Chapter 7 - The Commission of Blood
At four o'clock that afternoon, a secret conclave of New York's five criminal families convened inside an abandoned bank vault beneath Lower Manhattan.
The room was lit by harsh halogen bulbs, casting long, menacing shadows across the twenty-foot steel safe doors.
Around the central granite conference table sat four elderly mob bosses, flanked by their senior capos and legal advisers.
At the head of the table sat Don Alberto Luciano, an eighty-year-old patriarch with hollow cheeks and cold, reptilian eyes.
"You called this emergency commission, Dante," Luciano rasped, leaning his hands upon an ivory-topped cane.
"You burned two of my warehouses in Brooklyn and put twelve of my soldiers in the city morgue. You have broken the peace of the Five Boroughs."
Dante Mancini sat at the opposite end of the table, wearing a bespoke three-piece midnight-blue suit, his hands resting flat and motionless on the stone surface.
He didn't bring six bodyguards.
He brought only Marco, who stood behind his left shoulder holding an ordinary brown cardboard shoe box.
"The peace was broken when your men put strychnine into my nursery's honey jar, Alberto," Dante said, his voice flat, devoid of emotion, and terrifyingly cold.
A collective uneasy shift rippled through the other three family bosses.
Even in the brutal underworld of New York, targeting children in their beds violated the ancient, unbreakable code of the American commission.
"I know nothing of poison," Luciano lied smoothly, waving a dismissive, manicured hand. "A rogue crew seeking retribution for a gambling debt."
Dante signaled with a slight tilt of his head.
Marco stepped forward, placed the cardboard box onto the center of the table, and pulled off the lid.
Inside lay Paul's personal cell phone, connected to a speaker dock, along with three signed, notarized bank transfer drafts bearing the official corporate seal of the Luciano Trust.
Dante tapped the play button on the remote.
Luciano’s raspy voice boomed through the vault's concrete acoustics with crystalline clarity:
"Kill the three boys while Mancini is inspecting the docks. Leave the single mother alive so the police blame the nanny for the poisoning."
The room went completely, suffocatingly silent.
The other three bosses turned their heads toward Luciano with cold, unmistakable disgust.
"You crossed the line, Alberto," Don Falcone of Staten Island said, his deep voice heavy with final judgment.
"We are businessmen. We do not murder children in their playrooms."
Dante stood up slowly, towering over the table.
"I am not asking the Commission for permission to retaliate," Dante announced, his eyes locking onto Luciano like crosshairs.
"I am informing you that as of 4:15 PM, the Luciano shipping lines, the Brooklyn piers, and the concrete plants belong to the Mancini family. Alberto Luciano is stripped of his seat and exiled to Sicily before midnight."
Luciano stood up, his face crimson with fury, his cane shaking against the floor.
"You cannot do this! I built this city!"
The other three bosses stood up in unison, turning their backs on Luciano and nodding their solemn approval toward Dante.
"The vote is unanimous, Dante," Falcone declared.
May you like
"Take his territory. Clean your house."
Dante turned on his heel and walked out of the vault without looking back, leaving the broken old don weeping in the cold light of his own ruined empire.
