Chapter 7 - The Gathering of the Family
By eight o’clock that evening, the Great Hall of the Vescari estate was illuminated only by the fire roaring in the massive stone hearth and the two iron candelabras hanging from the vaulted timber ceiling.
Outside, the storm had turned into a howling gale, rattling the antique leaded glass windows.
Around the twenty-foot walnut dining table sat the inner circle of the Vescari empire.
There were six of them. Men with grey hair and scarred knuckles who had run the unions, the waste management companies, and the maritime shipping lines since Dominic’s father had been in power. They sat in heavy wool suits, sipping single-malt whiskey from crystal tumblers, their faces grim and silent.
At the far end of the table sat Teresa Vescari.
She had changed out of her sable coat into a black silk dress, but she looked ten years older than she had that morning. Her hands were clasped tightly in front of her, her knuckles trembling against the dark wood.
Beside her sat Anthony.
His nose had been set by a private physician who had arrived under armed escort an hour earlier. Two thick strips of medical tape crossed the bridge of his face, and both of his eyes were swollen into purplish-black slits. He kept his head down, staring into his lap, unable to meet the gaze of any man in the room.
Dominic stood at the head of the table.
He placed the velvet box on the wood. He didn't speak. He simply stood there, his hands resting on the back of his high-backed chair, watching his family.
Finally, an older man named Uncle Carlo—a veteran of forty years who had survived three federal grand juries—cleared his throat.
“Dominic,” Carlo said, his gravelly voice cutting through the crackle of the hearth. “We hear rumors from the city. We hear the DA is dropping the maid’s charges tomorrow morning. We hear Torrino signed over the Hudson concrete rights.”
“They aren't rumors, Carlo,” Dominic said clearly. “They are facts.”
Carlo leaned back, his bushy grey eyebrows drawing together. “And the brooch?”
Dominic tapped the velvet box. “On the table.”
A murmur of approval rippled through the older men.
Teresa suddenly stood up, scraping her chair back against the floorboards. “Dominic! If the brooch is back, and Torrino is handled, then this matter is closed! Anthony made a mistake—a business error! He is young, he was under terrible pressure with the Hudson project—”
“He broke the house code, Teresa,” Dominic cut her off, his voice soft, low, and terrifyingly clear.
Teresa’s face twisted into an ugly mask of desperation. “The house code? What code? He tried to protect his investment! He used an employee as a pawn! We have used pawns for fifty years! Your father used pawns! My husband used pawns!”
“We never framed our own people,” Carlo growled from across the table, his fist slamming down against the walnut. “We never put a woman who eats from our table into a state prison to cover our own stupidity! That’s not a pawn, Teresa. That’s cowardice. A man who frames his own household to save his skin will sell his own brother to the Feds when the cuffs come out.”
Anthony flinched as if Carlo had thrown scalding water in his face.
“I didn't... I wasn't going to talk to the Feds,” Anthony stammered through swollen lips, his voice thick and nasal from the broken cartilage. “Dom, I swear to God... I was just trying to finish Hudson. The family needed that project! We needed to go legitimate!”
Dominic walked slowly down the length of the table until he stood directly behind Anthony’s chair.
Anthony shrank down into his shoulders, terrified of another blow.
Dominic didn't strike him. He placed one heavy, steady hand on Anthony’s shoulder.
“Legitimate,” Dominic said, the word tasting like poison on his tongue. “You wanted to be legitimate, Anthony. You wanted to wear eight-thousand-dollar suits and sit on museum boards. You wanted to look down on the people who scrub our floors and call them 'nobodies.'”
Dominic squeezed the shoulder. Anthony gasped in pain.
“A man who steals from his grandmother is a thief,” Dominic whispered into his cousin’s ear. “A man who brings Frank Torrino into our vaults is a traitor. But a man who lets a four-year-old girl watch her mother get dragged off to prison because he couldn't pay his own debts...”
Dominic leaned down, his voice dropping so low only the people at the table could hear.
“...that man is not a Vescari.”
Teresa rushed around the table, falling to her knees beside Dominic, grabbing his arm. The proud, arrogant matriarch was gone, reduced to a weeping mother pleading for her son’s life.
“Dominic, please!” she wept, her mascara running in black streaks down her cheeks. “Don’t do this! Don’t put him out! He won’t survive two days without the family! Frank will find him! The Chicago people will find him!”
Dominic pulled his arm smoothly from her grip.
“He should have thought of that before he went down to the cold stairs,” Dominic said.
He looked over at Carlo and the other captains.
“As head of this family, I strip Anthony Vescari of all shares in the Hudson project. I strip him of his deeds, his trust funds, and his name. By midnight tonight, he will be on a flight to Palermo. He will live in my grandfather’s mountain house in Corleone. He will have an allowance of two thousand euros a month, and he will never set foot in the United States again as long as he draws breath.”
Anthony let out a wretched, guttural sob, collapsing forward against the table, his head buried in his arms.
“And you, Teresa,” Dominic said, looking down at his aunt with cold indifference. “You will pack your bags. You have an apartment in Naples that my father bought in 1982. You will join your son by the end of the week.”
“You can’t do this!” Teresa screamed, her voice cracking into madness. “The family won’t let you!”
Dominic looked around the table.
Carlo did not move.
The other four captains looked down at their whiskey glasses, silent as stone.
“The family has spoken,” Carlo said simply.
Dominic turned and walked toward the Great Hall’s heavy doors. Before he opened them, he looked back over his shoulder.
“Salvatore,” he said.
“Yes, boss?”
“Escort them to the gate. If Anthony is still on this property when the hall clock strikes midnight, tell Marco he doesn't need to drive him to JFK.”
May you like
Dominic walked out, leaving the echoes of Teresa’s weeping behind him.
***
