Chapter 7 - The Romano Iron
The wind off Lake Michigan at the Port of Indiana was brutal enough to peel paint from shipping containers.
Gulls wheeled through the gray afternoon sky, screaming above the towering yellow gantry cranes that lined the deep-water slips. A massive freighter, registered out of Genoa, was groaning against the heavy rubber bumpers of Dock 4, its winches hauling giant pallets of structural steel from the hold into the waiting Romano rail cars.
I stood on the catwalk of the administrative tower, forty feet above the concrete apron, wrapped in a long black cashmere coat with a silver fox collar that had belonged to my mother.
Beside me stood Uncle Silvio, his heavy wool scarf tucked into his lapels, holding a clipboard with the terminal receipts.
"Three hundred thousand tons clear by midnight," Silvio reported, his breath misting in the freezing air. "The New York families have already confirmed the new routing contracts. They’re routing all their Canadian shipments through our slip instead of Moretti’s South Side yard."
"And the banks?" I asked.
"Aaron Feld called ten minutes ago. The Gary casino developers have officially defaulted on their bridge loans. Since Enzo can't produce the maritime collateral, the bank has seized his forty percent equity. By Monday morning, Enzo Moretti won't have enough cash to pay his housekeepers in Lake Forest."
I looked out over the gray, white-capped water of the lake. It was the same water that had carried my grandfather’s first rum-running skiffs ninety years ago. The Romano family had survived the Castellammarese War, the fall of Capone, and the federal purges of the eighties. We didn't break because a boy from Taylor Street forgot his vows.
"A car is coming up the perimeter road," Silvio said, pointing with his cane.
I looked down.
A single black Maserati, its front bumper cracked and crusted with salt, was speeding down the access road between the mountain of blue shipping containers. It was moving too fast, fishtailing on the icy gravel, before slamming on the brakes twenty yards from the base of our catwalk tower.
Enzo got out.
He wasn't wearing an overcoat. He was just wearing his suit jacket, his tie pulled loose, his white shirt stained with blood that wasn't his own. His hair was wild, whipped by the freezing lake wind, and his eyes were manic as he looked up at the catwalk.
Two Romano guards stepped forward, raising their shotguns, but I held up my hand from the railing.
"Let him come up," I said.
Silvio frowned. "Carmela, the man is unhinged. He has nothing left to lose."
"A man with nothing left to lose is only dangerous if he still has pride," I said. "Enzo has none."
Silvio nodded slowly to the men below. The guards lowered their weapons and stepped back, letting Enzo stagger toward the metal stairs of the tower.
The clang of his leather soles on the open-grate iron steps echoed above the roar of the gantry cranes. He was breathing heavily, each gasp sounding like a dry pump rattling in an empty well. When he reached the platform, he had to grab the railing to keep from falling.
He stopped ten feet from me.
He looked at me as if I were an apparition. His face was gray, his eyes hollowed out by grief, guilt, and forty-eight hours of total psychological collapse.
"Carmela," he gasped, his chest heaving under his thin linen shirt. "Carmela... I did it. I took care of them."
I didn't move. I kept my hands buried deep in the pockets of my fur coat. "Took care of whom, Enzo?"
"Paulie. Bianca. All of them." He took a stumbling step forward, his hands outstretched, trembling violently. "Bianca is gone. Leo took her. She’ll never touch this city again. She lied about everything, Carmela! Luca wasn't mine! The whole thing was a setup to rob us! She was sleeping with Paulie the whole time!"
"I know," I said calmly.
Enzo blinked, his mouth falling open. "You... you knew?"
"I knew three weeks before the accident," I told him, my voice carrying over the wind without rising. "I hired a private firm out of Detroit to pull the financial audits on Dante’s side businesses. I had the hotel receipts from the Drake, the rental records from the cottage in Wisconsin, and the bank transfers between Bianca and Paulie."
Enzo stared at me, his mind struggling to process the words. "You knew? Then why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you show me?"
"Because if I showed you, you would have defended her," I said, meeting his bloodshot eyes with an unblinking gaze that cut through him like a blade. "If I handed you the pictures, you would have told me I was insecure. You would have told me I was crazy. You would have told me that poor, tragic Bianca was just leaning on you for emotional support."
Enzo flinched as if I had struck him with a lead pipe.
"You had to lose everything to see the truth, Enzo," I continued. "You had to see your own empire crumble under your feet before you could pull your head out of your nostalgic fantasies. You didn't love Bianca. You loved the version of yourself you saw in her eyes—the big, generous hero saving the broken widow. You traded your actual wife and your unborn child for an audience of one."
A ragged sob tore through Enzo’s chest. He dropped to his knees right there on the frozen iron grating of the catwalk, forty feet above the concrete docks.
"Forgive me," he wept, pressing his palms against the cold metal, bowing his head until his forehead touched his knuckles. "Carmela, God forgive me, please. Take the money. Take the docks. Take the houses. Take every dime I have in the world! Just... don't leave me alone in the dark. Don't look at me like I'm a stranger."
"You aren't a stranger, Enzo," I said, walking slowly toward him until my boots stopped inches from his weeping face.
He looked up, a glimmer of desperate, pathetic hope flaring in his eyes. He reached up, trying to touch the hem of my coat. "Carmela..."
"You aren't a stranger," I repeated softly. "You are the man who killed my baby on West Archer Avenue because you were too busy playing father to another man’s son."
The hope died in his eyes so fast it was like blowing out a candle in a hurricane.
"The papers are signed," I said, pulling a certified document from Silvio’s clipboard and letting it drop onto his back. "The judge granted the dissolution at three o’clock. Our marriage no longer exists in the eyes of the law, the church, or the families. You have until midnight to vacate the Lake Forest house. If you aren't out by then, Silvio’s boys will put your belongings on the curb and burn them."
"Carmela, no..." he whimpered, grabbing the certified divorce decree with shaking, blood-stained fingers. "Where do I go? What do I do?"
"Go back to Taylor Street, Enzo," I said, turning away from him to look back out over the lake. "Go back to where you started before my father made you a don. Run your little bookmaking joints. Collect your five-dollar bets. And every time you look in the mirror, remember what you traded away for a pair of brown eyes and a lie."
I looked at Silvio. "Get him off my dock."
Silvio nodded to the guards at the base of the stairs. Two heavy-set Romano men climbed the iron ladder, grabbed Enzo Moretti by his arms, and hauled him to his feet.
He didn't fight them. He didn't scream.
May you like
He just let them drag him down the stairs like a sack of damp grain, his eyes locked on my back until the metal door of the administrative tower clicked shut behind him, cutting off his weeping forever.
***
