Chapter 9 - THE VERDICT
The sound of Adrian’s voice shattered the cathedral’s peace like glass bursting under a hammer.
A collective, gasp erupted from three hundred throats.
Celeste stumbled back a step, her face instantly turning as white as her wedding dress. Her eyes widened in absolute, blind terror. "You... you..."
Frankie Vallone leaped to his feet in his pew, his hand lunging into his coat. "What the hell is this?!"
"Sit down, Frankie," Adrian commanded, his voice echoing off the vaulted stone ceilings with the terrifying weight of an emperor.
From the balcony above, twenty of Gabriel’s men racked the slides of automatic submachine guns, aiming them directly down at Vallone’s men in the right pews. The traitorous mobsters went frozen, their hands trapped inside their jackets.
Adrian stepped down from the altar, slowly walking toward Celeste. Every footstep of his polished leather shoes sounded like a death knell in the silent church.
"For three years," Adrian spoke, his voice booming through the cathedral's sound system as Gabriel flipped on the altar microphones, "I lived in the dark. I thought my ears were destroyed by a bomb. I thought my brother was killed by rival gangs. And I thought the woman holding my hand loved me."
Celeste backed up until her spine hit the altar railing. "Adrian... Adrian, please! It's a miracle! You can hear! I don't know what you're talking about—"
"Silence!" Adrian roared.
The power of his voice caused the front rows of socialites to flinch.
Adrian gestured to the front pew. "Dr. Crane. Step forward."
Dr. Leonard Crane, shaking uncontrollably, was shoved up the altar steps by Gabriel’s enforcers. He fell to his knees before the congregation, weeping openly.
"Tell them, Leonard," Adrian said coldly. "Tell everyone what you put in my head."
Crane sobbed into the microphone. "A dampener! A surgical capsule! Celeste Marlow paid me three million dollars to keep Adrian deaf! She wanted to control the syndicate! She... she ordered the bomb at Bellini's! It was supposed to just deafen him, but Thomas... Thomas picked up the wrong bag..."
A wave of violent shocks rolled through the syndicate captains.
Old men who had served Adrian’s father stood up, their faces contorted with rage as they looked at Celeste. The sacred code of the underworld had been shattered: a mob boss’s brother had been murdered, and the boss himself turned into a puppet by an outsider.
"Lies!" Celeste shrieked, her regal composure entirely dissolving into hysterical madness. "He's lying! Vallone! Kill him! Kill them all!"
Frankie Vallone tried to draw his weapon, but Gabriel Russo was faster. Gabriel drew a suppressed pistol from beneath his tuxedo coat and fired two precise rounds into Vallone’s chest. Vallone collapsed backward over his pew, dead before he hit the floor.
The rest of Vallone's men threw their hands into the air, falling to their knees as Gabriel’s security team swarmed the pews, disarming them within seconds.
Celeste dropped to her knees on the altar steps, weeping frantically, reaching out to clutch at the hem of Adrian's trousers. "Adrian! Please! I loved you! I did it for us! We could have ruled this city together! Don't do this!"
Adrian looked down at her. His grey eyes were as cold as icebergs.
He didn't hit her. He didn't raise his voice again. He simply looked down at the woman who had stolen three years of his life.
"You took my sound," Adrian whispered, his voice carrying clearly to every ear in the room. "You took my brother. And now, I take everything from you."
Adrian turned to Gabriel.
May you like
"Take her to the federal prosecutor's office," Adrian ordered. "Give them the recordings, the shell company documents, and Crane’s signed confession. Let her spend the rest of her life in a six-by-eight concrete cell where the only sound she hears is her own mind breaking."
Two heavy security guards grabbed Celeste by her silk sleeves, dragging her screaming and kicking down the long marble aisle of the cathedral, her white dress trailing through the blood of Frankie Vallone.
