Gifted To The Don The Real Mafia Heiress Returns Chapter 09
The City Turns
My burner buzzes under the pillow at dawn. I roll over and read the text.
“Lorenzo threw up on his own shoes when the box hit his desk. Drove to his father’s estate at three a.m. Cried in Don Vittorio’s office. Demanded blood.”
I smile and delete it. Pull the SIM. Snap it. Drop both halves into the glass of water on the nightstand.
Dante comes in an hour later with fresh coffee and the rest of the pictures.
“Every capo in the city was in Vittorio’s office by six a.m. On their knees. Screaming for my head. They say I tortured a made man’s daughter. Contempt of the Family.”\
“And my uncle?”
Six years ago, Don Vittorio Colombo put a bullet in my father’s head in his own office.
Took his brother’s chair while it was still warm and became the new Don Colombo.
Told the whole city it was a rival family accident.
Now he’s sending his army to a house I’m sitting in.
Fitting.
“How many?”
“Three thousand. Give or take.”
“Country compound too?”
Dante’s mouth moves — the closest thing to a smile he does in public. “He’s calling them in. He doesn’t know I bought the captain three years ago.”
“Every rifle he’s counting on already belongs to us.”
—
By noon, three thousand men have the estate ringed.
Inside, I am eating breakfast.
Dante stands at my elbow, pouring me orange juice. Steady. As if the three thousand rifles outside the fence are just pigeons.
“Miss Colombo. Lorenzo couldn’t wait.”
I drink the juice. Sugar bursts on my tongue. “They’re loud out there.”
Dante gets it instantly. His eyes light that beautiful, murderous red. “I’ll shut them up.”
He turns and walks out.
The captain on the megaphone is still yelling. “Ricci! Give up that whore! Or we come through the gate!”
I stand and walk to the window.
Dante appears in the doorway. “You brought your yappy dogs to my Ricci front door?”
The captain goes purple. Opens his mouth to give the order.
“Now.”
Dante touches his earpiece. Two words in Italian. Done.
—
Luca comes in ten minutes later. Cheeks flushed. Eyes wide.
“Miss Colombo. Encrypted files hit every senator on your uncle’s payroll.”
“Bank routing numbers. Photos. Wire transfers. Every dirty vote the Colombo Family bought in the last six years.”
“The same files went to every news wire in the country. It’s on every front page by lunch.”
“And?”
Luca swallows.
“The other file. The one about your father.”
“Read it.”
He clears his throat. Steadies himself.
“On the night of November eleventh, six years ago, Don Vittorio Colombo shot his older brother — Don Alessandro Colombo, the sitting head of the Family — in the study of the main estate.”
“He then ordered the elimination of the rest of the direct bloodline, including the Don’s wife and his fourteen-year-old daughter, Isabella.”
“He took the seat before dawn. The story of a rival family accident was fabricated at his order.”
Luca’s voice drops.
“Isabella Colombo lives. Alessandro’s daughter is home. The seat her father built will not stay in the hands of the man who murdered him.”
I close my eyes for a second. Then open them.
“Streets?”
“There’s a crowd outside the Family cemetery. Somebody’s laying flowers on your father’s grave. Growing by the minute.”
I laugh, soft. Once.
Six years. Every capo my uncle ever bought. Every mouth he ever paid to stay closed. All of it on the sidewalks by noon.
“And the men outside our gates?”
Luca’s mouth twitches. “Their captain just got the same file on his phone, Ma’am. His men have it too. Half of them are on the wrong side of history and they just figured it out. He hasn’t moved in six minutes.”
“Good.”
I stand.
—
Dante is at the door. He’s stripped off the suit of a Don and back in matte black tactical.
Old. Worn-in. The way he used to wear when he was just my sworn soldier.
He takes the old pistol off the wall, steps in front of me, drops to one knee and lays the pistol across both palms.
“Yours. Same as it was.”
I lift it. The steel catches the scar on my face and the cold in my eyes.
“Walk with me.”
He rises and follows, falling in half a step behind me.
—
I push the double doors open with my own hand and stand on the top step.
“My name is Isabella Colombo.”
Quiet voice. Carried anyway.
“Which one of you wants me dead?”