All Chapters of The Lost Ricci: Heir Back from the Dead: Chapter 21
- Chapter 30
112 chapters
Chapter 21: Paychecks
The heavy, velvet-draped room was silent for exactly three seconds before the explosion came.Leonardo Bronson’s face turned a shade of purple that matched the vintage wine on the sideboard. He didn't just stand; he lunged toward the table, his hand slamming onto the white linen cloth with a force that made the silverware dance."Get up," Leonardo hissed, his voice trembling with a cocktail of shock and unbridled fury. "Get out of that chair, you insolent, low-life parasite! Do you have any idea where you are? Do you have any concept of the sacrilege you are committing?"Dante didn't move. He leaned back into the plush leather of the "Imperial Chair," his arms resting casually on the gold-leaf armrests. He looked less like a trespasser and more like a king who had finally found his throne."I’m in a restaurant, Leonardo," Dante said, his tone infuriatingly level. "And I’m sitting in a chair. It’s a bit stiff, but the view of your collapse is excellent from here.""A chair?" Ken Lawren
Chapter 22: Frozen in fear
The Imperial Suite had transformed from a sanctuary of luxury into a courtroom of the damned. Leonardo Bronson sat huddled in a gilded chair, his sweat soaking through the collar of his bespoke tuxedo. He watched Dante... the man he had once ordered to scrub the grime from his foyer, sip a wine that cost more than most people’s monthly mortgage.Desperation is a powerful stimulant. Leonardo wiped his brow and leaned forward, his voice shifting into a nauseatingly oily pitch."Dante—or, should I say, Mr. Representative—we clearly got off on the wrong foot," Leonardo began, spreading his hands wide. "But we are men of business. Let’s set aside the... domestic misunderstandings. The Bronson Group has a development project in the North District. High-end retail, residential towers—it’s a gold mine. I’m offering you a joint venture. Fifty-fifty. We provide the land and the legacy; you provide the Apex Crown liquidity. It’s a win-win."Dante set his glass down with a soft clink that silence
Chapter 23: Signature!
Guilia’s mother lunged at Dante’s sleeve to try and convince him again, her eyes gleaming with a desperate hope, waiting for Dante to accept her offer to turn his failed marriage into a profitable arrangement.But Dante reached into the pocket of his charcoal sweater and pulled out his phone. He tapped the screen twice."You really are a remarkable woman, Mrs. Bronson," Dante said, his voice devoid of emotion."I knew you'd see reason," she purred, reaching out to pat his cheek.Dante stepped back, dodging her touch. "I wasn't complimenting your virtue. I was marveling at your timing. Rafael!"The restaurant owner appeared instantly, hovering near the edge of the alcove. "Yes, sir?""The audio feed from the house system," Dante commanded. "The alcove mic is active. Patch it into the main dining room and the lobby speakers. I want everyone to hear the Bronson family values."Beatrice’s face went from smug satisfaction to a mask of pure terror in half a second. "Dante? What are you doin
Ch-24: Dead?!
The rain lashed against the windshield of the black Mercedes SUV as Leonardo Bronson drove with a manic, white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. Beside him, Beatrice was frantically shoving jewelry into a designer silk tote, her breath hitching in jagged gasps. In the backseat, Marcus was staring at his tablet, his face ghostly pale in the digital glow."It’s not just the bank accounts, Dad," Marcus whispered, his voice trembling. "The servers… our private cloud… it’s all gone. I can’t even log into the family trust portal. It says 'User Terminated by Administrative Authority.'""Shut up, Marcus!" Leonardo roared, blowing through a red light as they neared the perimeter of the city’s private airfield. "We have the offshore account in Zurich. That’s outside Apex’s jurisdiction. Once we’re on the Gulfstream, we’re untouchable. I’ve known Captain Miller for fifteen years. He’ll get us out."Leonardo was operating on pure adrenaline, the primal instinct of a cornered animal. He believe
Chapter 25: Final Dinner
The storm that had begun as a drizzle at the airfield had matured into a violent, thunderous gale. Over the Ricci estate… a sprawling fortress of glass, steel, and ancient stone nestled in the cliffs, the sky was a bruised charcoal, illuminated only by jagged veins of lightning.Leonardo Bronson sat in the back of a nondescript van parked three miles down the coast road. He was no longer the polished tycoon; his hair was matted, his eyes were bloodshot with a manic, sleepless fever, and his tuxedo was stained with the mud of the airfield. He had been released from police custody only two hours prior, his bail posted by an untraceable account in the Cayman Islands.He didn't care who had paid it. He only cared about the duffel bags of heavy weaponry sitting at his feet."You’re sure about this?" a man asked from the front seat. He was a scarred veteran of three bush wars, a mercenary known only as 'Viper.' "Assaulting a Ricci estate is a suicide mission for most. But for the price you
Ch-26: Reversal
The Bronson estate was no longer a home. It was a crime scene of a dead legacy.Yellow police tape fluttered in the damp wind, snagging on the thorns of the untended rose bushes. The grand fountain in the circular driveway—the one Leonardo used to boast was carved from a single block of Carrara marble—had been drained, its basin filled with sodden leaves and trash. Inside the house, the silence was heavy, smelling of dust and the metallic tang of a life stripped bare.Giulia Bronson stood in the center of the foyer. She wore a simple black dress, her jewelry gone, her eyes hollow. She had spent the last forty-eight hours in a daze, watching the news loops of her father being dragged away in handcuffs and her mother’s voice echoing her shame across the nation."I didn't think you'd come," a voice echoed from the top of the grand staircase.Giulia looked up. Dante was there, but not the Dante she had known for three years. He wasn't the man who checked the tire pressure on her car or th
Chapter 27
The guest house was a memory of poverty.It was a four-hundred-square-foot rectangular box of weathered cedar and damp drywall, tucked so far into the shadows of the estate’s perimeter that the sun only touched it for twenty minutes a day. For three years, Leonardo Bronson had walked past this structure with a feeling of benevolent disgust, occasionally pointing it out to his peers as a sign of his "charitable nature"—the place where he kept his daughter’s unremarkable husband.Now, Leonardo sat on the edge of a sagging twin mattress that smelled faintly of motor oil and old rain.The transition had been so fast it felt like a dream, but the cold seeping through his thin socks was very real. He was still wearing his tuxedo trousers, though the jacket was gone—lost somewhere in the scuffle of his arrest. His hands, once soft and manicured for signing billion-dollar mergers, were stained with the grime of the police van."I can’t breathe in here," Beatrice whimpered. She was huddled in
Ch-28: The Judas Price
The guest house felt smaller with every breath Giulia took. The air was thick with the scent of her mother’s cheap, backup perfume and the lingering, metallic smell of the industrial floor cleaner Leonardo had tracked in before his shift.Giulia sat on the narrow twin bed, Dante’s bed, and felt the rough texture of the wool blanket against her palms. This was the reality of her life now. A week ago, she was debating whether to buy a third vacation home in Tuscany; tonight, she was calculating how many days a single box of generic pasta could last three adults."He’s going to kill us, Giulia," Beatrice whimpered from the folding chair. She was staring at a spider crawling up the damp drywall. "He won't stop until we’re begging for scraps on the street corner. That... that monster. To think I let him sit at my Christmas table.""We didn't let him sit there, Mother," Giulia said, her voice hollow. "We ordered him to serve the ham. There’s a difference."Giulia stood up. Her eyes fell on
Ch-29: Believe it!
The air in the boardroom of Golden Fingers was thick with the scent of expensive cologne and the metallic tang of panic. This was the "Sanctum," a room paneled in rare ebony wood where the board of directors had, for decades, decided which lives to enrich and which to ruin.But today, the chairs were filled with men and women whose faces looked like wax melting under a high flame. Leonardo Bronson was behind bars, his "Ghost Legion" assault having been broadcast to the world as a grotesque act of domestic terrorism. The company’s stock was no longer a line on a chart; it was a vertical drop into an abyss."The Greco Group has offered forty cents on the dollar," Harold Vance, the acting Chairman, said as he wiped sweat from his upper lip. "It’s an insult, but it’s a lifeboat. If we don’t sell by the time the markets open tomorrow, the regulatory freeze will turn this entire building into a graveyard.""Forty cents?" Sarah Miller, the Head of Acquisitions, snapped. "That’s not a sale, H
Ch-30: Bad Luck!
The flickering television screen in the guest house was the only source of light, casting jagged, blue-tinted shadows against the peeling wallpaper. Giulia sat on the edge of the twin bed, her eyes fixed on the breaking news banner that had been scrolling for the last twenty minutes.BRONSON EMPIRE LIQUIDATED: REPRESENTATIVE WELLINGTON ANNOUNCES "LEGACY" TRANSFORMATION.She watched, frozen, as the camera panned over the boardroom she had visited a thousand times as a child. She saw the men who had been her father’s "brothers"—the titans of the city—slinking out of the building with their heads bowed, clutching single-dollar bills as if they were holy relics.Then, Dante appeared on screen. He wasn't shouting. He wasn't gloating. He spoke with a terrifying, calm clarity about "restitution" and "non-profit trusts." He was dismantling the wealth her family had spent three generations accumulating, and he was doing it with the effortless grace of a man tidying a desk."He’s giving it away