When the truck hit him, what Danny Hiem saw last was his phone screen:
Chapter 47: The Fall of House Moretti
He didn't see the red light and neither did he hear the blaring horn, all he did see was the stupid fucking notification from WebNovel about a new chapter update.
And what came after was nothing, but very soon after that - chaos.
---
Danny woke up choking on blood that wasn't his.
His first coherent thought was that his dorm room smelled like gunpowder and expensive cologne. His second thought was that his dorm room definitely shouldn't smell like either of those things.
His third thought...well, that got cut off by the screaming.
"Papa! PAPA NO!"
The words came out of his mouth, which was weird - because they definitely weren't his words.
It was from a deeper voice, far more rough and certainly unbelonging to a Porsche kid that grew up in Sacramento.
And his body, for some weird absurd reason seemed to be moving on its own, stumbling forward across marble floors that sure as hell weren't his dorm's shitty linoleum.
There was a man on the ground.
His suit expensive and his hair silver, but an even more prevalent feature of his, was the three bullet wounds in his chest, blooming red across white silk. His eyes were still open and moving, finding Danny's face with the kind of effort that meant he had maybe seconds left.
"D-Dante..." The dying man's voice was wet, bubbling. "My son..."
Dante?
Danny's brain stuttered at hearing the name. He knew that name.
From -
Oh shit.
"You gotta be fucking kidding me."
The words slipped out in English before he could stop them, and wrong-wrong-wrong, his mouth wasn't supposed to make those sounds, this body's tongue wasn't shaped right for it. But nobody noticed because there were other people in the room, and they were all staring at the man bleeding out on the floor.
Infact, It didn't seem like just staring.
Danny's eyes, or Dante's eyes? - tracked left.
Three men standing near the door that were clad in suit. One of them still clutched his gun in hand, smoke curling from the barrel. All three were looking at the dying man with the kind of professional indifference you'd give a broken vending machine.
"Apologies, Don Moretti," the shooter said, and he didn't sound sorry at all. "But the Five Families have voted. Your time is done."
Don Moretti.
Dante Moretti.
The worthless son from 'Blood & Honor', the webnovel Danny had literally been reading before a Sysco truck turned him into sidewalk art.
This wasn't happening, right?
This couldn't be -
His father - no, Dante's father - no, fuck it, the old man on the ground grabbed Danny's sleeve with a hand that had maybe one good squeeze left in it.
"Dante... listen..." More blood. God, so much blood. It was getting on Danny's shoes, and they looked like really fucking expensive shoes. Italian leather, probably. The kind Danny had always wanted but could never afford. "The... the family... you have to..."
The old man's eyes went glassy halfway through the sentence.
Just like that. One second a person, the next second meat.
Danny had never seen anyone die before.
The closest he had been to a corpse was his grandfather's funeral, but even that was just a body in a box. This was different, he watched this old man leave. Watched the lights go out in real-time.
He was going to throw up.
"Well," one of the shooters said, holstering his gun. "That's that."
The other two laughed, like an actual cacklecle, you'd think someone had told a decent joke at a bar.
"What about the kid?" The youngest one - couldn't be older than thirty - gestured at Danny with his chin.
The shooter, the one who'd done it, looked Danny up and down like he was checking the quality of a used car. "Dante Moretti. The gambling addict. The coward." He smiled. It wasn't a nice smile. "Word is he pissed himself last month when the Volkov brats got rough with him at that club."
Had he? Danny didn't know. These weren't his memories, just his body now, apparently. But from the way the other men snickered, it was probably true.
"Let him live," the shooter continued. "He's more useful as a joke than a martyr. Let him watch the Moretti family crumble to dust."
And just like that, they left. Simply walked out like they hadn't just murdered someone.
Like this was a usual Tuesday.
Danny stood there, his hands shaking - Dante's hands shaking - and stared at the corpse of a man whose entire life history he didn't know, whose death he was apparently supposed to care about.
The mansion had gone dead quiet at this point, that was odd. Where was everyone else? In the novel, the family had dozens of soldiers, captains, enforcers.
Where the fuck were they?
Then he heard it.
Footsteps. Lots of them. Coming from deeper in the house, converging from different directions. And voices, low and urgent.
"—said the old man's dead—"
"—Five Families made their move—"
"—what about the kid—"
Oh.
Oh, they'd been here the whole time and they'd heard the gunshots, they simply just did nothing about it.
Nobody had come to help.
The first one to reach the room was a thick-necked guy in a tracksuit who took one look at the body and crossed himself.
"Madonna," he muttered. Then his eyes landed on Danny. "Kid. You alright?"
Danny opened his mouth but no words came out.
More men filed in.
It counted up - ten, fifteen, maybe twenty. All of them staring at the corpse and a few of them looked genuinely sad while most just looked nervous, like they were already doing math in their heads about what came next.
"We need to call Uncle Sal," someone said.
"We need to secure the perimeter," someone else countered.
"We need to figure out who's in charge now."
Nobody looked at Danny when they said that last part. They looked through him, past him, around him.
Right. Because in the novel, Dante Moretti was a big joke and a complete disappointment of a son. The original Dante had spent the last three years pissing away the family's money and reputation in equal measure, and everyone knew it.
He was a liability.
Nobody expected him to do anything now except maybe cry.
And honestly? Danny kind of wanted to cry.
This was insane and utterly impossible. He was supposed to be dead. He was supposed to be -
[SYSTEM INITIALIZATION COMPLETE]
The words appeared in his vision like a video game HUD, bright blue text hanging in the air where only he could see it.
[WELCOME, USER]
[YOU HAVE INHERITED: THE MORETTI FAMILY (CRITICAL CONDITION)]
[CURRENT FAMILY STATUS:
- SOLDIERS: 47 (LOYALTY: QUESTIONABLE)
- CAPTAINS: 6 (LOYALTY: LOW)
- TERRITORY: 15% (DOWN FROM 89%)
- RESOURCES: $847,000 (DEBTS: $15,000,000)
- REPUTATION: LAUGHINGSTOCK]
[MISSION: SURVIVE THE NEXT 48 HOURS]
[REWARD: UNLOCK BASIC SYSTEM FUNCTIONS]
[FAILURE: DEATH]
Danny stared at the floating text. Then at the corpse. Then at the men who were now arguing about whether to call the police (bad idea) or the coroner (also bad idea) or just wrap the body up and handle it themselves (probably the least bad idea).
He'd spent four years reading crime novels and Mafia stories - you know, gangster shit. He'd romanticized it, sure, treated it like fiction, like a cool aesthetic.
He'd practiced "intimidating" looks in his bathroom mirror and bought a secondhand suit he couldn't afford because it made him feel like Michael Corleone.
And now he was here, like actually fucking here.
Standing in a pool of someone's blood, in a dead man's shoes, with a whole crime family falling apart around him and a death sentence hanging over his head if he didn't figure out how to stop it.
This was everything he'd ever wanted.
He was absolutely fucked.
"Hey." Tracksuit guy snapped his fingers in front of Danny's face. "Kid. You hearing me? We need to move the body before—"
"Shut up."
The words came out quiet, but something in Danny's voice - in Dante's voice - made the man stop mid-sentence.
Every eye in the room turned to him.
Danny - no, fuck it, he was Dante now, wasn't he? - Dante looked down at his father's corpse one more time.
In the novel, this was where the original Dante had broken down. He sobbed and begged Uncle Sal to take over. Proved everyone right about what a weak, useless piece of shit he was.
The original Dante had let the family die because he didn't know how to save it.
But Danny?
Danny had read the book.
He looked up at the room full of killers, thieves, and career criminals who expected him to roll over and die, and felt something cold and sharp settle into his chest where the panic used to be.
"Everyone out," Dante said.
But he hoped Carlo stayed.
To tell the truth, he didn't actually know which one was Carlo. He was just guessing based on the fact that Carlo was supposed to be the oldest enforcer, and there was one guy in the room who looked like he'd been around since the Cold War.
The old guy's eyebrows went up, but he nodded.
The others hesitated, looking at each other like they weren't sure if they had to listen to him anymore.
"Out." Dante put some steel in it this time. "Now."
They went, and they were slow, reluctant, but they went.
When the door closed, Carlo folded his arms and gave Dante a look that could've stripped paint. "You gonna tell me what you're planning, kid? Or are we just standing here with your father's body because you finally grew a pair?"
Dante met his eyes. "Tell me who's loyal. Who's already talking to the other families. Who's going to try to kill me in my sleep."
Carlo's expression didn't change. "That's a long list."
"Then start with the short one. Who's loyal?"
"Why the hell should I tell you?"
"Because you're still here."
For a long moment, Carlo just stared at him.
"Alright," Carlo said finally. "But we're burning the body first. The Five Families are gonna want proof your old man's dead, and I'll be damned if we give it to them."
Dante nodded. "Do it."
This was crazy, so genuinely and completelyompletely insane.
But somewhere between the corpse and the system message and the reality of his situation, Danny had made a choice.
He'd spent his whole life reading about this world - studying and obsessing over it.
Now he was living it.
And he'd be damned if he was going to die before he found out how the story ended.
[QUEST UPDATED: HANDLE YOUR FATHER'S BODY]
[OPTIONS:
1. BURN IT (DENIES ENEMIES PROOF, ANGERS TRADITION-FOCUSED MEMBERS)
2. ARRANGE PROPER FUNERAL (SHOWS RESPECT, LEAVES YOU VULNERABLE DURING SERVICE)
3. HIDE IT (BUYS TIME, CREATES UNCERTAINTY)]
Great, multiple choice.
Dante took a breath, looked at the man who'd raised a son he'd never met, and made his first real decision as a mob boss.
"Get the gasoline."