Chapter 12 - THE TRIBUNAL OF OLD BONES
The executive boardroom on the top floor of the Grand Continental Hotel overlooked the misty morning skyline.
The room was lined with dark mahogany paneling, smelling of expensive cigars, leather upholstery, and ancient paranoia.
Seated around the thirty-foot boardroom table were the heads of the four remaining families that controlled the city’s underground economy.
At the head of the table sat Don Salvatore Moretti, an eighty-four-year-old patriarch whose word had settled disputes for half a century.
Beside him sat Julian Rossi’s primary financial backer, Councilman Robert Vance—Daniel Vance’s estranged elder brother.
Robert Vance was a polished, corrupt politician who had brokered the clandestine deals between Julian and the Mexican cartels.
"Julian was supposed to check in three hours ago," Robert Vance muttered nervously, tapping a gold signet ring on the polished table.
"The police commissioner isn't answering his private line."
"And the Amber Alert broadcast has suddenly been scrubbed from the state network without explanation."
Don Salvatore blew a slow ribbon of cigar smoke toward the ceiling.
"When wolves stop howling, Robert, it means they are already dead," Salvatore said in a raspy, gravelly voice.
"You let Julian reach for Marco's crown before the old man was even in the ground."
"And now the silence from the docks smells like a slaughterhouse."
The heavy double doors of the boardroom were suddenly flung open with tremendous force.
The two armed guards stationed in the hallway did not enter.
Instead, they stepped aside, their heads lowered in profound, terrified deference.
Rolling through the entrance was a motorized wheelchair carrying Anthony DeLuca.
The eighty-one-year-old patriarch was pale, an oxygen cannula resting beneath his nose, his abdomen tightly bound in surgical gauze beneath a tailored three-piece suit.
Walking immediately behind him, his dark overcoat stained with dried mud and gunpowder, was Marco DeLuca.
Every man at the boardroom table rose to their feet in sheer disbelief.
"Anthony..." Don Salvatore whispered, his cigar freezing midway to his lips.
"The word on the wire was that you were executed in your brownstone at dawn."
"You should know better than to believe rumors circulated by dead men, Salvatore," Anthony rasped, his voice amplified by the quiet room.
Marco stepped forward, tossing a heavy leather briefcase onto the center of the mahogany table.
The latches popped open, spilling hundreds of photocopied customs manifests, wire transfers, and audio transcriptions across the mahogany surface.
Robert Vance turned ash-white as his own signature appeared on the top three federal banking disclosures.
"Julian is eighty feet deep in the grain elevators at South Basin," Marco said, his voice flat, emotionless, and deadly.
"He confessed to the execution of my wife before he fell."
"And he gave up the names of every council member who funded his coup."
Robert Vance stumbled backward, his chair toppling onto the Persian rug with a loud thud.
"Marco, wait! Julian misled us!" Vance pleaded, raising his trembling hands.
"He told us Elena was going to hand over the port terminals to the federal prosecutors!"
"He said you had lost your stomach for the business!"
Anthony DeLuca raised his hand, cutting off Vance's excuses with a single flick of his frail wrist.
"My daughter-in-law Elena was trying to save this family from the disease that is currently eating you alive, Robert," Anthony spoke, his eyes burning with cold rage.
"You thought that by killing a mother and hunting a seven-year-old child, you could turn our shipping lines into a cartel pipeline."
"You broke the first and most sacred commandment of the commission."
"You targeted the bloodline of the founding house."
Don Salvatore looked at the documents on the table, then looked at Robert Vance with utter revulsion.
"Is this true, Robert?" Salvatore asked quietly.
"You authorized an ambush on Anthony's great-granddaughter?"
Vance could not speak; his mouth opened and closed like a fish suffocating on dry land.
Salvatore turned his gaze to Marco.
"The commission takes no part in treason against children, Marco," Salvatore declared solemnly.
"The DeLuca house holds the right of complete and absolute retribution."
Marco looked at the council members, then shook his head slowly.
"No," Marco said, a cold, liberating smile touching his lips.
"Retribution in this room is the old way."
"And the old way is dead."
Marco turned toward the open doorway.
Two dozen armed federal agents, led by Special Agent Miller, poured into the executive boardroom with tactical shields and arrest warrants raised.
"Federal agents! Keep your hands where we can see them!" Miller shouted, stepping to the front.
"Robert Vance, Salvatore Moretti, you are under arrest for racketeering, conspiracy to commit murder, and interstate trafficking!"
The room erupted into shouts of fury and panic as the mighty syndicate barons were forced onto their knees on the plush carpet.
Anthony DeLuca sat in his wheelchair, breathing quietly through his oxygen tube, watching the empire he had built for sixty years crumble into handcuffs.
He looked at Marco, and for the first time in Marco's life, the old patriarch nodded with quiet, solemn approval.
"It is finished, Marco," Anthony whispered.
May you like
"Now go back to the hospital."
"Go see the girl who gave us back our souls."
