Chapter 8 - The Price of Peace
We arrived back at the Gold Coast brownstone at four in the morning.
The city outside was silent, wrapped in a blanket of early-winter fog that rolled off Lake Michigan. But inside my foyer, the war I had postponed was already knocking at the gates.
Frank met us at the door, his face grim. “Dominic. Victor Castiglione is waiting in your study. He brought eight of his personal enforcers. They’re armed to the teeth. He says you have ten minutes to explain why you abandoned the commission meeting, or he’s calling the families in New York and declaring open season on Vale territory.”
Clara Hayes pulled back, terror returning to her eyes as she heard the names of men who ruled the city's darkness.
“Mrs. Gable,” I said without missing a beat. “Take Mrs. Hayes upstairs. Reunited the family. Lock the bedroom door and do not open it until I knock three times.”
“Yes, Mr. Dominic,” the housekeeper said, leading the trembling mother up the sweeping curved staircase toward the sound of her sleeping children.
I unbuttoned my coat, handed it to Marco, and checked the action on the Kimber .45 tucked into the small of my back.
“Wait here,” I told Marco. “If you hear more than three shots, come in through the library doors.”
I walked into the study.
The room smelled of Castiglione’s foul Tuscan cigars. Victor Castiglione sat behind *my* desk—a heavy, brutal man of fifty-five with silver temples, a tailored charcoal suit, and the dead eyes of an executioner. Four of his gun-hands stood along the bookshelves; another four flanked the leather sofa.
“You’re getting arrogant, Dominic,” Castiglione growled, not bothering to stand. He blew a thick plume of smoke toward the ceiling. “Thirty years the Vale and Castiglione families have honored the sit-downs. Today, you leave me sitting in a restaurant like a common street tout while you go joyriding on Fifth Avenue. The street says you skipped the meeting for a runaway brat.”
He laughed—a harsh, mocking bark that made his guards smirk.
“You’re losing your edge, Vale. You’re getting soft in your old age. A mob boss who plays nursemaid to gutter trash isn't fit to hold the rail corridors. So here’s the new arrangement: you hand over sixty percent of the lake freight, you surrender the distribution hubs on the West Side, and maybe—just maybe—I don't tell the Commission that Dominic Vale has lost his mind.”
I didn't sit down. I didn't reach for a drink. I walked slowly to the edge of the desk and looked down at the man occupying my chair.
“Victor,” I said softly.
“What?” he spat.
“Do you remember twenty-one years ago, when your nephew Michael took an overdose of tainted heroin in an alley behind Division Street?”
Castiglione’s smirk vanished. His jaw hardened. “Don't talk about Michael.”
“I remember it,” I continued, my voice steady, freezing the air in the room. “I remember that your brother spent three days looking for the supplier. And I remember that I was the one who brought that supplier to your basement in the trunk of my car, bound with copper wire, so your family could have peace.”
Castiglione glared at me, his eyes narrowing.
“I built my reputation on blood, Victor. But more than that, I built it on a simple truth: men like us rule this city because we maintain order where the law fails. When we start acting like vultures—when we start allowing vermin like Silas Vance to hunt starving mothers and infants through our streets—we are no longer kings. We are just monsters waiting to be put down.”
I leaned both hands on the mahogany desk, leaning in until Castiglione was forced to lean back.
“I didn't miss our meeting because I was weak. I missed it because an eight-year-old girl offered me forty-three dollars to save her brother’s life, and I remembered what a real man is supposed to do when he holds power.”
I tapped the desk once.
“The railyards remain mine. The lake freight remains mine. If you want a war over this, Victor, look behind you.”
Castiglione’s eyes flickered to the bay windows.
Outside in the courtyard, the shadows were not empty. Forty men—my personal guard, armed with heavy automatic rifles and tactical armor—stood in a silent, impenetrable ring around the house, their laser sights painting small, dancing dots of crimson across the chests of Castiglione’s eight bodyguards.
The smirk was completely gone from Castiglione’s face. The cigar dropped from his fingers onto the polished wood.
“You’re insane, Vale,” he whispered.
“I am Dominic Vale,” I replied coldly. “Get out of my chair. Get out of my house. And if any man wearing your colors ever looks sideways at a child on a Chicago street again, I won't call a sit-down. I will bury your family beneath the pavement of the rail yards you covet so dearly.”
May you like
Castiglione stood up slowly, his hands held high and away from his coat. Without another word, he signaled his men, and the nine of them filed out of the study like ghosts retreating before the dawn.
***
