Page 81 of The Mafia King's Lost Son
I scoop him up, feeling his small arms wrap around my neck. “I heard. You’re doing great, buddy.”
“Will you read with us?”
“Yeah. I’ll read with you.”
I carry him back to the couch and settle beside Scarlett. She hands me the book and Luca curls up between us, pointing at the words as I read.
For this one moment, everything else fades away. The ledger, the attacks, the impossible choices I’m facing. None of it matters as much as this.
My son’s laughter when I do funny voices for the characters. Scarlett’s hand resting on my knee. This feeling of being exactly where I’m supposed to be.
Later, after Luca’s asleep and Scarlett has gone to shower, I stand at the window of my office looking out over the estate grounds.
Viktor wants me to find the ledger and use it for power. The families want it for control. The politicians and criminals named in it want it destroyed.
But what do I want?
I want my son to grow up in a world where he doesn’t have to carry the weight of his grandfather’s sins. Where he can make choices based on who he wants to be, not who he’s expected to be.
I want Scarlett to feel safe. To not wake up in the middle of the night checking that the doors are locked and the guards are at their posts.
I want to be more than the sum of my father’s legacy. More than just another Moretti who built an empire on blood and fear.
And maybe, just maybe, I want redemption. I want to believe that someone like me can be saved.
Father Benedetto said I need to choose what kind of world I want for my son. That I need to make the hard choices so Luca doesn’t have to.
I think I finally know what that choice is.
I’m going to find the ledger. I’m going to learn every truth it contains, no matter how ugly. And then I’m going to decide what to do with it based on what’s best for Luca, not what’s best for my empire.
Even if it costs me everything I’ve built. Even if it means destroying my family’s legacy and starting from nothing.
Because that’s what a father does. He sacrifices for his child. He makes the world safer, even when it means giving up power.
And I’m Luca’s father. That’s the only legacy that matters now.
21
SCARLETT
“Focus on his mouth,” Dante says. “Not his eyes. His mouth. What shape were his lips making?”
I squeeze my eyes tighter and try to push past the blood and the fear and the way Antonio’s body kept twitching even after Dante’s bullet tore through him.
It’s another session of trying to get my memories of that night back. We’ve been at it for an hour already and my head is starting to pound.
“I don’t know. It’s still just pieces.”
“Try again. You’re close, I can feel it.”
I go back in again, to Antonio’s office. The smell of blood and bullet is so strong, and Antonio is dying in front of me again, his lips are moving, trying to say something.
“Saint…Sebastian…watches…”
Then it finally clicks. The whole thing, like someone finally turned the last piece of a puzzle in.
“Saint Sebastian watches the sinners burn at the old cathedral.”
