Chapter 5 - The Valenti Ultimatum
By noon, the estate was on absolute high alert.
Dozens of black SUVs were parked along the perimeter driveways, and armed men in sharp suits moved quietly through the stone corridors.
I stayed in the east wing, dressed in soft clothes Maria had provided for me—a cream cashmere sweater and comfortable trousers. Leo was sitting on a plush play mat on the floor, happily stacking colored wooden blocks, refusing to let me step more than three feet away from him. Whenever I walked toward the window, his little head would snap up, his gray-blue eyes tracking my every movement.
The heavy doors of the suite swung open, and Marco walked in, his face grim.
“Boss,” Marco called out to Luca, who was standing near the doorway reviewing financial ledgers on a tablet. “Valenti’s lieutenant just arrived at the front gate. He came alone under a white flag.”
Luca’s posture went completely rigid. “What does he want?”
“He brought a letter from Dominic Valenti,” Marco said, holding out a sealed wax envelope. “It’s addressed to you... and to Clara’s daughter.”
My head snapped up. “To me?”
Luca snatched the letter from Marco’s hand, tearing open the seal with swift, angry precision. He unfolded the thick parchment paper, his eyes scanning the handwritten lines.
As he read, the scar across his cheek flared bright red, and a dangerous, suffocating aura radiated from his body.
“What does it say, Luca?” I asked, standing up from the floor, my heart pounding violently.
Luca looked at me, his eyes burning with pure, unadulterated fury.
“Dominic Valenti knows you are here,” Luca rasped out through clenched teeth. “He knows you carry the legal deed to the original Moretti Trust—the trust Clara was managing before she was murdered.”
“What trust?!” I demanded, completely bewildered. “I don't have a trust! I have forty-three dollars!”
“When Clara died, she placed forty percent of the Moretti family’s legitimate real estate holdings into a private, sealed trust under your birth name—Avery Moretti,” Luca explained, his voice tight. “Under Italian estate law and the syndicate charter, that trust cannot be dissolved or seized unless the primary heir signs it over voluntarily.”
Luca held up the letter.
“Valenti is offering a truce,” Luca said bitterly. “He promises to pull his men out of Philadelphia permanently, end the forty-year war between our families, and leave us in peace.”
“In exchange for what?” I asked.
“In exchange for you,” Luca whispered, his voice trembling with dark rage. “He wants you to attend a dinner at his estate on Fifth Street tonight to sign over the trust documents. If you refuse... he promises to unleash a full-scale war across the city, targeting every business, every property, and every person connected to the Moretti name.”
Silence descended over the room like a heavy iron vault.
I looked at Marco, who stood with his head bowed. I looked at Luca, whose chest was heaving with restrained rage. And then I looked down at little Leo, who had crawled over to my feet, tugging gently on the hem of my trousers, looking up at me with trusting, innocent eyes.
“If there’s a war...” I whispered, my voice shaking, “will Leo be in danger?”
Luca looked at his son, his face softening with profound heartbreak. “Valenti has no honor, Avery. He will burn this city to the ground to get what he wants.”
I took a deep, steadying breath, feeling a strange, unfamiliar courage blooming deep inside my chest—the same blood that had carried my mother through years of hiding.
“Then tell Valenti I accept,” I declared firmly.
May you like
Luca turned to me in absolute shock. “Are you insane?! I will never let you walk into the lion’s den!”
“I’m not walking in alone, Luca,” I said, stepping up to him, looking directly into his dark, dangerous eyes. “You’re coming with me. And tonight, we finish what he started twenty years ago.”
