Chapter 14 - High Noon at the Aurelia Club
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At 11:50 AM, ten minutes before the high-noon sit-down of the Chicago Commission elders, Alderman Victor Vance stood at the head of the circular mahogany table inside the windowless, crimson-velvet vault room of the Aurelia Club on Rush Street.
At thirty-eight, Victor wore a $6,000 Brioni pinstripe suit, his hair slicked back with pomade, pacing confidently in front of the seven senior syndicate captains—men in their sixties who controlled the North Side, West Side, Cicero, and the unions.
Victor hadn't seen the live news broadcast from Wacker Drive twenty minutes earlier because phones and television feeds were strictly barred inside the lead-lined Commission vault. And because his scuba hit-team leader hadn't reported back since triggering the LaSalle floodgate at four a.m., Victor was one hundred percent certain that Roman Vane’s body was currently wedged against a sewer grate at the bottom of the Chicago River!
"It breaks my heart to call this table together against my own blood," Victor said solemnly, resting both hands on the mahogany table and shaking his head with practiced theatrical grief. "We all loved my Uncle Lorenzo, and for five years I have stood loyally behind my cousin Roman. But last night at The Sovereign, in front of two state senators, Roman lost his mind over a twenty-three-year-old housekeeping girl! And when two of my South Side soldiers went to Mercy General at ten o’clock to check on a hospitalized witness, Roman ambushed and murdered two made men of this family in cold blood!"
Around the circular table, harsh murmurs broke out among the older captains. Murdering two made soldiers without Commission approval—especially over a civilian woman—was a capital offense under the old rules.
"Why did Roman shoot your men at the hospital, Victor?" asked Don Bellini—the seventy-two-year-old Cicero patriarch and senior arbiter of the table.
"Because the girl’s dead father was a city building inspector who found out Roman secretly murdered Assistant U.S. Attorney David Miller three months ago and brought federal heat down on all our heads!" Victor declared, slamming his palm onto the table. "Notice that it’s five minutes to twelve and Roman isn't even here to answer the charges! He ran—or he got himself killed in the river tunnels last night trying to hide the evidence! Under Commission law, I move for an immediate vote to strip Roman Vane of the crown and place the family’s port and casino operations under my protection!"
Several of the captains nodded grimly. Don Bellini raised his hand to call the vote.
"All in favor of stripping Roman Vane—"
BOOM!
The heavy brass-studded double doors at the entrance of the vault room didn't just open—they swung back until the handles punched dents into the mahogany wainscoting.
Every captain at the table froze with their hands halfway in the air.
Victor Vance’s jaw dropped open, the color draining from his cheeks until his skin looked like sour milk.
Walking into the crimson-velvet vault room, completely dry, immaculate in a bespoke charcoal three-piece suit with the black onyx wolf ring gleaming on his right hand, was Roman Vane.
Walking directly at his left shoulder was Tessa Cole, dressed in a sharp black wool tailored coat over a high-necked cream silk blouse, her bandaged right hand tucked calmly into her pocket while her left hand carried a thin silver laptop.
And behind them came Matteo and four burly dockworkers rolling a heavy steel pallet jack loaded with three dripping, cement-encrusted stainless-steel hazardous-material drums—and a clear plastic evidence tray holding a chunk of grey concrete with a federal prosecutor’s gold badge and a monogrammed gold cufflink still embedded inside the stone!
"Sorry I’m two minutes late, gentlemen," Roman said, his low, lethal baritone cutting through the dead silence of the room like a broadsword. "My cousin’s plumbers left a water main running in the 1906 freight tunnel at four this morning, and it took us an extra ten minutes to wash the mud off Victor’s retirement fund."
Matteo shoved the heavy steel pallet jack forward until the three two-hundred-kilo drums stopped with a resounding metallic CLANG right at the edge of the circular mahogany table.
"What is the meaning of this, Roman?!" Don Bellini demanded, staring down at the cement-crusted barrels and the gold badge embedded in the chunk of concrete.
"Ask my cousin Victor," Roman said softly, never taking his gunmetal eyes off Victor’s trembling face. "He just told you all that I murdered AUSA David Miller three months ago and shot two of his men at Mercy General last night to cover it up. Tell them, Tessa."
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Tessa stepped right up to the edge of the Commission table, opened the silver laptop in front of Don Bellini, and pressed play on the time-stamped August 14th infrared photographs and ground-penetrating radar scans her father had hidden inside her ten-year-old sister’s teddy bear.
"My father was Frank Cole, Senior Structural Inspector for the City of Chicago," Tessa said, her voice clear, steady, and ringing with steel before the seven most dangerous patriarchs in the Midwest. "Three months ago, my father took these photographs at 2:00 AM at Pier 4 of Arthur Sterling’s Wacker Drive casino site—showing Alderman Victor Vance and Arthur Sterling burying AUSA David Miller alive inside the foundation caisson alongside two hundred kilos of stolen Canadian carfentanil!"
