Chapter 7 - A Seat at the Table
The Fulton Market meatpacking terminal smelled of iron, brine, and sub-zero cold.
Steam rose in thick, ghost-like plumes from the floor drains, mixing with the frigid November air drifting through the loading bays. Hanging from heavy overhead rails were hundreds of sides of beef, wrapped in muslin, swaying slightly in the draft. It was the traditional, neutral meeting ground for the Chicago Commission—a place where voices didn't carry, security was absolute, and blood could be washed down the industrial drains with a high-pressure hose before sunrise.
When Massimo’s convoy arrived, eight black SUVs were already parked in a wide semicircle inside the main warehouse bay.
Massimo stepped out of the Maybach, his tailored charcoal overcoat buttoned tight, his hands gloved in black leather. He turned and extended a hand to Frankie.
She took it.
She had refused to change into anything dainty. She wore her dark denim jeans, her heavy work boots, and Massimo’s long wool coat over a fresh white chef’s coat she had pulled from her duffel bag. Her dark curls were pulled back into a tight, severe knot. She walked beside him onto the cold concrete floor, her head held high, looking every inch like a queen stepping onto a battlefield.
Fifty men in dark suits and heavy overcoats fell silent the moment Massimo entered the bay.
At the center of the warehouse, beneath the humming industrial sodium lights, stood a folding metal table surrounded by five mismatched wooden chairs. Seated in four of them were the rulers of Chicago’s underworld: Old Man Scalise, whose family controlled the teamsters; Carlo Lucchese, the bookmaker king of the North Side; Vincent Morretti, who owned the waste management contracts; and sitting at the end, looking pale, sweating, and surrounded by six heavily armed bodyguards—Don Carmine Castellano.
Carmine was sixty-five, heavy-set, with thinning gray hair and the florid complexion of a man whose blood pressure was a medical emergency.
As Massimo approached the table, the bodyguards shifted, hands resting inside their coats. Tino and four Riva enforcers spread out behind Massimo, their expressions blank, their coats unbuttoned.
Massimo didn't take the fifth chair. He remained standing, towering over the table, his presence commanding the space as if it were a boardroom. Frankie stood half a step behind his right shoulder.
Don Carmine’s eyes flicked to Frankie, then up to Massimo, a sneer curling his lip. “Massimo. You call an emergency summit at four in the morning, drag every Don in Cook County out of their beds, and you bring your pastry chef?”
A low chuckle rippled through Castellano’s men.
Massimo didn't smile. He didn't even blink.
“Carmine,” Massimo said, his voice quiet, flat, and carrying to every corner of the freezing warehouse. “You have three minutes to explain why your men threw gasoline through the front windows of Bello’s Bakery on 31st Street.”
Carmine leaned back in his chair, spreading his hands. “My son Silvio is sitting in your dock office with broken fingers, Riva! You disrespected my blood over a parking spot in an alley! The bakery was an educational message. You cost my family, I cost yours.”
“The bakery,” Frankie said, her voice cutting through the damp air like a cleaver, “has been feeding the families of Bridgeport since your father was selling stolen hubcaps off Western Avenue, Carmine.”
The room went dead silent.
Old Man Scalise’s jaw dropped. Carlo Lucchese choked on his cigarette smoke. Nobody—absolutely nobody—spoke to a Don of the Commission in that tone, least of all a civilian woman.
Carmine’s face turned an ugly, mottled purple. He surged to his feet, slamming his palm onto the metal table. “Shut your mouth, you little Bridgeport tramp, before I have someone finish what they started on your kitchen!”
Before Carmine’s hand could leave the table, Massimo moved.
The speed was incomprehensible for a man of his size. In a blur of motion, Massimo’s gloved hand shot across the table, grabbed Carmine by the collar of his silk shirt, and slammed the older man face-first into the cold metal surface with a sickening crack.
The sound of twenty pistols clearing leather echoed through the warehouse like dry thunder.
Tino had his Kimber leveled at Carmine’s underboss. Castellano’s men had their guns pointed at Massimo. Massimo’s snipers in the catwalks above racked the bolts of their long rifles in unison—a metallic rhythm that froze everyone in place.
Massimo didn't even look up at the guns pointed at his head. He kept Carmine pinned to the table with one hand, leaning down until his lips were an inch from the old man’s ear.
“Speak to her again,” Massimo whispered, and the sheer, freezing malice in his voice made Old Man Scalise cross himself beneath the table, “and I won't kill you, Carmine. I will dismantle everything your father built, brick by brick, and feed your family to the pigs in Kane County while you watch.”
Carmine let out a strangled, muffled groan against the steel.
Frankie stepped forward. She didn't look at the guns. She looked down at Carmine’s face pressed against the cold metal.
“My mother’s recipe books were in that shop,” Frankie said, her voice steady, cold, and clear. “Forty years of notes. Her hand-written measurements for Easter bread, her notes on Panettone, her mother’s sourdough formula from Palermo. Your idiots didn't just break glass, Carmine. You tried to erase a family’s history.”
She looked up at the other three Dons seated at the table.
“Scalise. Lucchese. Morretti,” she said, addressing the most terrifying men in the Midwest by their surnames as if they were delinquent schoolboys. “Are you really going to let this incompetent, blustering idiot drag this city into a war because he can't control his twenty-year-old son’s temper? Because if you are, you’re all considerably stupider than my grandmother said you were.”
Old Man Scalise stared at her for five long seconds. Then, slowly, a dry, raspy wheeze escaped his chest. It turned into a cough, then into a full, booming laugh that rattled off the concrete walls.
“Gemma Riva picked this one, didn't she?” Scalise gasped, wiping a tear from his wrinkled eye. “By God, Massimo, she found a girl with more iron in her jaw than your grandfather ever had.”
Scalise stopped laughing and turned his cold, rheumy eyes onto Carmine.
“Release him, Massimo,” Scalise said.
Massimo let go. Carmine slid back into his chair, gasping for breath, clutching his bruised cheek, his dignity completely destroyed.
“The Castellano family,” Scalise decreed, looking at Lucchese and Morretti, who both nodded in silent agreement, “will cede all trucking routes south of 35th Street to Riva Logistics. Effective immediately. Furthermore, Carmine, your family will pay two million dollars in cash, delivered to this young woman by noon tomorrow, to rebuild her bakery.”
Carmine’s eyes bulged. “Two million?! For a storefront?!”
“For the recipes, Carmine,” Scalise said, his voice dropping into hard, merciless stone. “You burned a mother’s books. In this town, even the animals have respect for mothers. You pay, or we let Massimo off the leash.”
Carmine swallowed hard. He looked at Massimo, who stood with his arms folded, his face an unreadable mask of impending execution.
“I’ll pay,” Carmine whispered.
May you like
“Good,” Massimo said. He turned to Frankie, extending his arm. “Let’s go, Frankie. We have breakfast to make.”
***
