Chapter 4 - The Banquet of Lies
The Palmer House Hotel’s Grand Ballroom on Monroe Street was an exquisite display of high-society opulence built on blood money.
Crystal chandeliers hung from gilded ceilings thirty feet above polished marble floors. White linen tablecloths were adorned with sterling silver cutlery, expensive champagne buckets, and centerpieces of imported red roses.
Seated around the massive horseshoe table were twelve men who controlled every illegal enterprise, shipping lane, and political kickback from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River.
At the head of the table sat Victor Hale.
He was fifty-two years old, immaculate, dressed in a ten-thousand-dollar tailored Brioni suit, his graying hair combed back perfectly, a thick gold Signet ring gleaming on his right pinky finger. He was holding a glass of twenty-year-old single-malt scotch, holding court like a king enjoying the praise of his vassals.
Standing near the perimeter of the room were sixteen heavily armed private security guards equipped with tactical headsets and concealed weapons.
"Gentlemen," Victor’s voice boomed through the ballroom, smooth and persuasive, carried by the room's perfect acoustics. "We all knew this day might come. Cole Ashworth was a great leader in his time. He built the foundation of what we enjoy tonight. But power corrupts the mind when a man spends too much time hiding in European castles."
The heads of the Moretti family and the West Side crews nodded solemnly, sipping their drinks.
"Cole returned to our city tonight," Victor continued, his expression shifting into a masterclass of fabricated grief. "Not to rejoin us... but to tear us down. His mind has fractured. He attacked a medical transport carrying his own frail mother tonight. He murdered three senior police captains who tried to mediate. He is a loose cannon, a danger to everything we’ve built."
Victor raised his glass high into the air.
"Therefore, as the head of the Commission," Victor declared, "I am issuing a absolute death contract on Cole Ashworth. Fifty million dollars to the man who brings me his head. No negotiations. No mercy."
"Fifty million?" a voice echoed from the heavy mahogany double doors at the back of the ballroom. "You always were generous with my money, Victor."
The room went instantly, dead silent.
The sixteen security guards immediately reached for their weapons—but before a single holster could be unbuttoned, the heavy double doors were blown inward by two synchronized breaching charges.
BOOM! BOOM!
The explosive shockwaves shattered the glass chandeliers overhead, raining tiny crystals down onto the white tablecloths as thick gray smoke billowed into the room.
Through the haze walked Jimmy 'The Hammer' Vance and fifteen heavily armed enforcers clad in black tactical gear, their assault rifles raised, sweeping the room with red laser sights.
"DON'T MOVE! HANDS ON THE TABLE! HANDS ON THE DAMN TABLE!" Jimmy bellowed, his loud voice shaking the room.
The Commission members scrambled backward in terror, their hands flying up into the air, champagne glasses shattering against the marble floor.
Through the center of the smoke, walking with slow, deliberate, terrifying calm, came me.
I wore my dark suit, my dark coat, my hands resting casually inside my pockets. Beside me, his heavy paws slapping against the polished floor, walked Moose, his dark eyes locked directly onto Victor Hale.
Victor’s face instantly drained of every drop of color. His hand, still clutching his glass of scotch, began to tremble violently.
"Cole..." Victor stammered, stepping back against his high-backed leather chair. "How... how did you—"
"How did I get past your front security?" I asked smoothly, stepping up to the foot of the massive horseshoe table. "Victor, you hired former Chicago police officers to guard the front doors. Who do you think paid for their kids' college tuition ten years ago? They didn't even raise their hands."
I stopped twenty feet from him, pulling my hands from my pockets.
The room was filled with the tense, suffocating pressure of an impending execution.
"Cole, listen to me," Victor gasped, trying desperately to regain his composure, looking around at the terrified Commission members. "This is a misunderstanding! I was just telling the boys—"
"You were telling them I'm crazy," I interrupted flatly. "You were telling them I killed three police captains. You were telling them my mother has dementia."
I reached into my inner jacket pocket.
Victor flinched, taking another step back.
I didn't pull out a gun.
I pulled out a thick, leather-bound binder and tossed it onto the center of the white tablecloth. It slid across the smooth linen, coming to a stop right in front of Don Moretti, the oldest and most respected member of the Commission.
"Open it, Don Moretti," I said calmly.
Don Moretti, an eighty-year-old man with silver hair and sharp brown eyes, looked at me, then slowly opened the binder.
Inside were four hundred pages of bank statements, offshore transaction logs, land deeds, and medical records—every single piece of evidence Frank and my financial team had compiled over the last three hours.
"What is this?" Moretti asked, his raspy voice cutting through the quiet room.
"That," I explained, "is the paper trail of forty million dollars I sent to Victor Hale over the last eight years for my mother's care. And beneath those bank transfers are the property records showing that Victor used that money to buy three private yachts, four luxury villas in Miami, and a fifty-percent stake in the very casino you're sitting in right now."
Don Moretti flipped through the pages, his eyes narrowing as he read the offshore account numbers matching Victor’s personal shell companies.
"And what about his mother?" Moretti asked, looking up at me.
"Three weeks ago," I said, my voice dropping into an octave that made every man in the room shudder, "Victor stopped paying the fake private clinic he set up. He had my mother transferred to a state-run dump in West Chicago under a fake name. He ordered the administrator to starve her to death before I arrived back in the city."
A sharp gasp rippled through the older members of the Commission.
In our world, men killed each other over money, territory, and disrespect every single day. But there was one ancient, unwritten rule that governed every mafia family in Chicago: Family is sacred. Mothers are untouched.
Don Moretti slowly closed the binder. He turned his head and looked at Victor Hale with a disgust so profound it was worse than a death sentence.
"Is this true, Victor?" Moretti asked softly.
"It's... it's a lie! It's forged!" Victor shouted, his voice cracking with panicked desperation. He reached toward his inner coat pocket—
CRACK!
A single gunshot echoed through the ballroom.
Victor screamed, dropping to his knees as a bullet from my Kimber .45 tore through his shoulder, sending his silver-plated handgun clattering across the marble floor.
Moose let out a fierce, thunderous bark, stepping forward, his broad chest surging, ready to tear Victor’s throat out.
"STAY!" I barked at the dog.
Moose halted instantly, hovering two feet from Victor, his heavy jaws dripping saliva, growling continuously.
I walked slowly around the table until I was standing directly over Victor, looking down at the man who had been my brother for fifteen years.
"Why, Victor?" I asked softly, the question carrying genuine, quiet pain. "I gave you half my empire. I gave you total control of this city. I gave you more wealth than your grandchildren could ever spend. Why my mother?"
Victor clutched his bleeding shoulder, his pristine suit ruined with red, looking up at me through tears of pain and bitter, twisted hatred.
"Because she always looked at me like I was garbage!" Victor spat, his mask of sophistication completely vanishing, revealing the pathetic, envious worm underneath. "Even when you were in Europe, even when I brought her expensive gifts, she looked at me like I was just your shadow! She told me I would never be you! She told me that the moment you came back, you'd see right through me!"
He wiped blood from his mouth, coughing violently.
"I wanted to break her, Cole!" Victor laughed maniacally. "I wanted to break her until she begged me for mercy! I wanted to wipe that arrogant Ashworth pride off her face before you ever got back!"
I stared at him for a long, silent moment.
The anger inside me didn't explode into a frenzy. It condensed into a heavy, cold diamond of absolute certainty.
I didn't raise my gun.
I looked at Don Moretti and the rest of the Commission members.
"He's yours," I said flatly. "A man who violates the sacred oath of the Commission doesn't deserve a quick death from my hand. Do with him what the law of the streets demands."
Don Moretti stood up slowly, adjusting his suit jacket.
"Jimmy," Moretti said, looking at Jimmy Vance. "Take Mr. Hale to the meatpacking district. Make sure his death takes as long as the pain he caused Margaret Ashworth."
"With pleasure, Don Moretti," Jimmy grinned, stepping forward with two heavy enforcers, dragging the screaming, kicking Victor Hale out of the ballroom by his arms.
I turned my back on the room, whistle-calling Moose to my side.
"Cole," Don Moretti called out as I reached the ruined double doors.
I paused, looking back over my shoulder.
May you like
"The city is yours again," Moretti said respectfully, bowing his head slightly. "Whatever you need... it is done."
"I don't want the city," I replied quietly. "I never did."
