Chapter 3 - The Shadow Council
The annual grand summit of the East Coast Syndicate was being held in the grand ballroom of the historic St. Regis Hotel in midtown Manhattan.
The hotel was entirely surrounded by three rings of heavy security. More than fifty armed enforcers wearing dark suits stood guard in the lobby, the elevators, the private parking garages, and along the perimeter of the block. Every guest entering the grand ballroom was subjected to aggressive metal detectors, physical pat-downs, and digital biometric scans.
Inside the ballroom, beneath massive crystal chandeliers, sat forty of the most powerful and dangerous men in North America.
They sat around a massive, rectangular mahogany conference table. At the center head of the table stood an empty leather chair—the seat traditionally reserved for the Chairman of the DeLuca Syndicate.
Vincent Romano stood beside the empty chair, dressed in a flawless three-piece Italian suit, wearing Lorenzo’s stolen gold signet ring on his right hand. He was addressing the silent council with dramatic, rehearsed sorrow.
“For eleven years, I served Lorenzo DeLuca as his right hand,” Vincent proclaimed, his voice echoing powerfully through the room. “I loved him as a brother. But the evidence gathered by my private investigators over the last seventy-two hours is indisputable. Lorenzo was ambushed, executed, and his body dumped into the Atlantic Ocean by rogue hitmen financed directly by the Genovese leadership!”
A loud, angry murmur swept across the long table. Several younger capos slapped their hands against the mahogany surface, demanding immediate retaliation and open war in the streets.
Sitting at the far end of the table was Don Carmine Lucchesi, the eighty-year-old elder statesman of the Five Families. His sharp blue eyes narrowed as he stared at Vincent.
“You bring heavy accusations against the Genovese family, Vincent,” Don Carmine noted, his voice raspy and measured. “Where is the physical proof? Where is Lorenzo’s body?”
Vincent smiled smoothly, stepping forward and placing a heavy black leather folder onto the center of the table.
“The physical evidence is right here, Don Carmine,” Vincent announced loudly. “Forensic blood matches, intercepted radio transmissions, and banking records showing multi-million-dollar transfers to Genovese enforcement accounts. As acting Chairman of the DeLuca family, I am asking this council to officially ratify my leadership so I can mobilize our full armed strength and avenge Lorenzo’s death!”
Don Carmine reached for his reading glasses, preparing to open the black folder.
Suddenly, every light inside the grand ballroom went completely dark.
A collective gasp echoed through the room as forty hardened mobsters instantly reached for their concealed firearms in the pitch-black space.
Before anyone could pull a weapon, high-intensity emergency strobe lights flashed on, blinding the room.
The heavy, soundproof double doors at the back of the ballroom were suddenly blown off their hinges with a deafening metallic bang, crashing loudly onto the floorboards.
Through the drifting smoke and flashing lights walked a giant of a man.
He wore a tailored black suit, his left arm held firmly in a dark velvet sling across his chest. Moving beside him were Marcus Bell and Anthony Graves, carrying short-barreled tactical shotguns.
The room went so quiet that the sound of a dropping pin would have echoed like a gunshot.
Lorenzo DeLuca walked slowly, powerfully, and relentlessly down the center aisle of the ballroom, his cold gray eyes fixed entirely on Vincent Romano’s frozen face.
Vincent stepped back from the mahogany table, his face turning completely pale, his eyes wide with absolute, horrifying terror as if staring at a demon straight out of hell.
“Impossible...” Vincent choked out, his voice cracking violently. “You’re dead... I shot you myself...”
The room gasped in utter shock.
Don Carmine Lucchesi instantly stood up, his eyes flashing with lethal fury. “What did you just say, Vincent?!”
Vincent realized his catastrophic slip of the tongue a second too late, covering his mouth with a shaking hand as blood drained from his face.
Lorenzo stopped at the edge of the mahogany table, ten feet away from Vincent.
“You shot me in the shoulder from behind like a coward, Vincent,” Lorenzo said, his deep, gravelly voice carrying to every corner of the vast ballroom. “You locked me in the sub-basement vault beneath my own house, tied me to an iron chair, and left me to bleed to death in the dark while you attempted to steal eighty million dollars from my family’s offshore accounts.”
“Lies!” Vincent shrieked frantically, pulling a silver pistol from his suit pocket with a trembling hand. “He’s an imposter! Shoot him!”
Before Vincent could raise the barrel, Anthony Graves fired a single, lightning-fast round from his tactical shotgun.
The heavy slug struck Vincent’s right wrist, shattering the gun from his grip and blowing two of his fingers cleanly off.
Vincent let out a blood-curdling scream of agony, collapsing onto his knees on the carpet, clutching his bleeding, mangled hand against his chest.
Lorenzo stepped forward, completely unbothered by the violence, and looked down at the groveling traitor.
“You believed you had planned the perfect assassination, Vincent,” Lorenzo said quietly. “You secured the perimeter, you corrupted my doctors, you bribed my guards, and you swept the house for electronic bugs.”
Lorenzo reached into his right jacket pocket and pulled out a small, broken green object, holding it up between his thumb and forefinger for the entire council to see.
It was the broken plastic handle of Emma’s preschool rabbit scissors.
“You planned for every army, every detective, and every rival family in North America,” Lorenzo continued, his voice ringing with absolute, majestic authority. “But you didn't plan for a three-year-old child following a cat down the cellar stairs.”
Don Carmine Lucchesi looked at the broken green plastic in Lorenzo’s hand, then down at the bleeding traitor on the floor, and slowly raised his hand.
Within five seconds, six heavy syndicate enforcers stepped forward, grabbed Vincent Romano by his collar, and dragged him screaming and pleading out of the ballroom doors, leaving a thick trail of blood across the carpet.
Lorenzo walked to the head of the table, pulled back the heavy leather executive chair, and sat down smoothly in his rightful throne.
May you like
He looked around the table at the forty silent, terrified underbosses of New York.
“The meeting,” Lorenzo DeLuca announced softly, “will now come to order.”
