Sins of the Father (The Valachi Family Book 1) by Laurel K. Reid

Author:Laurel K. Reid [Reid, Laurel K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Darkan Press Inc.
Published: 2025-09-25T00:00:00+00:00

Luc’s fingers still tingled with the ghost of Mia’s pulse when the car pulled up to Il Dominio’s. The library order had been placed, the antiquarian summoned—a cage of leather and vellum, just as his mother advised. But tonight’s real work required a different kind of trap. The Commission wouldn’t care about a reluctant bride’s laughter or a bodyguard’s misplaced devotion. They understood only two languages: blood and leverage. And in his briefcase, Luc carried enough of both to burn their world to ash.

The oak doors groaned opened letting in the same cold draft that had carried Carbone’s warnings about Miami’s ports weeks before. The chandeliers still cast their long shadows over the century-old table—but this time, Luc stood where his father once sat.

Antonio took a position at his right shoulder, a shadow with a blade. John stood at his left, the consigliere’s briefcase full of papers that could burn empires. Across from them, the Commission’s faces were the same, but the internal war had changed.

Carbone’s bourbon-stained fingers drummed the table where he’d once asked for help against the Feds. Marchetti’s rosary beads still clicked between his fingers—the same ones he’d been counting when Luc proposed feeding the Bureau a corpse. Lombardi adjusted the same cufflinks that had glinted when he mocked Luc’s “think tank” strategies.

And at the head, old Moretti, who had once challenged Luc’s ambition, sat—the man who’d signed Ettore Bonino’s death warrant for turning to the Feds.

Luc placed two items on the scarred oak. The Betrothal Contract—the same heavy parchment as their territory agreements, signed with the same ink that bound them all—and a bullet, .38 caliber. Commission-issued. The kind they’d used on Ettore after voting him a traitor.

“We protected Carbone when the Feds came,” Luc said, voice cutting through the silence like the blade Antonio hadn’t yet drawn. “We gave Marchetti the docks when the Zetas knocked. But Ettore? We let him bleed out alone.”

Carbone’s jaw twitched. He remembered Luc’s solution—give them a corpse to chase—and the unspoken truth: He’d given up his own family member.

Moretti’s cane thudded. “He betrayed—”

“He made a deal. A blood debt that was dishonored,” Luc interrupted. “The same way we would honor a debt from one in this room—it wasn’t. The way Marchetti’s priests bury our sins. But Ettore’s price wasn’t silence. It was a daughter’s future.”

Matteo Bonino stiffened, his knuckles whitening around his glass. Who’d not been invited to these meetings after Ettore’s death, now sat stiffly—forced there by his niece’s fate.

Lombardi swirled his scotch—the same motion as when he’d dismissed Luc’s ideas. “And if we refuse this... romantic arrangement?”

Luc tapped the bullet. “Then the Bonino files go public. The ones detailing how Lombardi bribed three federal judges. How Carbone betrayed Bonino in attempts to move more than narcotics. How Moretti ordered Ettore’s hit to cover his own deals with the Russians, using Bonino as a front to avoid going to the Feds. If we can’t rely on the heads to have integrity, then I will burn it all down so we can start new.

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