Chapter 1
TRE QUARTI: THE TAROT READER’S DIVORCE COURT
By Valeri Caronna & Vinny Bellucci
Chapter One
Aries
Divorce Chocolate Cake
Toma Family
Five-Card Tarot Spread: Present Situation, Challenge, Hidden Influence, Advice, Outcome
Opening Scripture:
“For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known.”
Luke 12:2
Opening Quote:
“Some people come to court for freedom. Some come because the truth finally caught up with them.”
The Bellucci Courthouse did not look like a place where marriages ended.
It looked like a place where secrets were stored.
The building sat heavy on Canal Street, all carved stone, black iron, old columns, and stained glass that caught the New Orleans morning in bruised purple and courthouse gold. The sign outside read BELLUCCI COURTHOUSE, but everyone in the city knew the older name whispered behind closed doors.
The House of Scales.
Vinny Bellucci stood at the foot of the courthouse steps in a dark suit, watching people climb toward judgment.
Lawyers with leather bags. Women with sunglasses too large for their faces. Men pretending not to be nervous. Court clerks carrying coffee. Bailiffs checking phones. Reporters sniffing around for public humiliation.
Divorce court always brought a crowd.
Money made people lie.
Children made people desperate.
Property made people vicious.
Love, when it curdled, made people criminal.
Valeri Caronna stepped out of the black car with her tarot bag over her shoulder. She wore black, not funeral black, but altar black. The kind that made her look like she had already heard the confession before the sinner opened his mouth.
Vinny looked at her and gave the small nod he used when the room was full of enemies.
“You ready?” he asked.
Valeri glanced up at the courthouse.
“No,” she said. “But the building is.”
Vinny’s eyes moved toward the entrance.
“You feel it too?”
“I felt it three blocks away.”
He did not smile. That was how Valeri knew he believed her.
Inside, Bellucci Courthouse smelled like lemon polish, old paper, wet wool, and expensive fear. The marble floors had been buffed until they reflected ankles and shoes like shallow water. Above the main hall, painted angels held scales and swords, their faces cracked from age.
A temporary café had been set up near the mediation wing.
Bellucci’s Courthouse Café.
That was Vinny’s idea. Coffee, pastries, cannoli, sandwiches, desserts, something to soften the public before the legal blade came down.
Today’s special sat under a glass dome.
Divorce Chocolate Cake.
Dark. Glossy. Dense. No eggs. No milk. No butter. A depression-era style cake, the sign said, separated from all the ingredients people thought it needed.
Valeri stared at it.
“That’s ugly poetic,” she said.
Vinny followed her gaze. “The pastry chef thought it was funny.”
“It is funny.”
“You don’t look amused.”
“I’m not.”
Before Vinny could answer, Approfondisce Delves came out of the side hallway with a folder under one arm and a coffee in the other.
Everyone called him App.
Not because he was modern. Because he dug.
Approfondisce meant delves into. Explores deeply. Goes under the surface. Finds the rot beneath the floorboards.
App looked tired already.
“That cake’s gonna be evidence by lunch,” he said.
Valeri looked at him. “You joking?”
“I was hoping I was.”
Zero Fico appeared behind him, holding a tablet and wearing the expression of a man who had already found something illegal before breakfast.
“Security cameras are glitching in Courtroom Three,” Zero said. “Only Courtroom Three. Every time someone says the word custody, the feed skips.”
Vinny exhaled through his nose.
“Wonderful.”
Valeri touched the strap of her tarot bag.
“Who’s first?”
App opened the folder.
“Aries. Male. Toma family connection. Name is Rocco Toma. Owns three gyms, two recovery clinics, and a protein shake company that probably tastes like drywall and felony charges.”
Zero Fico snorted.
Vinny gave him a look.
Zero lifted one hand. “Allegedly.”
App continued. “Rocco is here for divorce mediation. Wife is Marissa Toma. She claims emotional abuse, financial control, and suspicious injuries connected to several business partners. Rocco claims she’s unstable and trying to ruin him.”
Valeri looked toward the hallway.
A man in a fitted charcoal suit stood near the café counter.
Broad shoulders. Shaved head. Expensive watch. Aries energy all over him. Fire with a jawline. War pretending to be discipline.
He was cutting into a slice of Divorce Chocolate Cake with the side of his fork like it had offended him.
“That him?” Valeri asked.
“That’s him,” App said.
Rocco Toma looked up.
Their eyes met.
The courthouse lights flickered once.
Valeri smiled without warmth.
“Let’s read.”
The voluntary tarot room had once been a witness waiting chamber. Vinny had converted it with a round table, two lamps, two chairs, and a small brass plaque on the door:
PRE-HEARING CLARITY SESSION
VOLUNTARY
NON-EVIDENTIARY
Valeri laughed when she first saw the plaque.
Non-evidentiary.
The universe never signed that agreement.
Rocco entered like he owned the building.
Marissa came in behind him.
She was smaller, elegant, tense in the shoulders, with a bruise hidden badly beneath makeup near her collarbone. Her hands shook when she sat down, but her eyes did not.
Valeri noticed that.
Fear in the body.
Steel in the soul.
Rocco sat back.
“So this is the witch part?”
Vinny stood near the wall. App stood by the door. Zero monitored the tablet in the corner.
Valeri removed her tarot deck from its black cloth.
“No,” she said. “This is the part where you stop performing.”
Rocco laughed.
Marissa did not.
Valeri placed the deck on the table.
“Five-card spread. Present Situation. Challenge. Hidden Influence. Advice. Outcome.”
Rocco leaned forward.
“And if I don’t like what it says?”
Valeri looked him dead in the face.
“Then argue with the cards.”
She shuffled.
The room cooled.
Outside the frosted glass, courthouse noise softened, as if the building had leaned in to listen.
Valeri laid the first card.
Present Situation: The Emperor
The Emperor sat armored on his throne, stone behind him, power in his hand.
Rocco smiled.
“That’s me.”
Valeri studied the card.
“Yes,” she said. “That’s the problem.”
Marissa lowered her eyes.
Valeri tapped the card once.
“The Emperor is structure, authority, control, leadership. In a healthy reading, he protects. In a corrupted reading, he dominates. He confuses obedience with love.”
Rocco’s smile thinned.
“I built everything we have.”
Marissa whispered, “You built a cage.”
Rocco turned sharply. “Don’t start.”
Vinny shifted off the wall.
The air changed.
Valeri laid the second card.
Challenge: Five of Wands
Five figures fought with staffs, each swinging, none listening.
“Conflict,” Valeri said. “Competition. Chaos. Men fighting for rank.”
Rocco scoffed. “It’s divorce court. Of course there’s conflict.”
“No,” Valeri said. “This is not only between you and your wife. This is inside your businesses. Your gyms. Your men. Your trainers. Your so-called loyal circle.”
App looked up from the folder.
Marissa’s face tightened.
Valeri saw it.
“You know what this is,” Valeri said to her.
Marissa swallowed.
“There were accidents.”
Rocco slapped one palm lightly on the table. “Workout injuries.”
Marissa turned toward him. “Three men in six months?”
“People get hurt in gyms.”
“One lost his business. One lost his house. One disappeared.”
The lights flickered again.
Zero Fico looked down at his tablet.
“Camera skipped.”
Vinny said nothing, but his jaw set.
Valeri laid the third card.
Hidden Influence: Seven of Swords
A thief carried stolen swords away from a camp, glancing back over his shoulder.
Rocco stopped smiling.
Valeri’s voice went lower.
“There it is.”
Marissa closed her eyes.
App leaned forward.
Valeri touched the card.
“Deception. Theft. Strategy. Someone sneaking evidence out before the fight begins. Someone staging the scene.”
Rocco stood halfway.
“This is ridiculous.”
Vinny’s voice cut through the room.
“Sit down.”
Rocco looked at him.
For one second, the courthouse seemed to remember every Bellucci who had ever sat behind a bench.
Rocco sat.
Valeri did not blink.
“The hidden influence is fraud,” she said. “False claims. False injuries. False paperwork. Someone is manufacturing accidents for money.”
App opened the folder slowly.
Marissa whispered, “Insurance.”
Rocco’s eyes snapped to her.
Valeri turned the fourth card.
Advice: Justice
The sword.
The scales.
The seated figure staring forward.
No mercy.
No confusion.
Only balance.
Vinny’s gaze moved to the card like it had spoken his name.
Valeri said, “The advice is simple. Tell the truth before the truth is dragged out of you.”
Rocco laughed once, harsh and empty.
“I came here for custody.”
“No,” Valeri said. “You came here because you thought a divorce hearing was smaller than a criminal investigation.”
App’s phone buzzed.
He checked it.
His face changed.
“What?” Vinny asked.
App looked at Rocco.
“One of your former trainers just walked into the DA’s office.”
Rocco’s mouth went flat.
App continued. “With payroll records, insurance filings, and video from inside Toma Iron House Gym.”
Zero Fico turned the tablet around.
The frozen courthouse camera showed the hallway outside Courtroom Three.
For one frame, the image was normal.
For the next, a shadow stood behind Rocco’s reflection in the glass.
Not a person.
Not exactly.
A shape in old judicial robes.
Valeri saw scales hanging from one hand.
Then the feed corrected.
Rocco stared.
“What the hell was that?”
Valeri laid the final card.
Outcome: The Tower
Lightning split the tower.
Figures fell from the crown.
Fire consumed the stone.
Marissa made a soft sound in her throat.
Rocco went pale with rage.
Valeri’s hand rested beside the card.
“The Tower is collapse. Exposure. A structure built wrong being struck down because it will not come down any other way.”
Rocco pointed at her.
“You set this up.”
Valeri’s eyes flashed.
“Baby, I don’t need to set up what God already scheduled.”
The room went silent.
Then the courthouse alarm began to scream.
Not a fire alarm.
A security alarm.
Zero Fico jumped up.
“Basement access door opened.”
Vinny moved first.
App followed.
Rocco lunged for the door, but Marissa stood too fast, blocking him with nothing but her body and the last of her courage.
“Move,” he hissed.
She looked at him.
“No.”
For the first time, Rocco looked afraid.
Not of her.
Of what she had stopped being.
Vinny opened the door.
Two deputies were already in the hall.
“Mr. Toma,” Vinny said. “You’re not going anywhere.”
Rocco laughed, but it broke in the middle.
“You can’t arrest me because of tarot cards.”
App stepped beside Vinny.
“No,” App said. “But I can detain you because your partner just turned over evidence that your gyms were being used to stage injuries for insurance payouts, launder settlement money, and intimidate witnesses.”
Rocco looked at Valeri.
The Tower card sat between them.
Its painted fire seemed brighter than before.
“You don’t know who you’re messing with,” he said.
Valeri gathered the cards except The Tower.
She left it face up.
“That’s what every guilty man says right before the floor opens.”
Below them, deep under Bellucci Courthouse, something groaned.
Not pipes.
Not thunder.
Stone.
Old stone moving after too many years of silence.
Marissa began to cry.
Valeri reached across the table and placed a napkin beside her.
On it was a forkful of Divorce Chocolate Cake from the courthouse café, untouched.
Marissa stared at it through tears.
Valeri said, “Eat something. Freedom takes blood sugar.”
A laugh escaped Marissa before she could stop it.
Small.
Shaking.
Alive.
Outside, deputies escorted Rocco Toma down the hall.
Reporters swarmed.
Lawyers whispered.
Court clerks crossed themselves.
Vinny stood in the doorway, looking at Valeri.
“That was supposed to be a voluntary clarity session.”
Valeri slid The Tower back into her deck.
“It was clear.”
Zero Fico came from the hallway, tablet clutched in both hands.
“We have a problem.”
App frowned. “One problem or courthouse problem?”
Zero turned the screen around.
The basement camera showed an old sealed corridor beneath the building.
The door had not opened from the outside.
It had opened inward.
From the dark side.
Carved above the tunnel arch were five symbols.
A crown.
A wolf.
A coin.
A blade.
A scale.
Vinny stared.
“The Five Families.”
Valeri felt the deck grow hot in her hand.
From somewhere beneath Bellucci Courthouse came the faint sound of a gavel striking stone.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Then the courthouse lights went out.
Closing Prayer:
Lord, reveal what is hidden, protect the innocent, and bring justice without cruelty. Give courage to those trapped by fear, wisdom to those called to judge, and strength to those who must speak the truth. Let every false tower fall, and let what is righteous stand. Amen.
