. "Know what, Dominic?"
Dominic turned his gaze toward me, his expression softening with a profound, deep-seated sorrow that I had rarely seen on my brother's stoic face.
"Twenty-two years ago," Dominic explained quietly, never taking his eyes off Richard, "our mother wasn't killed in an accidental hit-and-run on the coastal highway. She was run off the road by a black town car registered to an offshore shell company."
My heart stopped. The air inside my lungs turned to glass.
I turned slowly to look at Richard Cole.
"Our father spent the last two years of his life hunting the driver," Dominic continued, his voice dropping into an icy register that shook the room. "The driver was paid two hundred thousand dollars to make sure Antonio Moretti was broken by grief so he would stop auditing the Cole container shipments. The driver died in prison ten years ago. But the man who wired the two hundred thousand dollars from a private Panamanian trust..."
Dominic gestured toward the trembling old man in the wheelchair.
"...was Richard Cole."
A deafening silence fell over the library.
Dante rose from his chair, his hands clenching into fists that shook with murderous intent. Matteo’s eyes turned pitch black. Leo looked away, unable to look at the man who had destroyed our childhood.
I stood up.
The pain in my back was completely gone, replaced by a cold, crystalline fury that felt like ancient ice. I walked across the Persian rug until I stood directly in front of Richard Cole’s wheelchair.
"Is it true?" I asked, my voice deadly quiet.
Richard began to weep. Bitter, shameful tears streamed down his wrinkled cheeks. He bowed his head, unable to look at my face.
"Antonio was going to ruin me," Richard sobbed, his voice muffled by his own shame. "I was young... I was desperate... I didn't mean for her to die! I only wanted to scare him! I only wanted him to back off the audit! Every day for twenty-two years, I saw her face in my nightmares! When Adrian brought you home six years ago, I thought... I thought God was giving me a chance to atone. I thought if I took care of you, if I made you my son's wife, the curse would lift!"
"You didn't take care of me," I said, my voice cutting through his tears like a diamond blade. "You allowed your son to abuse me. You watched me bleed on the floor of your ballroom. You let your mistress mock my mother’s ring."
I bent down until my face was inches from his.
"My mother was an angel, Richard. And you are a coward who hid behind an innocent girl for six years."
"Kill me," Richard begged, squeezing his eyes shut, shaking violently. "Dominic... Dante... do it. Put a bullet in my head. End it. Just spare Evelyn. She didn't know. None of them knew."
Dominic stood up, walking over to stand behind my shoulder.
"We don't murder sick old men in wheelchairs, Richard," Dominic said coldly. "That’s what cowards do. That’s what you did."
"Lorenzo," I commanded, never taking my eyes off Richard. "What is the verdict?"
Lorenzo stepped forward with a single piece of paper.
"Every asset, trust, property, and heirloom bearing the Cole name is seized effective midnight," Lorenzo read. "Your family home will be bulldozed and converted into the Maria Moretti Memorial Children’s Hospital. Evelyn Cole will be granted a modest one-bedroom apartment in the city and a monthly stipend equal to minimum wage. And you, Richard..."
Lorenzo looked at the old man with pure contempt.
"You will spend the remainder of your days in a state-run nursing facility under twenty-four-hour medical supervision, paid for by the Moretti foundation. You will not be allowed visitors. You will have no television, no internet, and no phone. You will sit in an empty room with your own mind until the day your heart finally stops beating."
Richard let out a broken, agonizing wail, collapsing forward in his wheelchair.
"Take him away," I said softly.
May you like
The security guards stepped in, turned the wheelchair around, and wheeled Richard Cole out of our home, out of our lives, and into the dark, silent oblivion he had earned.
***
