Chapter 7 - The Trial in the Grand SalonThe heavy oak doors at the back of the banquet hall burst open with a concussive bang.
Two armed guards dragged Victoria Vance down the center aisle.
The glamorous, untouchable heiress who had sneered at me in the corridor twenty-four hours earlier had ceased to exist.
Her white chinchilla fur was gone. Her designer gown was soaked in black sludge from cell 3C, torn at the knees, smelling of rotting potatoes, anthracite coal dust, and damp lime. Her bare feet were blue with frost, her manicured nails broken, her hair matted across her pale, terrified face.
Behind her walked her father, Don Arthur Vance—the patriarch of the Montreal syndicate—flanked by four of Matteo’s enforcers with submachine guns trained on his spine.
Arthur Vance was sixty-eight years old, his silver hair slicked back with patrician elegance, wearing an expensive seven-thousand-dollar tailored overcoat, holding an antique gold-tipped cane in his trembling right hand.
He stopped at the foot of the dais, his eyes widening in pure, unadulterated horror as he looked upon the man sitting on the throne.
“Francesco...?” Arthur gasped, his voice cracking into a high-pitched whimper. “My God... it’s impossible. You suffered four catastrophic strokes six years ago!”
Francesco leaned forward, resting both hands on his hickory cane, his gaze cutting through the Canadian Don like a straight razor.
“I suffered no strokes, Arthur,” Francesco said, each syllable falling like liquid nitrogen onto the marble floor. “I was poisoned with curare bought through your private medical accounts in Montreal.”
Arthur Vance swayed on his feet, all the color draining from his face, leaving him looking like a corpse in a bespoke suit.
“Francesco, listen to me! I knew nothing of this! Victoria acted alone! She was ambitious—she wanted total control of the Great Lakes terminals!”
“Liar!” Victoria shrieked from the floor, spitting black coal dust onto the marble. “You planned the whole thing, Daddy! You told me that if Francesco stayed silent, Matteo would be forced to marry me to keep the Canadian routes open! You told me to starve him in the cellar!”
The forty-five syndicate bosses around the table erupted into a low, murderous roar.
Don Carmine Falcone, the oldest capo from Brooklyn, slammed his fist onto the mahogany table so hard a crystal glass shattered.
“Treason!” Falcone bellowed, his weathered face twisted in ancient disgust. “A blood oath was sworn forty years ago between Chicago and Montreal! You poisoned our founding father and left him to rot under the floorboards!”
Matteo stepped forward from behind my chair.
He walked down the three steps of the dais, stopping two paces from Arthur Vance.
He didn't draw a weapon. He didn't raise his fist.
He pulled the leather-bound diary from his coat and dropped it onto the floor at Arthur’s feet.
“The United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois received those files at six o'clock this morning, Arthur,” Matteo said, his voice terrifyingly quiet. “Every container manifest, every synthetic fentanyl shipment, and every wire transfer for your curare purchases.”
Arthur Vance dropped to his knees beside his weeping daughter, clutching Matteo’s trousers in desperate, groveling supplication.
“Matteo... please! Spare our family! Take the Montreal docks! Take our shipping lines, our pharmaceutical patents, our private banks! Take everything, but let us board our private jet to Switzerland!”
Matteo looked down at the groveling Don with cold, absolute detachment.
“You threatened to take an unborn baby from this house, Arthur,” Matteo whispered, his voice vibrating with lethal finality. “You wanted to sell Leah’s child into private adoption in Quebec to clear sixty thousand dollars of loan-shark debt.”
He looked at Dante.
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“Deliver Arthur and Victoria Vance directly to the federal marshals waiting at the Chicago perimeter,” Matteo commanded. “Their trials begin on Monday. And by the time the judge bangs the gavel, the Vance name will be completely extinguished from North America.”
Victoria screamed as the guards hauled her toward the service doors, her fingernails tearing against the stone floor, her cries echoing down the long corridor until the heavy iron doors slammed shut forever.
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