Chapter 4 - The Cleaning of the House
By three o'clock that afternoon, the iron fist of Sullivan Castellano had descended upon the South Side with absolute, terrifying swiftness.
In the private basement assembly room beneath the Castellano Import-Export Building, the senior captains of the family had been gathered. Twelve men sat around a long oak table, their faces pale, their hands still, as two armed guards stood at every exit.
At the head of the table sat Sullivan.
To his right, tied securely to a heavy iron chair, sat Mateo Vance. His face was bruised, his nose broken, his expensive suit torn at the collar. He panted softly, terror burning in his dark eyes as he looked at the men who had once been his peers.
On the table in front of Sullivan lay three items:
The typewriter-typed note: Not of the same blood.
The IBM Selectric typewriter pulled from Mateo’s private office an hour ago.
A thick legal folder containing bank records from an offshore account in the Cayman Islands, showing three separate transfers of two hundred thousand dollars from a rival syndicate based in Detroit.
Sullivan did not raise his voice. He didn't need to. The low, gravelly density of his tone was far more terrifying than any scream.
"For three years," Sullivan said, his dark eyes scanning the captains at the table, "I trusted Mateo Vance with my life. I trusted him with my father’s business. And most importantly, I trusted him with my sister."
He picked up the legal folder and tossed it into the center of the table.
"Mateo wasn't just lying about Wynn," Sullivan continued softly. "He was selling our shipping manifests to the Detroit families. He needed Wynn out of the way because she spent two afternoons a week helping with the accounting ledgers. She noticed a forty-ton discrepancies in the grain shipments last month. She didn't know what it meant yet... but Mateo knew she would figure it out."
A low, lethal murmur swept through the captains.
"So he fabricated a lie," Sullivan said, leaning forward, resting his forearms on the table. "He used an old piece of letterhead from the Halloran office, typed a fake note, and told my sister I wanted her dead. He threw an eighteen-year-old girl out into a February blizzard to freeze in an alley so he could cover up his theft."
Mateo looked up, his voice cracking with desperate panic. "Sully... please! I was forced into it! Detroit threatened my family! They had a gun to my brother’s head!"
"You don't have a brother, Mateo," Sullivan said flatly, his voice devoid of all human warmth. "I checked."
Sullivan stood up. He walked slowly around the table until he stood directly behind Mateo’s chair. He placed his broad hands on the back of the iron frame.
"A man who attacks my business is an enemy," Sullivan said, looking at his captains. "We deal with enemies every day. But a man who uses my sister’s terror, who leaves a child to die in the cold to save his own pocketbook... that man is not a human being. He is vermin."
Sullivan looked at Frank, his chief bodyguard.
"Take him down to the river docks," Sullivan ordered quietly. "Put him on the six o'clock barge to the lower lake. Make sure he never sees the Chicago skyline again."
"No! Sully! Please! Merc—!" Mateo’s screams were cut short as Frank threw a heavy canvas sack over his head, dragging the chair and the traitor out through the rear heavy door.
The basement room was dead silent.
Sullivan walked back to his seat at the head of the table. He picked up his coat, put it on, and looked at his remaining captains.
"The business continues," Sullivan announced. "Captain Thomas will assume control of the shipping manifests. Captain Marco will handle the dock security. And starting tomorrow... we have a new priority."
Captain Thomas raised an eyebrow. "What priority, Boss?"
Sullivan picked up the gold signet ring he had brought back from the West Side—a duplicate he had pulled from his safe—and placed it on his pinky finger.
"We are building a foundation," Sullivan said, his eyes burning with a new, fierce purpose. "The Grace & Brennan Shelter for Women and Children. We are buying the entire block on 14th Street. We are tearing down those rotting tenements, and we are building warm, safe homes for every mother and child who has nowhere to go."
The captains looked at each other, startled by the sudden shift from violence to charity, but none dared question the absolute authority in Sullivan’s voice.
"And who’s going to run this foundation, Boss?" Marco asked respectfully.
May you like
Sullivan looked out the narrow basement window toward the gray Chicago sky, a rare, soft smile touching his lips.
"The only woman in this city who knows what it means to keep someone warm," Sullivan whispered.
