Chapter 6 - The Conclave of Wolves
The dress was emerald green silk, custom-cut to drape loosely over my injured shoulder while clinging tightly to my waist, completely concealing the heavy medical bandaging beneath. Around my neck hung a necklace of raw emeralds and diamonds that felt like a collar of ice.
My reflection in the gilded mirrors of the Metropolitan Club didn't look like Tessa Miller, the exhausted temp who counted quarters for laundromat machines.
I looked untouchable. Dangerous. Regal.
Dominic walked beside me, his hand resting firmly on the small of my back. His touch was both a stabilizing pillar and an electric current. Every step sent a dull throb through my healing ribs, but I refused to limp. I held my head high, my jaw set, digging my nails into my palms to anchor myself against the pain.
The grand dining room of the Metropolitan Club was lined with heavy oak paneling, lit by iron chandeliers that cast long, flickering shadows. Seated around a massive oval table were twenty men in dark suits. These weren't businessmen playing games; these were the apex predators of the East Coast underworld.
At the head of the table sat Victor Costa.
He was in his late fifties, with slicked-back gray hair, a pencil-thin mustache, and cold, reptilian eyes that tracked my entrance like a viper watching a bird. On either side of him sat two older men—the arbiters from Chicago and Philadelphia.
The chatter in the room died the instant Dominic’s dress shoes clicked against the herringbone floor.
"Gentlemen," Dominic's voice rang out, effortlessly commanding the cavernous room. "I trust we haven't kept you waiting."
Victor Costa smiled, a sickening, oily stretch of his lips. He rose slowly, smoothing the front of his bespoke jacket.
"Dominic," Costa purred. "We were beginning to think you were afraid to face the council. And you brought the little catering girl. How quaint."
Dominic pulled out a chair at the foot of the table, directly opposite Costa, and waited until I was seated before taking his own place beside me. His left hand rested flat on the polished mahogany, the matching gold band on his finger catching the chandelier light.
"You called a conclave on twenty-four hours' notice, Victor," Dominic said smoothly, ignoring the slight. "State your grievance so I can get my wife back to bed."
A few of the younger capos at the perimeter chuckled, but Costa’s eyes hardened.
"My grievance," Costa began, leaning his knuckles onto the table, "is that you are harboring an active witness to a family dispute. You married a nobody beneath our station without the approval of the Commission, solely to invoke the Omertà marital shield. By syndicate law, Section Four, an unapproved marriage to a civil witness is null and void. She belongs to the courts—or she belongs in the river."
The arbiters from Chicago exchanged quiet, heavy glances. The air in the room grew suffocating.
"She isn't an outsider," Dominic said calmly, leaning back in his chair. "Her name is Tessa Vance Rossi. Daughter of Marcus Vance."
A collective murmur rippled through the older men at the table. Costa’s smile flickered.
"Marcus Vance?" the Chicago don, an old man named Moretti, rasped. "The accountant from the ninety-eight bust?"
"The same," Dominic confirmed. "Her family was tied to the Rossi syndicate before half the men in this room wore long pants. Her father gave his life in service to this organization. The debt owed to her bloodline predates the current Commission charter. She is as much a part of this world as any woman in this room."
Costa sneered, rounding the table, his footsteps slow and deliberate until he stood just three feet from where I sat.
"She’s a waitress who caught stray bullets because she was too stupid to duck," Costa hissed, staring down at me. "Tell me, Mrs. Rossi... did your dear husband tell you who actually authorized the hit on your father in that Chicago warehouse?"
My breath hitched. I felt Dominic stiffen beside me, his hand sliding off the table toward his jacket.
"Victor," Dominic warned, a lethal edge cutting into his voice. "Step back."
Costa ignored him, leaning down until his foul breath—tobacco and stale mint—washed over my face. "Dominic claims his father did it alone. But old Salvatore was bedridden with gout that week. Who signed the execution order on Marcus Vance, Dominic? Who authorized the hit to keep the books quiet?"
Costa grinned wickedly, his eyes boring into mine.
"It was his mother. Isabella signed the order."
The room seemed to tilt. The chandeliers blurred.
*Isabella?* The elegant, gentle woman who had brought me soup? Who had kissed my forehead and called me a hero?
"You're lying," I whispered, the words escaping before I could stop them.
"Ask him!" Costa laughed, pointing a crooked finger at Dominic. "Ask the golden boy! His mother has more blood on her manicured hands than half the soldiers in Brooklyn! You didn't save an innocent old woman, little girl. You took seven bullets for the devil who signed your father's death warrant!"
"That's enough," Dominic's voice dropped to a pitch that rattled the crystal on the table.
He didn't draw a gun. He moved with a speed that defied human reaction. Dominic surged out of his chair, seized Costa by the throat with one hand, and slammed his skull down into the solid mahogany table with a sickening, wet *CRACK*.
Shouts erupted. Chairs scraped violently against the floor as twenty men drew weapons simultaneously, the metallic clatter of slides being racked deafening in the enclosed space.
Enzo and six Rossi soldiers materialized at our backs, submachine guns leveled at the room.
"Nobody moves!" Enzo bellowed.
Dominic kept Costa pinned to the table, blood pouring from Costa’s broken nose onto the polished wood. Dominic pulled a sleek, pearl-handled blade from his pocket, flicking it open, pressing the razor-sharp tip against the soft flesh beneath Costa's ear.
"You brought my father's sins into this room," Dominic whispered, his voice terrifyingly calm despite the guns aimed at his head. "You brought my mother into this room. And you threatened my wife."
"Dominic, stand down!" Don Moretti shouted from across the table, his hands raised. "This is a sanctioned conclave! You spill blood here, the whole Commission goes to war!"
Dominic didn't look at Moretti. He looked down at Costa, who was gasping for air, terror finally breaking through his arrogant facade.
Then, Dominic turned his gaze to me.
"Tessa," he said softly, amidst the sea of cocked guns and drawn knives. "Does he breathe? Or does he bleed?"
The entire room turned to look at me. The broke waitress. The girl with seven bullet wounds beneath an emerald dress.
In that moment, I realized the terrifying truth of what Dominic had done. He hadn't just made me his wife to protect me.
May you like
He was handing me the throne.
***
