Chapter 4 - The Voice in the Shadows
“Dante, please!” Richard Sterling choked out, the cold steel of Marcus’s gun digging into his graying hair. “She’s just a girl! She was protecting our family's interests! You were distracted by a nobody, a common waitress who knew nothing of our world! You were putting the entire syndicate at risk for a cheap fling!”
Dante didn't drop Vanessa. He simply squeezed harder until her lips turned a faint, bruised purple, then shoved her violently backward into a cushioned armchair. She collapsed in a heap of silver silk and gasped for air, coughing violently as her hands clutched her bruised throat.
“A cheap fling?” Dante repeated, turning his dark eyes onto Richard. “That waitress stood between me and a bullet in a West Loop alley while your daughter was busy snorting cocaine off designer handbags in Miami. Isabella gave me a reason to stay human. You gave me invoices and deceit.”
Dante signaled to Marcus, who threw a heavy leather folder onto the center of the table. It slapped against the porcelain plates with a sickening thud, spilling out financial statements, offshore banking routing numbers, and autopsy transcripts.
“Three years ago,” Dante said, addressing the entire room, his voice ringing out to every capo and underboss watching in terrified silence. “My younger brother Luca was found dead behind an abandoned warehouse on the South Side. The police called it an overdose. I called it a targeted hit by our rivals in Detroit. We launched a three-year war that cost this family sixty million dollars and forty good men.”
Dante leaned over the table, placing his palms on the polished wood. “Luca didn't overdose. He discovered that Richard Sterling was laundering money for federal cartels through our private shipping terminals, skimming twenty percent off every container. And when Luca confronted him, Richard poisoned his whiskey with pure fentanyl.”
Whispers rippled through the gathered crime bosses like a shockwave. Don Cavallo, an elder statesman of the Chicago Outfit, slowly rose to his feet from an adjacent table, his weathered face dark with fury. “Richard... is this true? Did you spill Moretti blood for dirty federal paper?”
“It’s a lie! Fabrications!” Richard stammered, sweat pouring down his jowls, soaking his silk tie. “He’s trying to justify breaking our engagement! He’s trying to protect his bastard child!”
“My daughter is no bastard,” Dante interrupted, his voice dropping into a register that promised hellfire. “She is a Moretti. And her mother is the only woman who will ever wear my ring.”
Suddenly, the red emergency lights along the ballroom walls began to flash. An alarm klaxon shrieked through the mansion’s intercom system, followed by the distant sound of automatic gunfire rattling from the exterior courtyards.
Marcus immediately stepped in front of Dante, his weapon raised toward the ceiling. “Boss! We’ve got breach alarms at the eastern perimeter! Multiple black SUVs just crashed the outer gates!”
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Richard Sterling’s terrified expression suddenly twisted into a desperate, feral sneer. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and began to laugh, a broken, hysterical sound.
“Did you think I came here without insurance, Dante?” Richard hissed, spitting blood onto the rug. “I knew that pathetic girl was still breathing! The moment she left Milwaukee three days ago, my informants flagged her! I knew she was heading for Chicago! I hired twenty mercenaries from out of state to clean up both loose ends tonight—your little bastard upstairs, and you!”
