He Fired Me. Now His Empire Is Burning Chapter 08
Henry completely broke.
He just shook his head, muttering, “Impossible… you’re lying…”
But he already suspected it. He just didn’t dare admit it to himself-admit that he had destroyed the entire Corleone family and cast out his most loyal advisor for a Russian spy.
After leaving the Vitiello manor, Henry went insane.
He blamed all of his failure, his humiliation, and the destruction of his family on Lucy’s betrayal,
He went to the black market and hired a crew of mercs with a reputation for cruelty.
He didn’t want Lucy to have a quick death. He wanted her to suffer.
One night, as a torrential rain poured down on New York, Lucy was finally cornered. After a week of desperate hiding, the mercs trapped her in a dark, wet dead-end alley.
Her once pretty, innocent face was now a mask of terror and despair.
She tried to buy them off with her body and her money, but these were killers for hire. They weren’t interested.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Riddled with bullets, Lucy collapsed into a filthy puddle.
Her eyes were wide open, staring blankly at the black sky as the light slowly faded from them.
It was a miserable end, identical to my own death in the rain in my past life.
But Henry, having killed the traitor, didn’t get his comeback.
His reputation for treachery, for slandering a loyal subordinate, and for being so blind he drove his family into the ground, had spread through the entire North American Mafia.
In a world that values loyalty and rules, he was a total pariah, a laughingstock.
No one with any talent would work for such a stupid, selfish coward. He was left with nothing but a pack of rats who only knew how to save themselves.
At the same time, the Colombians were never going to let him go.
Humiliated by the failed deal and driven by greed, they launched a relentless campaign to wipe him out.
Henry’s last few pockets of influence in New York were quickly cleaned out.
This time, fate didn’t smile on him.
During a chaotic firefight on the run, Henry’s car was intercepted by a Colombian convoy. He was shot through the chest and died in the gutter like a piece of trash, his body left next to a dumpster on some New York street.
The Corleone family, once a powerhouse in New York, was gone for good.
And far from the storm, from my new position of power, I watched it all unfold.
Using my intimate knowledge of the Corleone family’s old operations, my sharp skills, and my precise intel, I helped the Vitiello family take over all of the Corleones’ prime turf and businesses, quickly, perfectly, and with
minimal cost.
That shipping dock, the one Henry had once considered his lifeline, was now, under my management, doubling its throughput and had become the Vitiello family’s biggest money-making machine.
My position in the Vitiello family grew stronger by the day. I went from an exiled outsider to the Don’s most trusted right hand, feared and respected throughout the East Coast underworld as the “Ice Queen.”
Night fell over the Vitiello manor, the lamps casting a warm glow.
I was in the study handling business when my assistant handed me a photograph.
In it, Henry’s mangled, bloody face stared up from a New York street, his eyes wide open in death, grotesquely it by a streetlamp.
Looking at the photo, I felt nothing.
To me now, he was nothing. Less than nothing.
I casually tossed the photo into the roaring fire in the hearth beside me.
I rose and walked to the massive floor-to-ceiling window.
Outside lay the vast Vitiello estate, and beyond it, my own new empire, just beginning to rise.
I slowly raised my glass to the mesmerizing night view, a faint smile on my lips, and said softly,
“To the end of an old era, and the birth of a new one.”
