Chapter 7 - The Wrath of Vincent Romano
Midnight on the Chicago expressway hummed with the steady drone of heavy truck tires against wet asphalt. Inside the back of a black executive SUV, Isabella Romano sat wrapped in a heavy wool coat, her face streaked with dried tears and twisted into a mask of pure, unadulterated venom.
Her phone vibrated against the leather seat. She snatched it up instantly.
"Dad," she choked out, her voice breaking.
On the other end of the secure satellite line, Don Vincent Romano—head of the formidable Chicago syndicate—spoke with a voice like grinding stones. "Isabella. My men at the state border report that you crossed over an hour ago looking like a refugee. What in God's name happened at the Moretti estate? The entire alliance is hanging by a thread."
"He threw me out, Dad!" Isabella shrieked, the thin veneer of her composure shattering completely. "He threw me out like a piece of garbage in front of his entire staff! And for what? For a maid! A common, filthy kitchen scrubber and her illegitimate brat!"
A terrifying silence stretched across the phone line. When Vincent spoke again, his voice dropped an octave, freezing the air inside the vehicle.
"An illegitimate brat?" Vincent repeated slowly. "Whose child?"
"Alessandro's!" Isabella sobbed, her fingernails digging deep into the upholstery. "He knelt before her, Dad! He admitted the child was his blood! He chose a bastard servant over the daughter of Vincent Romano! He humiliated me, he insulted our family name, and he told me if I ever came back, he would bury us both!"
In his downtown Chicago penthouse office, Don Vincent Romano slowly lowered his crystal tumbler of bourbon onto the mahogany desk. His eyes, cold and calculating after decades of syndicate warfare, narrowed into lethal slits.
"For ten years, we bled side by side over those shipping routes," Vincent muttered, his voice cold as winter ice. "We offered him an olive branch through marriage, and he spat in our faces for a kitchen maid. He thinks his estate is an impregnable fortress. He thinks because he sits in New York, he is untouchable."
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"Make him pay, Dad," Isabella whispered, her voice dripping with malice. "Burn his empire to the ground. Kill them all."
"Pack your bags for a secure safehouse, Isabella," Vincent commanded. "By sunrise, the Moretti family will learn what happens when you break bread with wolves and then lock them out of the house."
