Chapter 13 - Before Sunrise
Police did not come immediately.
In the Duca world, nothing arrived immediately unless Lorenzo allowed it.
But Bianca Vale was already making calls before Carlo’s hands were tied. Not to criminals. Not to corrupt officials. To federal investigators she had kept at a careful distance for years.
Matteo watched her, stunned. “You’re calling them?”
Bianca looked at Lorenzo. “It’s time.”
Lorenzo’s face was gray with pain and something deeper.
“No,” he said.
Matteo turned to him. “Papa.”
Lorenzo’s jaw tightened. “You do not understand what happens if I open those books.”
“I understand exactly what happens,” Matteo said. “The empire built on fear ends.”
The words landed harder than any bullet.
Lorenzo stared at his son.
Mia stood a few feet away, wrapped in a blanket someone had forced around her shoulders. Her ribs hurt. Her shoulder burned. There was mud in her hair, blood on her sleeve, and one dead rose petal stuck to her shoe.
She had never felt more awake.
Matteo stepped closer to his father. “Mother didn’t make those drives to protect your crimes. She made them so one day we could stop being prisoners of them.”
Lorenzo’s eyes glistened.
For a man like him, that was almost a confession.
“She wanted you safe,” he said.
“She wanted me free.”
The ocean wind moved between them.
Below, Carlo sat handcuffed on the dock, face twisted with hatred. Enzo had been taken inside for medical help, crying and begging to testify against Carlo. The priest had survived, barely, and had already admitted the Ferrettis used his gambling debt to force him into the estate.
The great Duca machine was cracking open.
And somehow, Mia was standing in the center of it.
Lorenzo looked at her.
All evening, he had looked at her as an inconvenience, a joke, a temporary mistake sent by a desperate agency.
Now he looked at her as if seeing her had cost him something.
“My wife would have liked you,” he said.
Mia blinked.
It was the closest thing to an apology she had heard from him.
“She sounds smart,” Mia said.
“She was.”
Matteo smiled faintly.
Bianca ended her call. “Federal convoy will meet us at the south gate. I can negotiate protective terms, but only if we surrender the ledger voluntarily.”
Lorenzo looked toward Port Emery, glittering below the bluff.
His empire.
His sins.
His son’s cage.
Then he reached into his coat and removed a black drive.
The first key.
He handed it to Matteo.
Matteo took the medal chip from Mia, then the recovered chapel drive from Bianca.
Three pieces.
One choice.
Lorenzo nodded once.
“Do it,” he said.
May you like
Before sunrise, the Duca empire began to fall.
But Matteo Duca began to live.
