THE MAFIA'S BLOODLINE HEIR

Julian Vance sat strapped to an iron drafting chair in the center of the room, both of his shattered legs set in temporary splints by Dr. Harris, my family’s trusted combat surgeon who had arrived within forty minutes of my call.

On the long mahogany table lay thirty-two unredacted corporate ledgers retrieved from the secret wall safe behind the library paneling—records that Julian had kept hidden from the syndicate council since 2018.

Dr. Harris stepped away from the central line he had just placed in my arm, holding up a clear glass vial of blood he had drawn from my median cubital vein twenty minutes earlier.

“The toxicology report is conclusive, Don Lorenzo,” Dr. Harris said, his weathered face hard as flint. “High-concentration peptide neurotoxins. A derivative of bungarotoxin. It binds to the acetylcholine receptors at the neuromuscular junction. It doesn't sever the nerve; it simply locks the gate so the brain’s electrical impulse can't cross the synaptic cleft.”

The surgeon looked at the kneeling lawyer with pure, unadulterated medical disgust.

“Two injections of high-dose neostigmine and an atropine flush, and your motor pathways will clear eighty percent within forty-eight hours. He kept you in that chair with thirty dollars' worth of synthetic poison every week.”

I sat on the edge of the mahogany desk, wearing a dark wool sweater and tailored slacks, feeling the raw, burning surge of life returning to my calves and arches. Every muscle in my thighs twitched with an angry, electric ache, but I refused to sit in the wheelchair.

I picked up the black leather binder labeled Goose Island Logistics: Schedule D.

“Read page fourteen, Julian,” I said softly.

Julian sat with his head bowed, his face swollen from weeping, unable to lift his eyes.

“I’ll read it to the council,” I murmured.

“Payment authorized to Detroit Marine Salvage: Four million dollars. Consideration: High-temperature demolition of Foundry Bay 4. Secondary consideration: Recovery and disposal of personal effects belonging to Bianca Moretti.”

I closed the binder with a dull, heavy thud.

“You didn't just blow up the foundry to kill us, Julian,” I said, stepping across the carpet until my shadow swallowed the trembling attorney. “You blew up the foundry because Bianca found out you were using my father’s scrap-iron freighters to move stolen federal gold reserves from the Great Lakes naval depot.”

The door opened.

Frank Moretti, my father’s oldest surviving underboss, walked into the library, followed by sixty heavily armed syndicate soldiers wearing dark wool pea coats.

Frank stopped dead in the center of the room.

His weathered eyes tracked from the empty wheelchair sitting in the corner, to my standing frame, to Julian Vance strapped to the drafting chair.

The eighty-year-old capo slowly removed his wool cap, crossing himself with a trembling hand.

“Mother of God,” Frank whispered, his voice cracking with awe. “The Foundry King is back.”

“Call the River Barons, Frank,” I commanded, my baritone cutting through the room like a cold front off the lake. “Call the dock masters. Call the municipal aldermen. Tell them the Moretti Outfit is holding an emergency tribunal at the Goose Island terminal at eight o'clock tonight.”