Chapter 6 - Cornered in the Penthouse
The chase did not last long. Luke was a creature of luxury; he ran poorly in wet Italian leather loafers. He stumbled over the railroad ties, slipping in the mud, before collapsing against the side of an overturned freight car.
Dante stepped through the rain, his silhouette framed against the distant glare of police cruiser lights flashing blue and red through the mist. He stopped five feet from his brother, the barrel of his weapon pointed steadily at the ground.
Luke scrambled backward into the muck, clutching his sprained ankle, his hair plastered to his forehead with rain and sweat. ""Dante! Please! Listen to me! It wasn't what it looks like!""
""You killed Marcus,"" Dante said, his voice stripped of all human emotion. ""You tampered with his car.""
""Kane forced me!"" Luke sobbed, tears mingling with the rain on his cheeks. ""Kane had photos of me at the high-stakes tables in Macau! I owed him twelve million dollars, Dante! If I didn't give him the routes, he was going to skin me alive! I had no choice!""
""You always had a choice,"" Dante said. ""You could have come to your brother.""
""To you?"" Luke screamed hysterically. ""You would have locked me out! You would have treated me like a failure, just like Dad did! Dad always loved you best! You were the soldier! You were the prince! What was I? Just the pretty face who smiled at the bankers!""
Dante stared down at him. In Luke’s twisted, desperate features, he saw the ruin of their family. ""Marcus Carter had a wife. He had a little girl who asks every single night why her daddy had to go to heaven. You took him away from her for twelve million dollars of gambling debt.""
Luke swallowed hard, seeing the absolute finality in Dante’s eyes. He knew the Moretti law. He knew the sentence for treason.
""Are you going to shoot me?"" Luke whispered, shivering from the cold. ""In the back of an abandoned rail yard? That’s how the Moretti dynasty ends?""
Dante slowly raised the gun. The steel glinted under the storm clouds.
Luke squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for the bullet.
A single memory flashed through Dante’s mind: Sophie Carter standing on her tiptoes, pressing a soft kiss to his cheek, telling him that his crooked, ugly black stitches looked like a smile. Marcus had died, but Marcus had saved his daughter from this poison. If Dante pulled this trigger in cold blood, he would cement the curse of the Moretti bloodline forever. He would become the very monster that Sophie had warned Rex about.
Dante slowly lowered the weapon and engaged the safety.
Luke opened one eye, trembling. ""Dante?""
""Death is too clean for you, Luke,"" Dante said softly. ""You don't get the mercy of a quick grave.""
Dante turned his head toward the sound of approaching sirens. Two federal tactical vehicles bounced across the tracks, their spotlights blinding the two brothers in brilliant white light.
May you like
""You're going to spend the next thirty years in a federal penitentiary with Victor Kane,"" Dante told his brother, his voice as cold as winter frost. ""You will eat off plastic trays. You will wear orange jumpsuits. And every single day, you will remember that a five-year-old girl and a torn stuffed bear destroyed your entire empire.""
Federal agents swarmed the tracks, guns drawn. Dante calmly raised his empty hands, stepped aside, and allowed the agents to push Luke face-down into the mud, securing his wrists in heavy steel cuffs.
