Chapter 7 - The Final Aria
The sanctuary of St. Patrick’s Cathedral descended into a vacuum of absolute, suffocating silence.
Don Carmine’s hand twitched violently, his knuckles whitening as he stared at the small silver drive in my palm.
“That’s a fabrication!” Carmine roared, his voice cracking with sudden, desperate panic. “She’s lying! Marco, remove this peasant from the altar!”
Not a single guard moved.
Marco, Alessandro’s chief enforcer, stood with his arms crossed by the limestone pillar, looking at Carmine like an executioner waiting for the signal.
Alessandro stepped down the altar stairs, stopping right beside me, towering over his uncle with the terrifying presence of an awakened god of war.
“You didn't know Bianca kept a voice recorder in her music box, did you, Uncle?” Alessandro asked, his voice chillingly calm, echoing into the highest rafters of the cathedral.
The older syndicate heads at table one began standing up from their pews. Don Vincente, the elder chairman of the Five Borough Commission, stepped into the aisle with a look of thunderous disgust on his weathered face.
“Carmine,” Vincente demanded, his walking cane clicking hard against the stone. “Is this true? Did you order the execution of an inducted boss’s sister?”
In the code of the syndicate, murdering a capo was business; murdering a made man’s innocent sister was a capital offense carrying an immediate, non-negotiable sentence of death.
Carmine realized he was completely cornered. The arrogant kingpin who had ruled Brooklyn with an iron fist for thirty years looked around at forty drawn weapons, seeing his entire empire crumble into ashes in the middle of a church.
With a wild, feral scream of rage, Carmine reached inside his tailored tuxedo jacket, pulling a snub-nosed .38 revolver from his shoulder holster.
He leveled the barrel straight at my chest.
“If I burn, you die first, you little bitch!” he shrieked.
Before his finger could tighten around the trigger, Alessandro moved with blinding, inhuman speed.
He lunged forward, his left hand catching Carmine’s wrist, twisting the bone until a sickening crack echoed through the front pews.
The gun dropped from Carmine’s limp fingers, clattering loudly against the marble floor.
Alessandro drove his right elbow into Carmine’s throat, sweeping his legs out from under him in one fluid, brutal movement.
Carmine slammed heavily onto his back on the red carpet, gasping for air like a dying fish as Alessandro pinned his chest to the floor with a heavy, polished leather boot.
The four hundred guests sat frozen in their seats, nobody daring to make a sound as the Don of New York stood with his heel pressed against his uncle’s trachea.
Alessandro looked down at the pathetic old man, his gray eyes devoid of any human mercy.
“You spent ten years laughing while my sister lay in the cold ground,” Alessandro whispered, loud enough for every Don in the city to hear. “You thought you silenced her voice.”
Alessandro lifted his gaze, looking straight at me standing at the bottom of the altar steps in my silk gown.
“Camila,” he commanded softly. “Sing.”
I took a deep, steady breath, closed my eyes for a single second, and let the voice of my father fill my chest.
No piano. No accompaniment.
Just pure, terrifying, unadulterated human perfection.
I sang the final stanza of the Queen of the Night’s aria.
The notes soared without strain, hitting that impossible, crystalline high F with a resonance that shook the stained-glass windows of the cathedral.
It wasn't a song of mourning anymore.
It was an execution hymn.
Down on the floor, Carmine wept in sheer, humiliating terror as the music he had tried to slaughter washed over his face like boiling oil.
When the final note faded into the cathedral’s vaulted ceiling, Don Vincente stepped forward, looking down at Carmine with pure revulsion.
“The Commission has rendered its verdict,” Vincente announced, gesturing to four armed enforcers standing in the rear. “Take this garbage to the river docks where he murdered our children. Let the East River finish the job.”
The enforcers hauled the screaming, sobbing patriarch down the center aisle, dragging him through the bronze double doors into the gray afternoon light.
The doors clicked shut.
May you like
Alessandro stepped back onto the altar, took my hand in his, and looked at the elderly priest standing behind the cross with wide, trembling eyes.
“Father,” Alessandro said, as if nothing had happened. “You may finish our vows.”
