Chapter 5 - The Lion's Trap
Don Carmine Corvo slowly took two steps forward, his ebony cane tapping rhythmically against the hardwood floor between the rugs. His aged, rheumy eyes moved from my face, down to Mateo, then to Lucas, then to Leo, and finally rested on Dante.
A slow, terrible breath escaped the old man’s chest.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Carmine murmured in Italian, crossing himself with a trembling thumb. “They aren’t bastards. They’re Arthur Moretti’s grandchildren. Look at their eyes. Look at the jaw.”
He turned his head slowly, his gaze fixing on Bernardo with an expression of such pure, venomous disgust that my uncle visibly shrank back against the table.
“You lied to the Commission, Bernardo,” Carmine said, his voice dropping into a register that made every capo in the room stiffen. “You told us your nephew had lost his mind. You told us he was executing infants in Lake Forest. You asked us for a unanimous mandate to wipe out his entire bloodline.”
“Carmine, listen to me!” Bernardo pleaded, his hands coming up in a desperate, frantic appeal, sweat breaking out across his forehead, ruining his manicured composure. “He’s compromised! He kept them hidden for four years! Why would a boss hide his own heirs unless he was planning to betray the Commission? He’s unstable! Look at him—he brought tactical rifles into the Union League! He’s breaking the treaty!”
“I didn't hide them, Uncle,” I said, taking two deliberate steps into the center of the hall, my sons moving with me, never breaking the chain of their small hands. “My wife hid them. Because she found out that you were paying Dr. Rossi to slip digitalis into her prenatal vitamins.”
The word digitalis hit the room like a detonator.
Carmine Corvo’s eyes narrowed until they looked like black slits carved into leather. “What did you say, Alejandro?”
I reached into my breast pocket, pulled out the worn leather journal that Elena had carried from the safehouse, and threw it onto the table. It landed beside the spilled scotch, flopping open to a series of photocopied bank transfers and sworn medical affidavits bearing the seal of the Swiss Federal Banking Commission.
“Two million dollars,” I said, looking straight into Carmine’s eyes. “Wired from Bernardo’s Panamanian shell company to Dr. Rossi’s numbered account in Zurich three days before Sofia’s supposed death. He didn't just want my throne, Carmine. He poisoned the daughter of Don Vincenzo of Palermo. He tried to eradicate an entire branch of the founding families so he could sell our shipping lanes to the Russian syndicates in Brighton Beach.”
Carmine didn't read the documents. A man who had survived fifty years at the top of the American mob didn't need to read spreadsheets to know when he had been played for a fool. He looked at Bernardo, whose chest was heaving in ragged, shallow gasps, his eyes darting toward the side exits where four of my soldiers stood with their shotguns rested against their shoulders.
“Bernardo,” Carmine whispered softly. “Did you poison Sofia Vincenzo?”
“She was a threat!” Bernardo screamed, the last shred of his sanity snapping under the suffocating weight of the trap. “She was going to give him four sons! Four! Do you have any idea what that meant?! It meant the Moretti name would stay in his hands for the next fifty years! It meant the rest of us would be begging for scraps from his table until we rotted in the ground! My father built this city! Not Arthur! Not Alejandro! ME!”
He lunged for his waistband.
He was fast for an old man. He had drawn his snub-nosed .38 revolver before his personal bodyguard could even react.
He didn't aim at me.
In his blind, rabid frenzy, his barrel leveled straight at Mateo.
Time didn't slow down. It shattered.
Before Bernardo’s finger could complete the double-action pull, two things happened simultaneously.
Elena dove forward, throwing her entire body across the four boys like a living shield of wool and bone.
And I fired.
Three rounds from my P226 left the barrel with a concussive roar that shattered the crystal chandelier above our heads. The first bullet took Bernardo through the wrist, obliterating the bones of his shooting hand, sending the .38 spinning across the floorboards. The second round took him through the center of his sternum, punching through his bespoke suit jacket, driving him backward into the mahogany table. The third round entered directly through his left eye socket.
Bernardo Moretti slammed against the table, overturning three crystal decanters of bourbon, and collapsed onto his back on the Persian rug. His heels gave two short, violent twitches against the oak floor before going entirely, permanently still.
The echoing thunder of the gunshots rolled through the high-ceilinged hall, swallowed by the thick draperies and the crackle of the fireplace.
Nobody moved.
Thirty capos stood frozen, their weapons half-raised, their eyes wide as they looked at the dead man on the rug, and then at me.
I lowered my weapon, the slide smoking faintly in the cold draft.
Beneath Elena’s body, four small heads emerged. Mateo was looking at the pool of dark blood spreading across the Persian wool. He didn't scream. He didn't shake. He looked down at the dead man who had hunted his mother, then looked up at me, his hazel eyes completely clear, steady, and ancient.
Carmine Corvo looked down at Bernardo’s corpse, spat on the blood-soaked wool, and turned his back on the body.
The old boss leaned both hands on his ebony cane, straightened his back, and looked across the room at the four little boys.
“The succession is confirmed,” Carmine announced, his voice carrying the absolute, uncontested weight of the Five Families. “Alejandro Moretti sits at the head of Chicago. And when his time comes, the Commission will answer to his blood. Does any man in this room have an objection?”
Silence answered him. Absolute, terrified, reverent silence.
Carmine gave me a single, slow nod of his head—not the nod of an ally, but the nod of an old wolf who recognized that a younger, deadlier predator had just claimed the entire forest.
“Take your sons home, Alejandro,” the old man whispered. “And raise them well. This city belongs to them now.”
I holstered my weapon, stepped forward, and reached down.
May you like
I lifted Mateo onto my left hip. I lifted Lucas onto my right. Frank stepped in behind me, gently lifting Leo and Dante into his massive arms, while Elena walked between us, her rosary beads resting safely inside her pocket.
We walked out of the Union League Club, past the silent rows of mob bosses, through the heavy brass doors, and stepped back into the clean, cold Chicago rain.
