Chapter 9 - THE TRIBUNAL OF ELDERS
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Don Falcone slowly reached into his vest pocket, pulled out his gold-rimmed reading glasses, and perched them on his nose.
The ancient Don unfolded the heavy parchment, his rheumy eyes scanning the faded blue stamps and the bold signatures from 1999.
The silence inside the Palmer House Ballroom was so thick you could hear the rain tapping against the high stained-glass windows.
As Falcone read the final paragraph, a low, guttural laugh rumbled from his chest.
He looked up from the paper, his gaze impaling Salvatore Bellini with absolute, crushing contempt.
“The collateral deed for five million dollars,” Falcone announced to the sixty seated bosses.
“Executed twenty-five years ago by Salvatore Bellini in the presence of Roberto Moretti and Judge DeLuca.”
“The loan was never satisfied.”
Falcone tossed the document back onto the table with a dismissive snap of his wrist.
“The Bellini terminals have belonged to the Moretti family for a quarter of a century.”
“Salvatore has been operating as an unlicensed tenant on borrowed time.”
The ballroom erupted into a deafening roar of outrage and table-slamming fury from the capos.
To operate on another family’s territory without paying the mandatory council tithe was a crime punishable by immediate execution.
Salvatore stumbled backward, his chair tipping over onto the hardwood floor, his face the color of wet chalk.
“It was an informal agreement between Roberto and me!” Salvatore shrieked, looking frantically around the table for an ally.
“We agreed to settle the accounts upon Vanessa’s marriage to Luca!”
Luca stepped away from the head of the table, his movements slow, deliberate, and terrifyingly unhurried.
He walked down the length of the oval table, stopping three feet from where Salvatore stood cornered against his own bodyguards.
“You didn't want a marriage, Salvatore,” Luca said, his voice dropping into that deadly, vibrating whisper.
“You wanted an execution.”
Luca reached into his breast pocket and tossed the silver flash drive containing the cathedral blueprints onto the table.
“Yesterday afternoon, your daughter forged my power of attorney to sell my father’s restaurant to Carlo Vitale.”
“She hired two of your dock enforcers to abduct my brother Michael and execute him in a staged accident.”
“And she paid five million dollars to a Detroit mercenary cell to place three snipers in Saint Jude’s Cathedral on Saturday morning.”
Luca leaned in close, his dark gray eyes boring straight into Salvatore’s soul.
“You were going to shoot me at the altar, Salvatore.”
“You were going to murder my brother.”
“And you were going to hand our father’s heritage over to the Russian syndicate to cover your gambling debts.”
Don Lucchese, the head of the transport unions, stood up from his chair, his heavy gold signet ring flashing in the light.
“Is this true, Salvatore?” Lucchese demanded, his voice trembling with Sicilian wrath.
“Did you invite foreign mercenaries into this city to slaughter a founding family at the altar?”
Salvatore could not answer.
He looked down at the silver flash drive, his chest heaving in ragged, panicked gasps, his knees visibly shaking beneath his trousers.
Don Falcone stood up, raising his right hand toward the ceiling to silence the roaring room.
The sixty bosses immediately quieted, waiting for the patriarch’s judgment.
“Under Article Seven of the Chicago Charter,” Don Falcone proclaimed with cold, ancient finality.
“The Bellini name is stripped of all territory, all voting rights, and all standing in the Five Families.”
“Their shipping lines, their warehouses, and their bank assets are forfeit immediately to the Moretti family.”
“And Salvatore Bellini and his daughter Vanessa are condemned to exile.”
Falcone looked down at Salvatore as if he were a diseased dog.
“You have until six o'clock tonight to board a commercial flight out of O’Hare International.”
“If you or your daughter are seen within the borders of Illinois after the sun sets, every gun in this room has standing orders to put you in the ground.”
Two armed Moretti enforcers stepped forward, grabbing Salvatore by his lapels, hauling him roughly toward the rear exits.
The disgraced crime boss wept and cursed as he was dragged across the hardwood, his empire dismantled in less than twenty minutes.
When the heavy doors closed behind him, Don Falcone turned his gaze toward the head of the table.
The elderly Don looked at me, sitting tall and composed in my midnight-blue silk dress.
He bowed his head in deep, solemn respect.
May you like
“Welcome to the high table, Donna Emily,” Falcone said formally.
“The city thanks you for guarding the light.”
