Chapter Ten: The Serpent's Tongue
The heat in the city pressed against Ronnie's skin like the barrel of a gun. The chaos Dominic left behind hadn't dissipated—it had evolved. In the days following the attack on the Queens lab, whispers took on the weight of threats, and power shifted beneath the surface like tectonic plates before an earthquake.
Ronnie stood in her office, overlooking the city from the top floor of the Moretti tower. Every light in the skyline felt like an eye on her. Behind her, Sparks paced nervously, laptop in hand.
"They're coordinating," he said. "Giordano, Vasquez, the remnants of Rossi's people. Someone's pulling the strings."
"Not someone," Ronnie murmured. "Tommy."
"You don't know that."
"I don't need to. I feel it."
The betrayal hadn't cut clean. It still bled, slow and quiet.
Sparks frowned. "You sure you want to confront him?"
Ronnie turned, her voice iron. "I'm not confronting him. I'm ending him."
---
Flashback: Two years earlier
Tommy and Ronnie stood on a rooftop in Palermo, the wind tugging at her dark coat. They were younger then, reckless and raw.
"I think about what it'd be like if we weren't born into this," she had said.
Tommy smiled sadly. "You mean if we were free?"
"Yeah. Free."
He touched her face, a thumb against her cheekbone. "I don't think we were meant for peace."
---
Now, the memory taunted her. Tommy had chosen a different path, a quieter betrayal. He didn't shoot her. He didn't curse her name. He simply let the walls fall around her while pretending to hold them up.
---
That night, Ronnie called a meeting in the wine cellar beneath the estate—the old war room. Luca, Sparks, Cass, and Mia were there. A small circle. Trust had become rare currency.
"We move tomorrow," Ronnie said. "We hit Giordano's warehouse in Brooklyn. It's where they're funneling weapons. We destroy the supply line, we cut the spine."
Luca grunted. "And if Tommy's there?"
Ronnie's eyes darkened. "Then we end it."
Mia, quiet until now, stepped forward. "Ronnie... what if he's not the enemy you think he is?"
"I know what he is," Ronnie said, her voice sharp. "I've known since Sicily. I just didn't want to see it."
---
Scene: The Warehouse Siege
Brooklyn's warehouse district slept under a thick fog. Ronnie's crew moved in silence, weapons drawn, ghosts in the mist.
Sparks hacked the side door. Cass and Luca cleared the loading dock.
They breached at dawn.
Gunfire erupted. Screams cut the fog like sirens.
Ronnie moved through it all with cold precision. Every shot a statement. Every breath a decision.
Inside, crates of weapons stacked floor to ceiling. Giordano's soldiers fell one by one. But the man himself wasn't there.
And neither was Tommy.
What was there was a letter—sealed in wax, left on a desk in the back office. Addressed to Veronica.
---
She opened it alone, after the smoke cleared.
"You once told me the worst kind of war is the one where you don't know who the enemy is. I think you were wrong. The worst kind is when the enemy knows you better than you know yourself."
"I never wanted to hurt you. But I had to make a choice—between you and the peace I thought I could build behind your back. I failed. But I'd do it again if it meant saving you from the blood that's always been in our veins."
"This war ends with us. Or it never ends at all."
T.
Ronnie read it twice. Then she burned it in the ashtray.
---
That night, she drank alone in her father's study. Scotch. No ice.
Mia entered quietly. "He still loves you."
"That doesn't matter."
"It does if you love him too."
Ronnie laughed bitterly. "Love built this empire. Love burned it down."
Mia sat beside her. "So what now?"
Ronnie stared into the dark. "We hunt ghosts. And we salt the earth."
---
Subplot Reveal: The Silent Investor
Sparks returned later with news. "We found another player. Dominic wasn't acting alone. He had funding—from someone international. Swiss accounts. Offshore shells."
Ronnie raised a brow. "Who?"
"Valentina D'Angelo."
Silence fell.
Valentina. The exiled daughter of a Sicilian crime lord. Ronnie's childhood rival. Brilliant. Sadistic. Forgotten—until now.
"She's back," Sparks said. "And she's got her eyes on New York."
---
Ronnie smiled for the first time in days. Cold. Deadly.
"Let her come."
Because if Tommy was the blade in her back…
Valentina would be the fire at her front.
And Ronnie Moretti was ready to burn.
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