Chapter 9 - The Last Banquet
The Grand Ballroom of the Drake Hotel was a sanctuary of gilded opulence.
Crystal chandeliers hung from forty-foot ceilings, casting brilliant light over circular tables draped in white damask linen. At the center of the room, seated around a massive U-shaped mahogany table, were the twelve heads of the Chicago Outfit—the Commission.
At the head of the table sat Don Carmine Moretti, seventy-two years old, sporting a pristine white tuxedo, his silver hair slicked back, sipping dry vermouth while his capos flanked the perimeter.
"We have received confirmation," Carmine announced to the assembled bosses, raising his glass. "Matteo De Luca is dead. A tragic cardiac failure at Bellavita last evening. The De Luca bloodline has ended. In accordance with the 1985 treaty, the De Luca logistics routes will now be partitioned equally among the remaining five families, under my stewardship."
Murmurs of agreement rippled through the room. Men nodded, raising their glasses to toast the newly crowned sovereign of the city.
"To the future of the Outfit," Carmine declared, lifting his crystal flute.
"To the liars and the traitors," a voice cut through the ballroom like a sharpened broadsword.
The heavy double oak doors of the ballroom swung wide open.
Every head snapped toward the entrance.
Carmine Moretti froze, his glass hovering halfway to his mouth, his face draining of all color as though he were looking at an apparition dragged straight from the depths of hell.
Walking down the center aisle, flanked by thirty heavily armed soldiers wearing the black crest of the De Luca family, was Matteo. He was dressed in a tailored three-piece charcoal suit, his posture straight, his eyes burning with supreme authority.
And walking beside him, dressed in an emerald green silk dress that mirrored the green of her mother's eyes, was me.
In my hands, I carried a covered silver serving platter.
"Matteo..." Carmine whispered, his voice trembling. "You're... this is an outrage. This is a closed summit of the Commission!"
"Sit down, Carmine," Matteo commanded, his voice booming through the cavernous hall like thunder. "Before I have my men paint these gilded walls with the brains of your entire security detail."
Carmine’s bodyguards reached for their jackets, but before their hands could touch leather, the red targeting dots of twenty laser sights appeared simultaneously on Carmine's forehead, chest, and throat, projected from the upper mezzanine where Matteo’s snipers had already silently replaced Moretti’s men.
The room fell into a deathly, paralyzing quiet.
Matteo walked to the head of the table, stopped directly across from Carmine, and gestured to me.
I stepped forward and set the heavy silver platter onto the damask cloth directly in front of the old Don.
"Seventeen years ago," Matteo said, his voice echoing off the crystal chandeliers, "my father died believing that loyalty was earned through silence. He died believing that Isabella Rossi was a crazy kitchen girl who saw ghosts in the soup."
Matteo reached out and wrenched off the silver cloche dome.
Beneath it lay no food.
There was only a high-end portable audio recorder, connected to the hotel’s house sound system, and the antique three-notched silver fork, still stained with Luca Ferraro’s dried blood.
"Press play, Elena," Matteo said softly.
I reached out and hit the button.
The voice of Luca Ferraro, digitized and crystal-clear, blasted through the ballroom speakers:
*—"It's done, Carmine. Digitalis in his evening pasta. Three drops a week. In six months, Matteo will collapse on the docks, and the Commission will hand you the shipping contracts. Just make sure the girl and the mother disappear the night after."*
Then came Carmine Moretti’s unmistakable, gravelly drawl:
*—"Isabella knows too much. When Matteo drops, put two bullets in her head and throw the infant in the canal. We leave no witnesses, Luca. Not a single drop of Rossi blood survives."*
The recording clicked off.
The silence that followed was absolute. The other ten bosses at the table slowly pushed their chairs back, turning their cold, disgusted gazes away from Carmine. In the underworld, assassination of rivals was business. But poisoning a boss slowly while plotting the murder of a nursing infant was a violation of the sacred code that carried only one penalty.
"Carmine," Don Falcone, the eldest member of the Commission, spoke up, his voice dripping with disgust. "You broke the First Law."
Carmine looked wildly around the room, sweating through his silk tuxedo. "This is fabricated! It’s an AI recording! Matteo is trying to seize the entire city!"
"The tapes were recorded on magnetic tape seventeen years ago in Cicero," I spoke up, my voice clear, sharp, and commanding. Every eye in the room locked onto me. "Authenticated by the Cook County forensics unit this afternoon. And I am Elena Rossi De Luca. The infant you ordered thrown into the canal."
Carmine stared at me, his chest heaving, his arrogance completely shattered.
"What do you want?" Carmine croaked, his hands shaking violently against the table. "Money? Territories? Take the docks. Take the north side. Name your price, Matteo!"
Matteo turned to look at me. The undisputed king of Chicago stepped back half a pace, bowing his head slightly, surrendering the final judgment to his daughter.
"She names the price," Matteo said.
I looked at the old man who had hunted my mother into an early grave, who had forced us to live like animals in freezing walk-ups, who had stolen seventeen years of my father’s life.
I picked up the antique silver fork from the platter.
I set it down firmly in front of Carmine’s untouched plate of rare steak.
"Eat," I said.
Carmine stared at the blood-stained fork, his eyes wide with unadulterated terror. "What?"
"You wanted to feed poison to my family for seventeen years," I whispered, leaning over the table until my eyes were inches from his. "Eat your dinner with that fork, Carmine. Or walk out those double doors into the alley right now and see if your drivers are still alive."
Carmine looked at the doors. He looked at the laser dots burning into his chest. He looked at the cold, unyielding eyes of the twelve bosses who had already condemned him to death.
May you like
With a broken, whimpering sob, Carmine Moretti collapsed backward into his chair, clutching his chest as his heart finally gave out under the weight of his own terror, slumping lifelessly onto the white damask linen.
***
