Chapter 13 - The Trial of Marco Bellini
Marco went to trial eighteen months later after plea negotiations collapsed.
The courtroom was crowded.
Reporters loved him.
Old family lieutenant turns corporate traitor.
Mob dynasty cleans house.
Kolov connection.
None of the headlines captured the truth well.
Marco was not a cartoon villain.
That almost made it worse.
He had loved my father.
Protected Lucia.
Carried me home drunk when I was nineteen.
Sat beside my mother’s coffin.
And stolen millions.
Covered an attack that cost Noah his legs.
Used Paolo.
Used me.
Loyalty and betrayal had lived in the same man for decades.
That was the lesson.
People are rarely one thing.
The prosecution used financial records, internal communications, Noah’s warehouse video, Paolo’s testimony, and portions of my father’s archive.
I testified too.
So did Lucia.
Marco’s defense argued that my father authorized much of the historic conduct and that Marco became a convenient scapegoat for a family seeking legitimacy.
Some of that was true.
My father had authorized crimes.
That did not make Marco innocent of later theft, obstruction, conspiracy, and fraud.
The jury convicted him on most financial and obstruction counts and several conspiracy-related charges.
Other allegations did not stick.
Paolo took a plea and received a substantial sentence for Emma’s assault and his role in evidence suppression.
Lucia avoided criminal charges but paid civil penalties connected to nonprofit governance failures and permanently resigned from company oversight.
Again:
not cinematic.
Consequential.
Outside the courthouse, a reporter shouted:
“Dominic, is the Castellano-Kolov war over?”
I stopped.
“There was never a war.”
“What do you call all this?”
I looked toward Emma, who had come only for Noah’s testimony and was already walking away from the cameras.
May you like
“A cleanup we postponed for thirty years.”
Then I left.
