Chapter 9 - The Blood Ledger
The maintenance stairwell of The Drake was an endless spiral of peeling green paint and sweating concrete.
Every five flights, we paused on the landing so Frank could catch his breath, his wounded shoulder bleeding sluggishly through his fresh bandages.
I kept the leather satchel clutched tight against my ribs, feeling the sharp corners of the Bible pressing into my side.
With every step we climbed, the air grew warmer, thick with the scent of expensive cigar tobacco and roasted meats drifting from the upper vents.
When we reached the thirty-second floor, the heavy fire door was propped open with an empty wooden champagne crate.
Through the narrow gap, the muffled sound of classical piano music and dozens of clinking crystal glasses floated down the corridor.
Dante drew his suppressed automatic from beneath his coat, his movements mechanical and without hesitation.
He signaled Frank to take the secondary service corridor that wrapped behind the private kitchen.
“Stay two steps behind me, Clara,” Dante whispered, his lips grazing my ear as he leaned down.
“Whatever happens in that room, do not drop that book.”
“If they shoot you, Dante, that book won't stop a hollow-point bullet,” I whispered back.
“They won't shoot, Clara,” he said, his eyes cold and predatory.
“Men who wear four-thousand-dollar tuxedos don't like blood on their antique carpets unless they have a judge’s permission.”
He kicked the fire door open with one smooth, heavy thrust of his heel.
The door slammed back against the wall with a crack like summer thunder.
We walked straight out of the service hall into the center of the Grand Penthouse ballroom.
The room went instantly, shockingly silent.
Thirty men in black-tie attire stopped talking at the exact same instant.
Waiters in white coats froze with silver champagne trays balanced on their palms.
At the center of the room, seated in a massive carved velvet armchair near the roaring limestone fireplace, was Don Bernardo Marcone.
He had an ivory-handled walking stick rested between his knees and a crystal snifter of brandy in his liver-spotted hand.
Standing directly behind his chair, looking haggard, covered in bruises, and wearing a hastily tailored suit that didn't fit his frame, was Leo Carbone.
Leo’s eyes locked onto Dante, and his entire face turned into a spasm of panicked hatred.
“Romano!” Leo shrieked, his hand darting inside his breast pocket.
“Don't do it, Leo,” Dante said, his weapon remaining pointed casually at the Persian rug between them.
“Unless you want Frank to introduce your kneecaps to ten-gauge buckshot through the service pantry door.”
As if on cue, the pantry doors clicked open an inch, revealing the blackened muzzle of Frank’s shotgun leveled directly at the back of Leo’s skull.
Leo froze, his hand trembling inside his lapel.
Don Bernardo didn't flinch.
He set his snifter down on the marble side table with a slow, steady hand that showed no tremor of age.
He looked at Dante, then let his slate-gray eyes drift slowly over to me.
“You have bad manners, nephew,” Bernardo rasped in his dry, millstone voice.
“You interrupt a council meeting with drawn steel.”
“I didn't draw steel on family, Uncle,” Dante replied, taking three steps toward the fireplace.
“I drew steel on a thief who sold out his own blood fifty years ago and forgot to cover the paperwork.”
A murmur of uneasy whispers rippled through the gathered crime bosses from Grand Avenue and Cicero.
A tall, broad-shouldered boss with slicked-back white hair stepped forward from the crowd.
“What is the meaning of this, Bernardo?” the boss demanded in a heavy North Side accent.
“You told us Dante Romano went rogue and tried to sell the port to the federal task force.”
“He did,” Bernardo lied smoothly, not batting an eyelid.
“He’s cornered, he’s desperate, and he’s dragging a South Side waitress into our presence to beg for his life.”
I couldn't stay quiet for another second.
My grandmother’s temper, buried under twenty years of cold customer service and late rent notices, burst through my chest like a furnace blast.
I stepped around Dante, walked straight up to the edge of Bernardo’s oriental rug, and slammed the heavy oilcloth Bible onto the coffee table right between his brandy snifter and his ivory cane.
“I am Clara Hayes, granddaughter of Rosa Bellomo!” I yelled, my voice ringing off the gilded ceiling moldings.
“And you, Bernardo Marcone, haven't owned a single square foot of this city since the day you put our brother’s blood on your hands!”
The old man’s eyes widened slightly, a flash of ancient, buried fear flickering across his pale pupils.
“Quiet, child,” Bernardo hissed in dialect. “You do not know what you speak of.”
“I speak the language of Petralia Sottana, old man!” I screamed back in the archaic, harsh tongue of our ancestors.
“The language you used when you forged Salvatore Romano’s signature to take the docks!”
“The language you used when you threatened to drown my mother in the drainage canal if Rosa didn't leave the state!”
The entire ballroom went completely breathless.
None of the younger mobsters understood the words, but the older bosses from the West Side—men who had crossed the Atlantic as children—stiffened as if they had been struck by lightning.
The white-haired boss stepped closer, his jaw dropping open.
“That’s the Madonie dialect,” the old boss whispered to his lieutenant.
“Nobody has spoken that in this room since Don Vincenzo died in seventy-two.”
“Read the ledger, Don Carmine!” Dante shouted to the white-haired boss, gesturing toward the open pages.
“Look at the deeds of La Poma Holdings!”
“The entire Calumet terminal, the pension reserves, the maritime bonds—they aren't syndicate assets!”
“Bernardo Marcone has been skimming forty percent of every union member’s pension into private Swiss accounts registered to an expired holding firm!”
A deafening roar of outrage erupted from the outer ring of caporegimes.
These were men who didn't care about murder, extortion, or hijacking, but who lived and died by the sacred integrity of the family pension books.
Leo Carbone panicked.
Realizing that the room had turned and his protection had vanished, he yanked his pistol clear of his suit jacket and leveled it directly at my chest.
“Die, you miserable little bitch!” Leo screamed.
Dante moved with blinding speed, throwing his body across mine and knocking me violently to the carpet.
The gunshot deafened the room, the bullet shattering a three-hundred-dollar crystal vase on the mantelpiece above our heads.
Before Leo could cock the hammer a second time, Frank’s shotgun roared from the pantry doorway.
The blast caught Leo Carbone full in the chest, throwing his heavy frame backward across Don Bernardo’s coffee table in a shower of splintered mahogany and broken glass.
Leo hit the floor and didn't move again.
Women screamed, men scrambled for cover behind marble pillars, and five bodyguards immediately drew their weapons, forming a defensive ring around Dante and me.
I scrambled up from the rug, my hands coated in glass dust, my heart hammering like a machine gun in my throat.
Dante was already back on his feet, his weapon held at the low ready, his dark eyes fixed entirely on Don Bernardo.
The old Don was sitting alone amidst the wreckage of his crystal and shattered wood, his ivory cane shaking in his hand as he stared down at the bleeding corpse of his favorite lieutenant.
The white-haired boss, Don Carmine, stepped through the smoke, picked up Rosa’s Bible from the carpet, and adjusted his reading glasses.
He flipped through three pages of handwritten figures, his face darkening with absolute, murderous disgust.
Carmine looked down at Don Bernardo, his voice cold enough to freeze the flames in the hearth.
“You stole forty million dollars from the widows and orphans of the union locals, Bernardo,” Carmine said quietly.
“And you used a little girl’s dead grandmother to take the blame.”
Bernardo looked up, his lips trembling, his ivory mask of absolute power finally crumbling into the pathetic terror of a dying old man.
“Carmine... listen to me...” Bernardo whimpered.
May you like
“The meeting is adjourned,” Don Carmine announced to the room, turning his back on the old man.
“And Don Bernardo Marcone is no longer a member of this commission.”
