Chapter 4 - Victor Finally Told Me Why He Hated Me

Victor was arrested at 6:42 that morning.

Federal agents found him inside the river warehouse with Marco DeLuca, two suitcases of cash, forged passports, and copies of the same succession documents hidden inside my estate.

Nobody fired a weapon.

Nobody died.

For men raised in my world, that almost felt disappointing.

For the father and grandfather I was beginning to remember I wanted to be, it felt perfect.

Victor requested to speak with me after his arrest.

Daniel said absolutely not.

I agreed with Daniel for nearly four hours.

Then curiosity won.

The meeting happened inside a federal interview room with agents watching through glass. Victor wore plain detention clothes instead of the tailored suits I had seen him wear for twenty-five years.

Without those suits, he looked older.

Smaller.

Human.

That irritated me.

I wanted betrayal to have a face monstrous enough to justify not noticing it.

Instead, it looked familiar.

Victor stared at me.

“So the child stopped you.”

“Yes.”

He laughed once.

“Of course.”

“What does that mean?”

He leaned back.

“For twenty-five years, grown men were too frightened to question anything I handed you. The one person who ruined everything was five years old.”

That was almost funny.

Then I asked why.

Money explained the final months.

It did not explain Lucia.

Victor’s expression changed.

He had resented me far longer than I understood.

We grew up together in the same neighborhood. My father brought Victor into our organization after Victor’s own father died. As I rose, Victor became the man beside me.

Always beside.

Never equal.

He claimed he saved my life repeatedly.

Probably true.

He handled problems I forgot existed.

Also true.

He believed half my success belonged to him.

Maybe some of it did.

Then came the sentence that finally exposed the wound.

“You got everything because your name was Moretti.”

Victor said when I made mistakes, people called me bold. When he made mistakes, he became disposable. When I spent money recklessly, it was strategy. When he invested in DeLuca’s company, I refused to guarantee the loans because I considered the project too risky.

He had interpreted that as betrayal.

Then Lucia began challenging him.

She disliked how much access Victor had to my schedule, finances, and private correspondence. Six years earlier, she warned me that Victor had become too powerful inside the family.

I defended him.

Lucia left after our argument.

Victor saw opportunity.

He intercepted the first letter.

Then another.

Eventually, keeping us separated became easy.

“You made her hate me.”

Victor shook his head.

“No. You did that part yourself.”

The truth hurt because he was right.

He had hidden the reconciliation.

He had not created the argument that came before it.

I had spent years choosing loyalty from men like Victor over discomfort from my own daughter.

He simply made sure I never received another chance to correct it.

I asked whether he intended to kill Elena or Sophia if they discovered anything.

Victor’s face became defensive.

“No.”

“Peter is in a hospital because he discovered something.”

“He betrayed me.”

There it was.

The logic.

Loyalty meant obedience.

Betrayal meant punishment.

For twenty-five years, I had lived by versions of the same rule.

Maybe that was why Victor understood how to hide inside my life so well.

He was not opposite to me.

He was what happened when our rules reached their logical conclusion.

I stood.

Victor suddenly looked frightened.

Not because he expected me to attack him.

Because I was leaving.

“You’re just walking away?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t want revenge?”

I looked through the glass at the federal agents.

“You’ll get something better.”

His face hardened.

“What?”

“Consequences I don’t control.”

Then I left.

Victor eventually faced charges involving attempted murder, conspiracy, fraud, assault, financial crimes, and evidence tampering. DeLuca faced his own charges. Peter accepted responsibility for his involvement while cooperating extensively, and prosecutors took his coercion into account.

Gabriel remained devastated.

For weeks, he blamed himself for not noticing.

Sophia solved that too.

One afternoon, she heard him apologize to me again and looked confused.

“Mr. Gabriel didn’t give you the wrong pill.”

Simple.

Accurate.

Gabriel smiled for the first time in days.

Then Lucia arrived in Chicago.

She stepped through my front doors holding Matteo’s hand.

I had prepared speeches.

Apologies.

Explanations.

None survived seeing my grandson.

He looked up at me with Lucia’s eyes and asked, “Are you Grandpa Alessandro?”

I looked at my daughter.

She was crying.

“So I’ve been told.”

Matteo considered that.

Then he held out a toy car.

“Mom says you have real ones.”

Lucia laughed through tears.

I dropped to one knee.

For the first time in decades, Alessandro Moretti—the man people feared standing above them—met someone important at eye level.