The Principessa’s Mafia Trial: From A Stripped Bride To A Crimson Queen Chapter 11
The Fall of Falcone
We were three blocks from the estate when Dominic called Cain.
Cain glanced at the screen, then at me. “You want to take this?”
“No.”
He declined the call.
It rang again. And again. And again.
Seven calls in two minutes. Then the texts came in one after another.
*Vivian please*
*I’ll fix everything*
*Tell your father I’ll kneel*
*I’ll do whatever he wants*
*Please just pick up*
I turned the phone face-down on the seat.
Cain drove in silence. His knuckles were still red from the wine. His shirt was ruined. He hadn’t complained once.
“Your uncle is going to be furious,” I said.
“My uncle can wait.”
“Cain—”
“Vivian.” He didn’t take his eyes off the road. “You called. I came. That’s how this works. That’s how it’s always worked.”
I looked out the window. Vegas passed outside the window.
Three hours later, we landed in Chicago.
My father was waiting on the tarmac.
Don Cavallo stood in a black overcoat, hands clasped behind his back. Two bodyguards flanked him, but his eyes were only on me.
I stepped off the plane. Still in Cain’s coat. Still smelling like wine and blood.
My father didn’t say a word. He walked forward, pulled me into his arms, and held me.
Then he looked over my shoulder at Cain.
“How bad?”
“Bad,” Cain said. “They tore her dress. Broke the necklace off her neck. Put her on her knees in front of fifty men with cameras.”
My father’s arms tightened around me.
“And the girl? Lucia?”
“Head wound. Ambulance took her. She’ll live, but she won’t be pretty.”
My father released me. His face was calm. His voice was steady. But his eyes were hard.
“Good,” he said. “Then she’ll have a reminder.”
He turned to one of his men. “Get me the Falcone accounts. All of them. Every offshore shell, every LLC, every trust. I want them drained by sunrise.”
“Already done, sir. Don Falcone called an hour ago begging for a meeting.”
“No meeting.” My father straightened his coat. “No negotiation. No mercy. The Falcone family is finished.”
He looked at me one last time.
“You’re home now, baby. Nobody touches you again.”
Over the next three weeks, the Falcone empire fell apart.
The ports went first. Long Beach, Oakland, Seattle — every shipping contract severed overnight.
Then the casinos. The gaming board pulled their licenses after evidence of money laundering reached the right people.
Then the real estate. Liens filed on every property. Banks calling in loans that weren’t due for years.
Don Falcone had a stroke on the fourteenth day. He died on the nineteenth.
Dominic tried to run. He made it as far as Miami before Moretti soldiers turned him away at the airport.
Then he tried New York. The DeLucas wouldn’t even let him off the plane. Nobody would shelter him. Nobody would take his calls.
The photos from that night had spread to every family on the continent. Every Don, every underboss, every captain had seen what Dominic did to Don Cavallo’s daughter.
Nobody wanted Dominic near them.
By day twenty-one, Dominic Falcone was living in a motel off the I-15, selling his watch collection to cover the weekly rate.
As for Lucia, the bottle had fractured her skull in two places.
She survived the surgery, but the damage was done.
She lost pieces of her memory. She had seizures. Some days, she could not finish a sentence.
Her family’s medical contacts couldn’t help her. Nobody could.
She was transferred to a long-term care facility in Nevada. No visitors. No calls.
Just a locked room and a woman who no longer remembered why she had done any of it.
Dominic never visited her.
Not once.
He pawned the Falcone family ring on day twenty-three.
And then Cain placed a black velvet box in front of me.
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