Chapter 4 - The War for Chicago
The rain began as our seven-vehicle convoy hit the Kennedy Expressway, sweeping across the gray concrete in blinding, horizontal sheets that blurred the skyline into towering smears of neon and shadow.
Inside the rear passenger compartment of the armored Maybach, the world was silent, insulated from the roar of the twin-turbo engine and the rhythmic slap of the heavy wipers.
The four boys sat shoulder-to-shoulder on the custom leather bench seat, dressed in identical dark wool pea coats that Elena had pulled from their small travel duffels. Elena sat beside them, her arm wrapped around Dante, her thumb methodically tracing the silver crucifix hanging from her neck.
None of them were crying.
Mateo had his forehead pressed against the reinforced side window, his small breath fogging the ballistic glass, watching the black pursuit Suburbans flanking our car with flashing amber strobes. Lucas was quietly playing with the button on my sleeve, his small, warm fingers turning the dark horn over and over.
I reached out, my large, calloused hand covering Lucas’s small knuckles. He didn't pull away. He looked up at me, his hazel eyes completely clear, mirroring the stoic calm that had kept me alive through two decades of urban warfare.
“Are we going to see Mama’s house?” Lucas asked, his voice soft, almost lost beneath the engine’s purr.
“No, little bird,” I said gently, smoothing down the collar of his coat. “We’re going to meet your uncle Bernardo. The man who forgot who built this family.”
“Is he a bad man?” Leo chimed in from Elena’s side, his small brow furrowing with that crooked, stubborn expression that Sofia used to wear whenever I stayed out past dawn.
“He is a man who thinks he can steal what he didn't bleed for,” I told them. “And tonight, we teach him the price.”
Elena looked across the cabin at me, her eyes glistening in the faint green illumination of the dashboard monitors. “Alejandro... the Commission. Don Carmine Corvo has three hundred soldiers in the tri-state area. If you spill blood inside the Union League, you break the eighty-year treaty. The entire Five Families will declare open season on your name.”
“Let them declare it,” I whispered, checking the action on my P226 one final time before slipping it into my shoulder holster. “Carmine Corvo is an old butcher who cares about three things: his shipping containers, his heroin cuts, and his own skin. When I show him what Bernardo brought into his house, Carmine will thank me for not burning down his private club with him inside it.”
At 11:38 PM, our convoy turned off Michigan Avenue onto Jackson Boulevard.
The Union League Club was a magnificent, monolithic fortress of brick and limestone, built in the late nineteenth century by the industrial robber barons who had forged Chicago out of mud and slaughterhouses. Tonight, the valet drive was blocked by four black Cadillacs bearing New York commercial plates. Heavily armed men in dark overcoats stood beneath the granite portico, their hands tucked inside their pockets, scanning the rainy street with cold, professional vigilance.
When my Maybach pulled directly onto the granite sidewalk, blocking the main entrance, the guards stiffened. Two of them stepped forward, reaching beneath their coats.
They never cleared leather.
The doors of the three black vans behind my Maybach flew open simultaneously. Twenty-four men from my South Side crews—hardened dock fighters and tactical shooters armed with suppressed Benelli shotguns and short-barreled Sig Sauer rifles—spilled onto the sidewalk with military precision. In three seconds, the four New York guards were slammed face-first against the wet limestone, their weapons stripped, their radios crushed beneath tactical boots.
Frank walked to my door, pulling it open.
The cold Chicago wind whipped into the cabin, carrying the smell of wet pavement, lake sulfur, and impending slaughter.
I stepped out onto the sidewalk, turning back to extend my hand into the car.
“Mateo,” I said. “Take my hand.”
Mateo didn't hesitate. He placed his small gloved hand into my palm. Behind him came Lucas, Leo, and Dante, their small boots clicking sharply against the wet granite steps as they emerged from the armored cabin. Elena followed, her head held high, wrapped in a black wool shawl that made her look like a Sicilian widow walking to a funeral.
Frank stepped up beside me, his shotgun held low at the low-ready position. “Alejandro... you’re really bringing them inside?”
“They are the evidence, Frank,” I said, my voice echoing off the carved limestone archway above our heads. “And they are the jury.”
I walked through the brass-and-glass revolving doors of the Union League Club, four identical little boys walking in step beside me, their hands linked like an unbreakable chain of blood and bone.
The lobby was vast, cathedral-like, paneled in dark quarter-sawn oak, dominated by a towering stone fireplace where birch logs crackled with golden flame. Sitting around the perimeter on leather chesterfield sofas were thirty of the most dangerous men in North America: capos from the Genovese family, envoys from Detroit, and the entire high council of the Chicago Outfit.
At the center of the room, standing before a long table where crystal decanters of bourbon caught the firelight, were two men.
Don Carmine Corvo, seventy-five years old, wearing an eight-thousand-dollar Brioni suit with a white silk pocket square, leaning heavily on an ebony walking stick with a gold eagle’s head.
And beside him stood my uncle, Bernardo Moretti.
Bernardo was fifty-eight, silver-haired, impeccably groomed, holding a glass of twenty-year-old scotch. He was smiling—that broad, politician’s smile that had deceived my father for forty years. He was in the middle of a sentence, his hand raised in an expansive, theatrical gesture.
“—and so, gentlemen, with a heavy heart, I ask the Commission to recognize that my nephew’s tragic descent into madness leaves us with no choice but to declare an emergency succession—”
The heavy mahogany doors of the inner vestibule swung open with a concussive bang that silenced the room instantly.
Bernardo’s voice died in his throat.
Thirty men reached for their waistbands. Thirty pistols cleared leather in a fraction of a second.
“HOLD YOUR FIRE!” Carmine Corvo’s gravelly voice cracked across the room like a bullwhip.
The old New York boss didn't look at my twenty-four soldiers who had just fanned out along the mezzanine railing with automatic shotguns leveled at the floor. He didn't look at my drawn weapon.
Carmine Corvo was staring at the four little boys standing beside my knees.
The room went so quiet that the only sound was the hiss of the rain against the leaded glass windows and the rhythmic, hollow crackle of the fireplace.
Bernardo’s glass slipped from his fingers.
The heavy crystal tumbler hit the Persian rug, spilling amber scotch across the wool, rolling against the toe of Carmine Corvo’s polished oxford.
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“No,” Bernardo whispered, his face turning the color of lard, his lips trembling violently. “No... that’s impossible. They were in Michigan. The strike team—”
“The strike team is dead, Uncle,” I said, my voice quiet, carrying through the grand hall with the cold, immovable weight of an iron vault door closing. “Their bodies are cooling in my garage. But they were kind enough to give me the encryption keys to your Panamanian bank accounts before they passed.”
