Chapter 15 - The Wolf’s Justice
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Around the circular mahogany table, the seven veteran Chicago captains leaned forward as one, staring down at the high-resolution thermal and infrared photographs glowing on the laptop screen—and then at the chunk of concrete sitting on the tray beside them, where the gold cufflink engraved with V.V. sat frozen in the hardened grey mortar six inches from AUSA David Miller’s federal shield.
"Carfentanil?!" Don Bellini’s gravelly voice dropped into a shaking, venomous whisper as he looked up from the screen at Victor Vance. "This table passed a blood decree five years ago banning fentanyl and synthetic poison from Cook County! You brought two hundred kilos of elephant tranquilizer into our city behind our backs, murdered a federal prosecutor without sanction to cover your tracks, and buried him inside the foundation of the man bidding against this family’s casino license?!"
"And when my father refused to sign off on the cracked concrete pier," Tessa continued coldly, looking straight into Victor’s bulging, bloodshot eyes, "Victor and Arthur Sterling had my father murdered in his pickup truck with a potassium injection that mimicked a heart attack. And last night at ten-thirty, while I was with Roman, Victor sent those two South Side soldiers and a Milwaukee kidnapper into the Pediatric Cardiac ICU at Mercy General to cut my ten-year-old sister off her heart-support drip and kidnap her!"
The silence around the Commission table turned lethal.
Even the two South Side captains who had walked into the room thirty minutes ago leaning toward Victor’s side slowly pushed their chairs three feet back from him, their faces hard as granite. In their world, betraying the family to an outsider like Arthur Sterling while trafficking banned poison and sending hitmen into a children’s cancer and heart ward was a death sentence with no appeal.
"It’s a setup!" Victor shrieked, sweat pouring down his temples as he backed away from the head of the table toward his two personal bodyguards standing near the rear service bar. "Arthur Sterling forced me to store those drums! If I didn't help him dispose of Miller, the feds were going to indict the whole Seventh Ward! And Sterling’s tower is worth two billion dollars—once the license clears on Friday, there would have been enough money for every man at this table!"
"About that two-billion-dollar tower, Victor," Roman said softly, picking up the remote control for the wall-mounted monitor behind the bar and clicking on the live midday news broadcast from Wacker Drive.
On the screen, live helicopter footage showed forty police and fire department vehicles surrounding the evacuated glass atrium of Sterling Tower, where red city CONDEMNED / STRUCTURAL FAILURE tape was being stretched across the shattered thirty-foot glass facade—while a weeping, handcuffed Arthur Sterling was being led out of his corporate offices on LaSalle Street by six FBI agents from the Public Corruption Task Force after an anonymous courier had dropped a duplicate copy of Frank Cole’s radar scans and financial records regarding Arthur’s half of the plot on the U.S. Attorney’s desk at eleven-fifteen!
Victor stared at the television screen as his two-billion-dollar escape plan crumbled into dust on live television.
Realizing he was a dead man standing, Victor didn't wait for the captains to vote.
He lunged inside his pinstripe suit jacket, ripped out a gold-plated Colt Mustang .380 automatic, and grabbed the collar of the nearest elderly captain—Don Santini—trying to drag the seventy-year-old man out of his chair as a human shield while aiming the pistol across the table straight at Tessa!
"If I go down, Vane, your little maid goes first—!" Victor screamed.
Roman didn't even need to draw his gun—because Tessa was standing two feet from the edge of the heavy mahogany table where the three cement-crusted steel drums sat on the hydraulic pallet jack.
Before Victor’s finger could tighten on the trigger, Tessa slammed her boot down on the hydraulic foot-release pedal of the pallet jack while shoving the top edge of the front four-hundred-pound steel drum with her left forearm!
The heavy steel drum tipped off the lowered jack platform and rolled straight across the hardwood floor with the momentum of a bowling ball made of lead, smashing squarely into Victor Vance’s shins with a sickening CRACK of snapped tibia bones!
Victor’s shot went harmlessly into the velvet ceiling chandelier as his legs folded underneath him like wet cardboard, dropping him screaming onto the carpet!
In three calm strides, Roman walked around the table and planted the heel of his Italian leather shoe directly on top of Victor’s gun wrist, grinding the bone into the floorboards until the gold-plated .380 slipped from his nerveless fingers.
Roman looked around the circular table at the seven captains.
"Does anyone at this table have anything left to say on my cousin’s behalf?" Roman asked quietly.
May you like
Don Bellini stood up, adjusted his cuffs, and looked down at Victor writhing on the floor.
"The concrete mixer down at the Calumet salvage yard is pouring a new retaining wall at two o’clock, Roman," the old patriarch said coldly. "Since your cousin likes hiding his mistakes in wet cement, let him see how it feels from the inside."
