Chapter 7 - The Shadow Council
By eight o'clock the following evening, the private war room beneath my Alpine estate was filled with the heavy scent of cigars, espresso, and fear.
Seated around a heavy oak table were four men—the captains of the four families that formed the ruling council of the New York underworld: Dominick Moretti (my ambitious second cousin from Staten Island), Sal Lucese (the leader of the Brooklyn docks), Frank Moretti (who ran the construction unions in Queens), and Marco Bianchi.
I sat at the head of the table, dressed in a black suit, my face shadowed by the dim overhead lighting.
"The hit on the Queens apartment was executed by a Serbian mercenary outfit based out of Toronto," Marco reported, dropping a stack of forensic photographs onto the center of the table. "Eight men. High-grade military equipment. Untraceable weapons."
Dominick Moretti pulled a cigar from his mouth, leaning forward with a dark, mocking grin on his narrow face. "Serbians in Queens? Sounds like street trash, Vincent. Why would international mercenaries burn down a tenement house in Astoria? Unless... you were hiding something there?"
I didn't answer right away. I let the silence stretch across the table until the grin on Dominick’s face began to falter under the absolute weight of my stare.
"Six years ago," I began, my voice dangerously smooth, "a message was delivered to a young woman living in Brooklyn. She was told that if she ever contacted me, if she ever used my name, her unborn child would be murdered."
Sal Lucese shifted uncomfortably in his chair, his eyes darting toward the door. Frank Moretti stopped swirling his glass of scotch.
"That message," I continued, leaning forward, resting my forearms on the oak table, "didn't come from our enemies in Chicago. It didn't come from the Russians in Brighton Beach. It came from inside this room. From someone who knew I had a weakness. Someone who waited six years for me to suffer a heart attack on Fifty-Third Street before hiring foreign trash to clean up the bloodline."
Dominick’s face flushed red. He slammed his hand down on the table. "Are you accusing your own family, Vincent? We've stood by you for fifteen years! We built this empire together while you spent your nights brooding over old regrets!"
"I am not accusing you, Dominick," I said softly.
I pulled my suppressed 9mm pistol from my shoulder holster and laid it flat on the mahogany table between us.
"I'm giving the man who paid the Serbians sixty seconds to step out of this room before I tear his life apart piece by piece."
The room went dead silent. The only sound was the hum of the air filtration system thirty feet underground.
Frank Moretti—the man who controlled the Queens construction unions, the man who had overseen the development projects three blocks from Elena's apartment—slowly reached for his inner jacket pocket.
He was fast. But Marco was faster.
Before Frank’s hand could clear his lapel, Marco stepped up behind his chair, seized Frank’s chin with his left hand, and drove a five-inch titanium trench knife straight up through the base of Frank’s skull.
Frank’s body stiffened violently, his eyes bulging in sudden, silent shock, before he went completely limp against the heavy oak chair.
Dominick screamed, scrambling backward out of his seat, pulling his own weapon, but three of my personal bodyguards immediately racked their shotguns, pressing the cold steel barrels directly against the back of his neck.
"Sit down, Dominick," I ordered, without raising my voice.
Dominick collapsed back into his chair, his hands shaking violently as he stared at the pool of dark blood spreading across the mahogany table from Frank’s lifeless head.
I picked up my pistol, sliding it back into my holster.
"Frank thought he could take over the Queens territories if I died on Fifty-Third Street," I explained to the remaining captains. "He knew about Elena. He tracked her to Astoria five years ago and kept her in his back pocket as leverage. When he saw a six-year-old girl call 911 on the CCTV footage, he realized the child was mine. He tried to erase her before I could claim her."
I stood up from the head of the table, walking slowly over to Dominick. I placed one heavy, scarred hand on his trembling shoulder.
"The war is over, Dominick," I whispered into his ear. "Starting tonight, the Moretti family is changing. The unions, the docks, the real estate—everything is being transferred into a blind legal trust. By the end of this year, every dollar this family earns will be clean."
Dominick looked up at me, his eyes wide with disbelief. "You're walking away? From hundreds of millions of dollars? From the Five Boroughs?"
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"I died six days ago on a sidewalk on Fifty-Third Street, Dominick," I told him, looking down at Frank’s body. "A little girl in a yellow dress gave me my life back. I am not going to waste it playing king of a garbage dump."
I turned to Marco. "Clean this up. The plane from Baltimore lands at Teterboro in two hours. I want the surgical team at the estate by midnight."
