The Don’s Consigliere Charged Me By The Minute To Touch Him Chapter 07
A Kidney for a Handbag
[Dante’s POV]
Marco arrived fast.
I tucked Elena’s blanket tighter around her shoulders, then stepped outside.
He was holding a thick stack of documents. His eyes flickered toward Elena through the doorway, and something passed over his face — something heavy. Pitying.
It was like he wasn’t pitying her. He was pitying me. For what he was about to say.
He exhaled slowly. “Boss, the private medical team you asked me to contact about finding a heart donor — I’m afraid that’s no longer possible.”
I looked at him. My face must have been something terrible.
“Is it hard to find a match?” I pressed my fingers against the bridge of my nose. “Expand the search. Double the fee. Triple it. Use our family’s power. Whatever it takes — just find one!”
He lowered his head, and I caught the flash of something bitter in his eyes.
He’d been with me long enough. He knew how hard Elena’s mother had fought for that heart. How many times Elena had come to me quietly, begging me to help find a way.
And every time, I’d brushed it off.
“Heart donors are rare.”
“Everyone’s life matters. We can’t just cut the line.”
So Elena swallowed her guilt. She would wonder if she was being selfish for even asking.
Then — I turned around and handed her mother’s heart to Valentina’s dog without blinking.
That might be when Elena finally understood: Don Moretti could pull strings when he wanted to.
Her mother and she just weren’t worth the effort.
Marco shook his head. “We can find a heart. But it won’t matter anymore.”
After two seconds of silence, he looked me in the eye. “Your mother-in-law passed away this morning.”
My legs gave out.
The world tilted like someone had taken a bat to the back of my skull.
A deafening ringing filled my head.
But he wasn’t done.
“Also — Boss, the private medical team you’ve been paying for… they left three years ago. For the past three years, your mother-in-law has been under the care of regular hospital staff. Because medical payments were frequently late, she was given the cheapest medications available. The side effects were severe.”
I grabbed the railing beside me. My body swayed. “The medical team is gone. But the $3 million annual transfers never stopped. Where did the money go?”
He hesitated. “Boss… you put Valentina in full control of the family’s finances three years ago. Every cent went into her personal account. She also skimmed from multiple operations — substituting inferior product, pocketing the difference. I flagged it for you before, sir. Back then, you told me that Valentina was the only woman ever made consigliere on the East Coast, and that I should leave these matters to her discretion.”
He pulled a sheet from the stack. “I’ve also confirmed that the credentials she used to get into the family were forged. She never ran operations for anyone before you. She fled overseas to escape debts and reinvented herself.” He paused. “And there’s one more thing… Boss, I think it would be better for you to be prepared for it.”
He opened his phone and tapped into the hospital’s security footage from Elena’s mother’s room.
Valentina had said she’d visited. She said she’d seen the old woman healthy, out sunbathing.
But the footage showed something else.
Valentina walked into the room, turned on the TV, and set two videos to loop on the screen.
Elena — kneeling, slapping herself, over and over.
And in the master bedroom of our house — me and Valentina. On master bedroom’s bed.
The audio — Valentina’s voice, dripping with venom, playing on speaker for a dying woman to hear:
“Old hag — your daughter gets on her knees for me like a dog every day just to keep you alive. You’re nothing but a burden. A waste of air.”
Every word was a blade. And every one of them was cutting me open now.
“Boss — your mother-in-law didn’t die of natural heart failure. She was deliberately provoked into cardiac arrest. She died in pain.” Marco paused. “And the donor heart that Mrs. Moretti had secured — she found the match days ago. The surgery cost $500,000. She sold one of her kidneys to raise it. But the payment never went through. She watched her mother die on the operating table.”
Sold a kidney.
Still couldn’t pay.
Because I took her money for Valentina’s handbag.
Those words wrapped around my throat like a noose. Every breath tasted like blood.
While her mother lay dying on the table — while Elena wept and begged me not to take her last hope —
I called her a liar. I told her to stop making a scene.
I took her $500,000 and bought Valentina a purse.
One life. One handbag.
That’s why Elena lost her mind.
The bullet she put in her own chest — that was the last shred of light inside her, ground to dust.
She wanted me to remember that I killed two people. Two people I could never repay.
I doubled over.
My heart felt like it was being ripped from my chest with bare hands.
A mouthful of blood hit the floor.