Chapter 7 - A Scent of Spilled Vintage and Cold TeaAlexander stood up from the head of the table.
He towered over the groveling billionaire, six-foot-four of unyielding, sovereign authority.
“Your daughter asked Maya Vance to apologize on her knees tonight, Charles,” Alexander whispered, his voice quiet enough that the water dripping in the drain sounded like a metronome.
Sterling wept uncontrollably, his forehead pressed into the cold floorboards.
“Alexander... have mercy... I will sign over every share! I will leave the country tonight!”
“My mercy, Charles,” Alexander said softly, “is that you will spend the next forty years in a federal penitentiary at ADX Florence, watching the sun rise through a four-inch slit in a concrete wall, knowing that the woman your daughter called a basin-washer owns every railcar your family ever built.”
He looked at Frank.
“Deliver Charles Sterling to Assistant United States Attorney Marcus Vance at the federal building on Dearborn Street alongside these ledgers. Hand over the Montreal banking records.”
Sterling shrieked, clawing at the concrete as two armed operators dragged him backward down the aisle, his pathetic, echoing cries fading into the darkness until the heavy steel doors slammed shut forever.
Silence returned to the council chamber.
Pure, clean, and vast.
Alexander turned back to the sixty syndicate commanders standing along the table.
“From this hour forward,” he announced, his deep baritone rolling across the room with concussive weight, “the Moretti Syndicate does not deal in unverified mergers, backroom extortion, or the exploitation of our workforce. We clear the rail lines. We move the freight. We defend the people who keep our cities alive.”
He looked down at Maya, then at his mother.
“Maya Vance is appointed Executive Trustee of the newly chartered Donna Francesca and Maya Vance Foundation for Healthcare and Labor Safety. The foundation will receive fifty percent of the commercial revenues from every rail terminal formerly operated by the Sterling conglomerate—permanently endowed, unencumbered by syndicate tax.”
He looked at the sixty capos, his eyes hardening into flint.
“Maya Vance holds the golden voting share on the Board of Directors. Her word is my law in this territory. Anyone who fails to treat her with the honor due to the sovereign seat will answer directly to my barrel.”
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Don Carmine Falcone raised his heavy crystal glass of Barolo into the air, his gravelly voice leading the assembly in a thunderous, room-shaking roar that rattled the crystal pendants overhead:
“To Donna Maya! To Donna Francesca! To Don Alexander! Long live the house of Moretti!”
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