Miles Moretti Novels & Stories

The photos. The recording. The report. Soon, all of it would reach Adrian. But not yet. Not here. Not while I was still close enough to be found. My assistant turned slightly in the front seat. “Ms. Vale, your flight boards in an hour. Should I shut down the old number?” I looked out at the fading line of New York and placed my hand over my stomach. “Yes,” I said. “Turn it off.” Scarlett Moretti died at her wedding. Stephanie Vale took her unborn child and her future with her. He deserved neither.

“Lia! You made it. Come, meet some people.” He introduced her to a few faces: a bookie, a money launderer, a soldier with knuckles like worn stone. She made small talk in smooth Italian, laughing at the right moments, her eyes constantly mapping the room. And then she saw him. Dante Moretti sat in a corner booth, a king holding court in the shadows. He was younger than she expected from the grainy surveillance photos, maybe mid-thirties. He wore a simple, exquisitely cut navy suit, no flashy jewelry. He wasn’t the largest man in the room, but he commanded its gravity. He listened to an older capo speak, his head tilted slightly, his expression one of polite, chilling attention. Then, as if s

I had been in love with Damian Moretti for two full years. I knew how pathetic that sounded. Falling for your boss was already a bad idea. Falling for a man like Damian was practically a warning label in human form. He was the heir to the Moretti family, the CEO of Moretti Holdings, and the kind of man Upper East Side socialites watched the way people watched a loaded gun: with fear, curiosity, and terrible judgment. The Moretti name came with rumors. Private docks. Black Bentleys. Men in dark suits who appeared before trouble and disappeared before police did. None of that had anything to do with me.

A hiss, a blinding flash of white light, and the door slumped forward. I kicked it in. The office was a tomb of mahogany and cigarette smoke. Moretti was there, standing behind his desk, a heavy silver revolver in his hand. He was seventy years old, his face a map of wrinkles and old scars. He looked at us, then his eyes landed on Eden. "So," Moretti rasped, his voice sounding like dry leaves. "The prize is a killer now. Schmidt, you’ve ruined a perfectly good piece of art." Father stepped forward, pushing Eden to the front. The rest of us circled the room, our weapons levelled at Moretti’s chest.

"Admit that you're in the mafia!" I looked up at the swirling snowflakes falling from the sky and screamed at the top of my lungs, "I'm Enzo Moretti, former special forces captain in the peacekeeping force. To hell with the mafia!" "Still running your mouth, huh?" Antonio snapped furiously. The blade sank into my skin, and blood immediately gushed out. Right at that very moment, a thunderous crash erupted as the compound's iron gate was sent flying by an immense force, making it slam heavily onto the snow-covered ground.

Marco Moretti stepped into the gloom. His silk tie was yanked loose, his sleeves rolled up like he was ready to get his hands dirty. He didn't touch the lights. He dragged a chair across the floor—the screech of wood on wood sounding like a dying animal—and sat backward, arms draped over the backrest. He pulled a compact video camera from his pocket and set it on the yellowed tablecloth. Click. A tiny red light began to pulse in the dark. A digital heartbeat.

# CHAPTER THREE Moretti has been talking for eleven minutes. I know because I've been counting. Watching him work the table the way men like him always do — loud, performative, filling the room so nobody else can breathe in it. He has soft hands. I noticed that when he shook mine. The hands of a man who hasn't built anything himself in a very long time. "Your new acquisition in the south quarter," Moretti is saying to Alfonso, cutting into his steak like he owns the knife. "I have to be honest with you, it concerns me. The infrastructure alone"

Enzo vanished into the smoke, his yacht groaning as it listed. We clambered onto the pier, gasping, guns trained on the approaching shadows. Sal Moretti emerged from the water like a demon, unflinching, his enforcers forming a perimeter. At his side: Rocco Bianchi, the Moretti family’s infamous hammer. Tall, scarred, with a shaved head and eyes like chipped obsidian, Rocco was a legend in underworld whispers—ex-military, sadistic, the man who broke bones for fun and left no witnesses. Tattoos of saints and sinners coiled up his arms, visible through his torn shirt. He’d risen from Chicago’s streets, Sal’s adopted brother in blood, enforcer of the Moretti code.

Sean opened the door for me, and I walked inside. Don Moretti was already sitting at a large round table in the back corner. He was an old man with white hair and a very expensive blue suit. He was cutting a piece of steak, but when he saw me walk in, he set his knife down and smiled a fake, political smile. "Christopher," Moretti said, spreading his hands wide. "Look at you. The papers in the city said you were dead, but here you are, looking as sharp as ever." "You shouldn't believe everything you read in the papers, Moretti," I said, sitting down in the leather chair across from him. Sean stood right behind me, his hands crossed in front of his belt, close to his weapon.

I entered the room, Moretti was already seated with one of his men next to him. Moretti was a middle-aged short stout man with a balding head and when he smiled, he had replaced three of his teeth with faux gold teeth. He wore a miserable excuse of a suit that the middle button was struggling to hold in even though it was fighting a war against his bulging stomach. I could smell the greed rolling off his body like a cologne, bastard, it was just like him to try and stab me in the back.