Chapter 26 - The Council of Wolves
Dawn broke over Manhattan not with sunlight, but with a suffocating, slate-gray blanket of winter fog.
In the subterranean council chambers beneath the old Manhattan Federal Courthouse—a territory declared neutral since the Five Families formed the Commission in 1931—the atmosphere was thick with cigar smoke and the scent of imminent betrayal.
Don Moretti sat at the head of the oval mahogany table. He was a fat, reptilian man with slicked-back silver hair and diamond rings that clicked rhythmically against his water glass. Around him sat the heads of the remaining crime syndicates of New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia.
"Dante Serrano has gone rogue," Moretti announced, his voice echoing off the vaulted marble ceilings. He slammed a heavy dossier onto the table. "He concealed the survival of Julian Bellandi. Worse, we have genetic verification from Rome. Dante Serrano is not an heir to Armando. He is a fraud. A changeling. A Bellandi mongrel masquerading as our supreme Don."
Murmurs of shock and venom rippled through the assembled capos.
"The laws of the Commission are absolute," the Don of South Boston spoke up, his voice raspy with age. "If a Don gains his seat through deceit, his bloodline is null. His territory is forfeit. His life belongs to the table."
"Precisely," Moretti smiled, a predator showing its yellowed teeth. "I have dispatched our cleanup crews upstate. By now, both Dante and the Bellandi girl are carcasses in the snow. I propose we divide the Serrano docks and the Bellandi financial vaults equally among the four remaining families."
Before the capos could raise their hands in agreement, the heavy, ten-foot-tall bronze doors at the back of the chamber groaned on their hinges.
The guards outside didn't open them.
The doors burst inward with a deafening crash, the heavy security bolts shearing clean off their anchors. Two Moretti enforcers flew through the air, hitting the marble floor in crumpled, unconscious heaps.
Through the drifting dust and smoke strode Dante Serrano.
He wore a tailored three-piece charcoal suit, immaculate, his silver-crowned cane tapping with lethal rhythm against the stone. But he did not enter alone.
Beside him walked Clara.
She wore a gown of liquid gold silk that clung to her curves like armor, but what stopped every heart in that room was her hair. It was not pinned. It was not bound.
Her two-meter golden mane cascaded down her back in glorious, shimmering waves, sweeping past her waist, past her knees, trailing behind her like the imperial train of an ancient empress. In her right hand, she carried an antique ivory ledger—the sovereign ledger of the Bellandi treasury.
And behind them, pushed in a high-tech wheelchair by Marco, sat Julian Bellandi, wearing an oxygen cannula and smiling like the Devil welcoming guests to Hell.
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"Excuse the intrusion, gentlemen," Dante said smoothly, his silver eyes locking onto Moretti’s instantly pale face. "We heard there was a vote regarding my territory."
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