Chapter 6 - The War Council
By 4:00 AM, the fire engines were screaming down 14th Street, fighting a three-alarm blaze that consumed the meatpacking plant and everything inside it.
Back at the Moretti estate in Riverdale, the master bedroom in the east wing had been converted into a private medical suite. Dr. Mercer—a trusted family physician who had been on my payroll for fifteen years—had stitched Sarah’s lip, set her broken wrist, and put her on an IV drip.
She was sleeping peacefully under a warm comforter.
Curled up right beside her, holding her mother's uninjured hand in both of her tiny paws, was Emma. The little girl refused to leave the room, her small face peaceful for the first time since I had met her in the bakery.
I stood on the second-story balcony outside the bedroom, watching the snow fall gently over the dark pine trees of the estate grounds.
The heavy oak doors downstairs clicked open. Marco walked up the stairs, carrying a fresh cup of black coffee, his face somber.
"Dominic Valenti called an emergency session of the Commission," Marco reported, handing me the coffee. "It's set for eight o'clock this morning at the St. Regis Hotel."
I took a sip of the hot black liquid. "How many bosses are attending?"
"All five families," Marco said grimly. "Old man Rossini is presiding. Valenti is claiming you launched an unprovoked military strike on his property, executed four of his soldiers, crippled his underboss, and stole thirty million dollars in private corporate bonds."
"Is that what he's telling them?" I chuckled softly—a dark, humorless sound.
"He didn't mention the cleaner," Marco added. "He didn't mention the child. He's framing this as a direct bid by the Moretti family to seize control of the Midtown docks."
I turned around, leaning my back against the stone balustrade. "And the contents of that black briefcase?"
"Our crypto guys went through the hard drives an hour ago," Marco’s eyes gleamed with cold satisfaction. "It's not just offshore accounts, Calder. It's the master ledger for a massive human trafficking operation running through the port of Newark. Valenti was taking a fifteen percent cut from an international cartel to let shipping containers pass through his terminals unchecked."
My blood boiled. Human trafficking. The one red line the Commission had established thirty years ago—the one line every boss in New York agreed never to cross under penalty of total execution.
"Dominic didn't just break our truce," I whispered, staring out into the dark. "He brought poison into our house."
"If we present those drives to Chairman Rossini at the sit-down," Marco murmured, "the Commission will pull Valenti's backing instantly. They'll order a house-cleaning."
"No," I said flatly, tossing the paper coffee cup into a nearby bin.
Marco blinked. "No? Boss, that drive is our get-out-of-jail-free card! It clears us with the Commission!"
"If I hand those drives to Rossini," I said, looking through the glass door into the bedroom where Emma was sleeping beside her mother, "the Commission will bury the story to protect their own reputations. They'll execute Valenti behind closed doors, partition his territory, and Sarah Jenkins will remain a living witness who knows too much. The other four families will want her dead just to tidy up the edges."
Marco went quiet. He knew I was right. In our world, witnesses were loose ends, no matter how innocent they were.
"So what's the play, Calder?" Marco asked softly.
May you like
I reached into my pocket, pulling out my satellite phone.
"We don't go to the Commission to defend ourselves," I said, my voice dropping into a lethal, low register. "We go to the sit-down to put Dominic Valenti in the ground."
