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A Fender Bender Cost the Don Everything
Novelix
Completed
"A neon Ferrari rams my car in a drive-thru line. The driver kicks my door and demands fifty grand for a scratch. When my blind mother-in-law tries to speak, the woman sneers and tells the ""old hag"" to shut up and die. “Pay,” she sneers. “My man is Dante Moretti, the next Don of Chicago. Cross me, and you both vanish before sunset.” I was so mad I let out a laugh. She has no idea Dante is my husband. And she has no idea the frail old woman she just humiliated is the undisputed Godmother of the Syndicate."
Chapters (3)
第1章
A neon Ferrari rams my car in a drive-thru line.
The driver kicks my door and demands fifty grand for a scratch.
When my blind mother-in-law tries to speak, the woman sneers and tells the "old hag" to shut up and die.
“Pay,” she sneers. “My man is Dante Moretti, the next Don of Chicago. Cross me, and you both vanish before sunset.”
I was so mad I let out a laugh.
She has no idea Dante is my husband.
And she has no idea the frail old woman she just humiliated is the undisputed Godmother of the Syndicate.
.....
"Get out of that piece of junk right now, you filthy beggar."
A loud kick slammed into my driver door, rattling the window glass.
I had been waiting in line at an ordinary diner drive-thru on 26th Street. My foot was firmly on the brake of my ten-year-old Honda Civic.
Thirty seconds ago, a hot-pink Ferrari tried to cut the queue.
The driver misjudged the turn and slammed violently into my rear bumper.
It was an everyday fender-bender during morning rush hour.
Except the driver didn't check for damage. She kicked my door.
Through the glass, a woman glared at me with open disgust.
Beside her stood a burly man in a dark suit, his hand resting conspicuously on his hip.
"Are you deaf, bitch?" the woman screamed, pounding on my roof.
"Look at what your trash can did to my front bumper. Get out here."
Around us, several drivers waiting in their sedans and pickup trucks looked over.
"Hey, lady," a delivery driver called from behind. "You cut the line and rear-ended her. It was your fault."
The burly man snapped his head around.
He pulled back his suit jacket, deliberately showing off the grip of a silver handgun tucked in his waistband.
"Shut your mouth if you want to see tomorrow," the man snarled.
The delivery driver turned pale. He rolled his window up instantly and looked away.
The other drivers stared straight ahead, gripping their steering wheels in dead silence. Nobody dared speak up.
I pushed my door open and stepped out.
I wore an ordinary gray sweater, dark slacks, and worn boots.
The woman looked me up and down.
Her gaze swept over my faded clothes, then landed on my dented, ten-year-old Civic. A look of pure, classist revulsion twisted her face.
"You drive a three-thousand-dollar piece of scrap metal," she sneered, curling her lip.
"You reversed into me on purpose, didn't you? Some broke nobody trying to stage an accident for an insurance payout."
"You hit a stationary car from behind in a drive-thru lane," I said evenly.
"By law, you are one hundred percent liable. Show me your driver's license and insurance."
The woman burst into mocking laughter.
"Insurance? Rico, did you hear this cockroach? She wants my insurance."
The brute named Rico chuckled. "She doesn't know who she's talking to, Miss Chloe."
Chloe took a step forward, poking her manicured finger hard against my chest.
"Listen to me, peasant. You're paying me fifty thousand dollars in cash right now for the scratch on my ceramic coat."
"If you don't, Rico will break both your legs."
"Take your hand off me," I said, my voice dead calm.
Her face darkened. "Rico, put this cunt on her knees."
Rico drew a silver pistol and shoved the cold barrel right against my forehead.
"On the ground, bitch. Move, and I blow your brains out."
Inside the car, a golden retriever began barking frantically.
The passenger door clicked open.
An eighty-year-old woman in a simple cardigan stepped out cautiously, tapping a white cane on the asphalt while holding the dog's harness.
Chloe laughed with cruel delight.
"Look at this circus. A blind old crone and a mutt. What kind of gutter did you two crawl out of?"
I stared past the gun into Chloe's arrogant eyes.
"Put the gun away. You have no idea what line you're crossing."
"Line?" Chloe scoffed, flipping her blonde hair.
"Listen well, tramp. I am the wife of the next Don of this entire city."
"And Rico here is the elite personal bodyguard the Don assigned exclusively to keep me safe and wipe out anyone who crosses my path."
The woman had no idea what kind of death sentence she had just signed.
She had no idea that the quiet, blind old woman standing beside my Civic was Donna Carmela Moretti--the undisputed supreme Godmother of the Chicago Syndicate.
Thirty years ago, when Carmela's husband was assassinated, she wiped out three rival syndicates in forty-eight hours and seized the entire Midwest underworld.
Hardened mob bosses still bowed to her with trembling knees.
This morning, Carmela had simply wanted an apple turnover.
Dante had fired her loyal caregiver, claiming he hired someone better.
When the new nurse never showed, Carmela's blood sugar dropped. I drove her here in my old car.
Seeing that I didn't flinch, Chloe assumed my silence was sheer ignorance.
A cruel, triumphant sneer spread across her lips as she dropped her final boast:
"Not just any petty street gang Don, bitch. The supreme boss of the Moretti Family--Dante Moretti."
My breath hitched.
My husband.
And the personal bodyguard Dante claimed he had deployed to the southern docks was standing in front of me, pressing a gun to my forehead to protect a cheap mistress.
---
第2章
A wave of bitter disgust swept through me.
Dante Moretti had been my husband for five years.
He held the public title of Don only because his mother, Donna Carmela, wanted to grant her only son dignity before her health deteriorated.
Dante was weak, vain, and utterly incompetent.
Every single smuggling route, dock worker union, and money-laundering channel was secretly run by me, Elena Vance.
I had inherited my late father's syndicate loyalists and built Dante's throne with my own hands.
Dante was merely an empty puppet living off my family's legacy.
And now, his mistress was brandishing his name in front of me like a royal crown.
"What's wrong, mute?" Chloe sneered, seeing my stillness. "Speechless now that you know my man rules this town?"
The passenger door of the Civic clicked open wider.
Carmela stepped out cautiously onto the blacktop, tapping her white cane in one hand. She held the leather harness of Barnaby, her golden retriever guide dog, in the other.
Her milky, sightless eyes turned sharply toward Chloe.
"Who did you say your man is?" Carmela asked.
Her raspy voice carried the chilling, unmistakable authority of a woman who had ordered dozens of executions.
"Dante Moretti?"
"Shut your mouth, grandma," Chloe snapped, disgusted by the old woman's tone.
"Yes, Dante Moretti. He spends every night in my bed, while his frigid wife sits at home like dead furniture."
Chloe smirked, tossing her blonde hair over her shoulder.
"He bought me this Ferrari yesterday. And today, he gave me a plush little job."
"He made me the private nurse for his blind, senile mother. Fifty grand a month just to sign a log sheet and let the old bag rot."
"Dante told me the old bitch should have died ten years ago anyway. She's just hogging the family fortune."
Every nerve in my body turned to ice.
The elite caretaker Dante bragged about.
The reason he fired Teresa, Carmela's devoted nurse of fifteen years.
It was all an excuse to put his mistress on the syndicate payroll and sneak her into our private estate to sleep with her.
Carmela began to shake. Her knuckles turned white around her cane.
For thirty years, Carmela had endured bullets, poison, and gang wars to secure an empire for her son.
To hear that her only child wished her dead for a stripper's vanity shattered her heart.
"You... foul creature," Carmela whispered, her chest heaving. "You dare speak his name before me?"
"Who are you calling foul, you decaying fossil?" Chloe hissed.
She lunged forward and slapped Carmela across the face with all her might.
The sharp crack stunned the drive-thru.
Carmela stumbled, her gold-rimmed glasses flying off and shattering on the pavement.
"Mother," I cried, lunging forward to catch her.
Seeing his mistress struck, Barnaby broke into a ferocious growl.
The ninety-pound golden retriever lunged forward with bared fangs to protect Carmela.
"Rico, shoot it," Chloe screamed.
A gunshot cracked through the morning air.
Rico fired. The 9mm bullet tore through Barnaby's hind flank.
The loyal dog cried out in agony, collapsing onto the asphalt.
Blood soaked his golden coat as he dragged himself on his front paws, whining softly to curl around Carmela's feet.
"Barnaby," Carmela dropped to her knees in the dirt, her trembling fingers touching the warm, sticky blood pooling on the dog's fur.
"My boy... what did you do to him?"
The shock was too violent.
Carmela gasped raggedly, clutching her left chest.
Her skin turned paper-white, her lips a horrifying shade of blue. Her breath hitched in her throat, her pupils rolling upward.
"Her heart," I yelled, dropping beside her.
I ripped open her handbag to grab her emergency nitroglycerin spray.
A high heel came crashing down on my hand.
Chloe stomped her heel into the back of my fingers, grinding my flesh into the asphalt.
Then she kicked Carmela's bag across the lane.
The medicine bottle skittered across the concrete and vanished down the iron grate of a sewer drain.
"Oops," Chloe laughed viciously. "Looks like grandma's candy fell into the sewer."
"She is having a massive myocardial infarction," I snarled, my eyes burning with murderous fury. "She's going to die."
"Then let her die," Chloe sneered. "Save the world some oxygen. You're not going anywhere until you pay me fifty thousand dollars."
I glared at her, my voice turning deadly cold.
"I am Elena Vance, Dante Moretti's legal wife. And the woman you just slapped is his mother--Donna Carmela, the supreme Godmother of the Syndicate."
"If you don't step back right now, you won't live to see sunset."
Chloe stared at me for two seconds, then burst into shrieking, hysterical laughter.
"You? Dante's wife?" Chloe laughed until tears leaked from her mascara.
"And this blind, rotting hag in the dirt is the legendary Godmother? Rico, did you hear this delusional psycho?"
Rico spat on the asphalt, chuckling darkly.
"A Godmother riding in a ten-year-old rusted Honda Civic? Pulling a scam for grocery money? That's rich."
"The Godmother travels in armored motorcades, beggar," Chloe hissed, stepping forward and viciously kicking me in the stomach.
"Dante told me his mother is resting in a luxury villa in Lake Forest. You think you can throw around the Godmother's name to scare me? You broke, pathetic tramp."
Chloe grabbed my hair, yanking my head back. She drove her acrylic nails deep into my cheek, drawing blood.
"You want to play pretend?" Chloe sneered, slamming my head hard against the asphalt.
"Then let me show you what happens to bitches who impersonate mafia royalty."
I coughed up blood. With trembling fingers, I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone.
I hit speed dial 1.
The line connected. Dante's impatient voice answered:
"Elena? What is it? I'm in a crucial meeting downtown. Don't bother me with domestic nonsense."
"Dante..." I gasped, trying to keep my voice audible.
"Your mother is dying. We're at the diner drive-thru on 26th... she had a heart attack... bring doctors--"
"Elena, shut the fuck up," Dante snapped over the phone.
"Stop using my mother to manipulate me. She was perfectly fine this morning. I don't have time for your pathetic little dramas. Don't call me again today."
Click.
He hung up on his mother's dying gasps.
Seeing me get hung up on, Chloe smirked with triumphant cruelty.
She pulled out her gold iPhone and dialed Dante's number right in front of me.
The call was answered on the very first ring.
"Dante, baby," Chloe instantly melted into a tearful, seductive sob.
"You have to help me. I came to pick up your breakfast on 26th Street, and two crazy homeless women crashed into my Ferrari."
"They're threatening to kill me. One of them is faking a heart attack on the ground right now. Rico had to shoot their rabid dog just to save my life."
Through Chloe's speaker, Dante's voice came through--protective, tender, and furious:
"What? Someone dared touch you, Chloe? Hold them right there."
"I'm around the corner with two Escalades full of enforcers. Nobody touches my queen and walks away alive."
---
第3章
Chloe ended the call and tossed her rose-gold phone casually back into her designer purse.
She adjusted the pink fox-fur collar around her neck, looking down at Carmela and me like we were stray rats cluttering her private driveway.
"Did you hear that, tramp?" Chloe laughed mockingly, her high heels clicking loudly against the asphalt as she strutted in front of us.
"Dante is coming with two carloads of shooters. When he pulls up, he'll personally break your legs, tear out your tongue, and feed your guts to the pigs down at the stockyards."
"Nobody disrespects me in this town and lives to tell about it."
Carmela lay trembling in the dirt, her shallow breathing rattling faintly in her throat.
Beside her, Barnaby whimpered softly, pressing his bloody nose against her limp fingers.
My fists clenched until my fingernails pierced my skin.
I tried to push myself up to carry Carmela away, to get her to a clinic before her heart stopped completely.
"Where do you think you're going, garbage?" Rico growled.
Before I could gain my footing, Rico stepped forward. He swung the heavy steel butt of his Beretta directly into my collarbone.
Crack.
A jolt of white-hot agony exploded across my chest. The brutal impact knocked me flat onto the concrete curb.
Before I could catch my breath, Rico drove his heavy leather combat boot into my left ribs.
The air was violently expelled from my lungs in a ragged gasp, and the taste of metallic copper flooded my mouth.
"Stay down in the dirt where you belong," Rico grunted.
He planted his muddy heel onto the small of my back, pressing down until the rough asphalt dug into my cheek.
Chloe stepped over Carmela's limp form, her lip curled in cruel amusement.
As she looked down at the old woman struggling for oxygen, her sharp eyes caught the subtle glint of polished metal on Carmela's wrist.
It was an antique silver timepiece--an heirloom commissioned half a century ago, engraved with the crest of the Moretti dynasty.
"Well, well, what do we have here?" Chloe sneered, crouching down.
"What's a bag lady doing with a piece like that? You steal it?"
Chloe grabbed Carmela's frail, paper-thin wrist and yanked violently.
Carmela groaned in pain as the metal clasp snagged on her flesh, tearing delicate skin before Chloe ripped the watch free.
Chloe wiped the blood off the silver on Carmela's sleeve and tossed the priceless heirloom casually toward Rico.
"Catch," Chloe laughed. "Pawn it later for cigarette money and cheap whiskey."
Carmela's eyes fluttered weakly. Her lips moved, trying to form words, but only a dry wheeze escaped.
"Look at you, rotting old hag," Chloe hissed, kicking Carmela's fallen white cane across the pavement until it rolled into the storm drain with a hollow clang.
"You smell like rotten garbage and sewer water. Rico, Dante will be here in less than two minutes. We can't let these two disgusting faces ruin his morning mood."
"What do you want to do with them, Miss Chloe?" Rico asked, pocketing the antique watch with a grin.
"Go to the Ferrari trunk and get those burlap sacks," Chloe commanded, a sinister giggle bubbling in her throat.
"The grease-soaked ones from the spare tire tools. Put bags over their heads."
"Cover their pathetic, bleeding faces so Dante doesn't have to look at such ugly trash when he arrives."
Rico marched to the rear of the pink sports car, popped the carbon-fiber trunk, and returned carrying two heavy burlap sacks.
They were stiff with dried motor oil, road salt, and grease.
Rico grabbed Carmela by the gray hair--an eighty-year-old matriarch suffering a massive heart attack--and shoved the coarse burlap sack roughly over her head.
He dragged the opening down to her shoulders, wrapping a length of industrial wire around her throat and twisting it tight.
"Don't touch her, you animal," I snarled, adrenaline tearing through the agony in my broken ribs.
I lunged forward with my bare hands, aiming for Rico's throat.
Rico spun on his heel and drove a brutal fist straight into my solar plexus.
The strike doubled me over, dropping me instantly to my knees as I choked on bile.
Before I could recover, Rico shoved the second burlap sack down over my head.
Instant, suffocating darkness swallowed me.
The choking stench of rancid motor oil, dirt, and dried animal blood filled my nose and mouth.
Every breath scratched against my throat.
Before I could reach up to tear the coarse fabric away, Rico grabbed my arms, yanked them behind my back, and fastened heavy industrial plastic zip-ties around my wrists.
He pulled them with a harsh zip, tightening the nylon until the edges sliced through my skin.
"Carmela," I called out through the thick, scratchy fibers, blindly crawling forward on my knees across the rough pavement.
My forehead bumped against Carmela's cold, trembling shoulder.
"Mother... breathe... please, hold on... stay with me."
Beneath the rough cloth, Carmela's body shuddered with faint gasps.
She was slipping away in the dark, suffocating beneath grease and dust while her dog bled out beside her.
Around us, the drivers trapped in the drive-thru line watched the horrific scene unfold.
Ordinary citizens, fathers on their way to work, delivery drivers--all frozen in sheer terror behind their locked doors.
No one dared honk. No one dared dial 911. The sight of Rico's pistol had silenced the entire street.
Less than two minutes later, the screech of burning rubber tore through the damp morning air.
Two massive, midnight-black Cadillac Escalades swerved violently into the entrance of the diner drive-thru, jumping the curb and blocking both exits with military precision.
The heavy doors flew open in rapid succession.
Heavy leather boots hit the wet pavement with thunderous weight.
Dante Moretti had arrived.
---
