Chapter 12 - The Serpent’s Assembly
The industrial fluorescent lights of Hangar Four hummed with a sickly, yellow buzz against the freezing concrete floor.
Outside, a cold, greasy Chicago sleet tapped relentlessly against the corrugated steel walls of the massive aviation building.
In the center of the vast hangar floor, parked between an executive Bombardier jet and a row of maintenance toolboxes, stood a long mahogany conference table.
The table looked absurdly out of place amid the smell of aviation kerosene, hydraulic fluid, and motor grease.
Sitting at the head of the table was Arthur Sterling.
The sixty-two-year-old attorney wore a bespoke charcoal pinstripe three-piece suit, an Italian silk tie, and wire-rimmed gold glasses.
His leather briefcase lay open before him, revealing stacks of legal parchment stamped with red wax and judicial ribbons.
To his right sat Don Vittorio Marcone, a massive, seventy-year-old mob boss with thinning white hair and cold, reptilian eyes.
Marcone wore a heavy cashmere coat draped over his shoulders, his manicured hands resting on a gold-plated walking stick.
Behind Marcone stood four men in tailored suits, their jackets unbuttoned to reveal the shoulder holsters of automatic pistols.
Pacing back and forth along the concrete floor twenty feet away was Michael Romano.
Michael looked like a ghost trapped in an expensive suit.
His tie was yanked loose, his collar soaked through with nervous sweat, and his hands trembled so violently he could barely hold his glass.
He had poured three fingers of single-malt scotch from a decanter on the table, drinking it down like water every ten minutes.
"Sit down, Michael," Arthur Sterling said, his voice smooth, clinical, and dripping with condescending patience.
"You're pacing like a caged dog, and the squeak of your leather shoes is giving me a migraine."
Michael spun around, his bloodshot eyes wide with panic.
"It's seven-thirty in the morning, Arthur!" Michael hissed, his voice echoing off the high metal rafters.
"Marco Vane hasn't called in since midnight!"
"The satellite transponders on the snowmobiles went dark four hours ago!"
"What if Vincent survived?"
"What if he’s still out there?"
Don Vittorio Marcone let out a dry, gravelly chuckle that sounded like stones rattling in an empty tin cup.
"Your brother was trapped at four thousand feet in an unplowed wilderness during a record-breaking blizzard, boy," Marcone said.
"Even if he somehow put a bullet in Marco, the temperature on that crest dropped to twenty below zero."
"A man cannot carry an old woman and a cripple through five miles of snow without his lungs freezing into solid glass."
"Vincent is a corpse under six feet of drift."
"The state troopers won't find his bones until the spring thaw in April."
"You don't know him like I do!" Michael shouted, slamming his empty glass onto the mahogany table with a violent crack.
"Vincent doesn't die! He’s survived three ambushes, two car bombings, and five federal grand juries!"
"If he gets off that mountain, he will hunt every single person in this room down and tear our throats out with his bare hands!"
"That is precisely why we are signing these documents right now," Arthur Sterling said calmly, tapping the documents with a gold Montblanc pen.
"Once Judge Vance certifies the declaration of presumed death, the Romano trust is legally dissolved."
"The bank accounts are transferred."
"The shipping contracts are reassigned to Marcone Logistics."
"Even if Vincent Romano crawled out of the snow tomorrow morning, he would be a penniless felon with no legal standing in any court in the United States."
At the far end of the table, Judge Harold Vance cleared his throat nervously.
The sixty-year-old appellate judge looked distinctly uncomfortable in the damp chill of the hangar.
He kept adjusting his gold-rimmed spectacles, glancing repeatedly toward the massive rolling doors at the front of the building.
"Arthur, the statutory waiting period for an emergency presumption of death is usually seventy-two hours," Vance stammered.
"If the federal prosecutor’s office catches wind that I certified this petition eight hours after the alleged incident—"
"The federal prosecutor’s office won't catch wind of anything, Harold," Sterling interrupted, his voice dropping into a razor-sharp whisper.
"Because by nine o'clock, two million dollars will land in your daughter’s trust fund in Zurich."
"And because if you don't stamp that parchment, Don Marcone’s associates will ensure your car finds the bottom of the Chicago River before noon."
Judge Vance swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing against his starched white collar.
He nodded silently, reaching into his leather portfolio and pulling out the heavy brass mechanical seal of the Cook County Probate Court.
Sterling turned his gaze back to Michael, sliding the master document across the table.
"Sign the affidavit of execution, Michael," Sterling commanded softly.
"As the sole surviving male heir of Anthony Romano, you attest that Vincent Romano and Margaret Romano perished in the Adirondack storm."
"You authorize the transfer of the family assets to the holding entity."
"And you take your seat at the head of the Chicago Commission."
Michael stared down at the crisp white paper.
The black ink lines seemed to writhe like snakes before his exhausted eyes.
"Where is Sarah?" Michael whispered, looking up at Sterling.
"You promised me Sarah would be brought here before I put ink to this paper."
"Where is my wife, Arthur?"
Arthur Sterling smiled—a thin, cruel, patrician smile that showed too many white teeth.
"Sarah is perfectly safe, Michael," Sterling lied effortlessly.
"She is waiting in a private suite at the Drake Hotel, having breakfast."
"The moment you sign, my driver will bring her directly to the airport to join you on the flight to Miami."
Michael picked up the heavy gold pen.
His fingers were shaking so violently that the golden nib scratched against the surface of the paper without making a mark.
He remembered Vincent pulling him out of the frozen pond behind their childhood house when he was eight years old.
He remembered Vincent taking the blame when their father discovered the stolen accounting books six years ago.
He remembered the look on Vincent’s face over the phone when he had given away their location in the blizzard.
"I had to do it," Michael muttered to himself like a lunatic, the pen hovering over the signature line.
"I had to protect my family."
"Vincent would have gotten us all killed eventually anyway."
"Sign it, you miserable coward," Marcone growled, leaning forward on his gold cane.
"We don't have all morning to watch you weep."
Michael lowered the pen to the paper, the black ink touching the line: Michael Anthony Romano, Managing Trustee.
Before the first letter could be drawn, a sudden, concussive boom echoed from the exterior of the hangar.
The high-voltage industrial lights along the ceiling flickered violently once, twice, and then snapped off into pitch darkness.
The only illumination remaining inside the hangar was the pale, sickly gray daylight filtering through the frosted skylights sixty feet above.
The massive, five-ton steel rolling doors of Hangar Four began to groan.
The heavy electric motor ground into gear, slowly lifting the corrugated iron wall upward with an ear-splitting screech of rusted gears.
A freezing gust of Chicago sleet swept across the concrete floor, sending legal papers fluttering from the table like white birds.
Michael froze, the pen dropping from his numb fingers and clattering against the mahogany wood.
May you like
Through the widening gap beneath the rising steel door, the silhouette of three black vehicles sat idling on the wet tarmac.
And stepping through the swirling curtain of freezing rain, walking directly into the center of the hangar, were three figures.
