Chapter 9 - Stripped of Red Silk and DiamondsThe heavy double doors of the banquet hall swung open.
Assistant United States Attorney Marcus Vance walked into the room, flanked by twelve federal marshals in dark tactical windbreakers with arrest warrants drawn.
Behind them walked William Mercer, his wrists secured in steel transport cuffs, his head hanging in total, broken defeat.
The forty syndicate commanders in the room stood up as one, drawing their concealed weapons, training thirty suppressed pistols directly onto Salvatore Bellini and his personal security detail.
In the underworld of the Great Lakes, business disputes were settled with negotiations. Turf was traded in shipping leases.
That was business.
That was the life.
But framing a sovereign Don for adultery to steal an inheritance, bringing black-market extortionists into an allied house, and battering an innocent domestic worker—that was an unforgivable treason that carried an immediate, permanent death sentence under the council charter.
Don Carmine Falcone, the oldest and most revered capo in Chicago, slowly pushed his chair back.
He walked down the side of the table, leaning heavily on his carved ash walking stick, his face set in lines of ancient, terrifying wrath.
He stopped beside Salvatore Bellini.
“Salvatore,” Falcone rasped, his voice vibrating with ancient disgust. “You brought federal wiretappers and blackmailers into an Outfit house? You tried to steal Antonio Moretti’s harbor through a cheap frame-up?”
Salvatore fell to his knees on the floorboards, clutching Falcone’s trousers in desperate, groveling supplication.
“Carmine! Listen to me! The cartel was going to execute my sons! I was desperate! We were going to repay the trust after the merger cleared!”
“You don't betray a Moretti to save your own dirty skin, Salvatore,” Falcone replied with absolute, chilling finality.
He turned toward Luca.
“Don Luca. The Commission recognizes the blood debt. The house of Bellini is stripped of all charters, all territories, and all protection.”
Luca nodded once.
He looked at Marcus Vance.
“Take Salvatore and Vanessa Bellini into federal custody. Every shipping berth, every warehouse lease, and every vessel operating under the Bellini name is seized under the joint authority of the federal court and the Moretti Maritime Trust.”
Vanessa shrieked, clawing at the floorboards, her ivory suit tearing against the wood as two marshals hauled her backward down the center aisle.
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“Luca! No! You can't do this! I was supposed to be your wife! I was supposed to be the Donna of this city!”
Her screams echoed through the vaulted room until the heavy oak doors slammed shut, cutting off her voice forever.
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