Chapter 14 - The Ghost of the North End
|
At 9:45 AM, the rain had cleared from the Boston sky, leaving a cold, razor-sharp October sun glittering off the gold dome of the State House.
Instead of holding the ten-o’clock Commission sit-down at the damaged Charlestown pier loft—which Enzo’s port lawyers had cordoned off under the guise of a municipal gas-line inspection while keeping the news of Grigori Volkov’s wiped-out strike team completely off the airwaves—Enzo sent word at eight a.m. moving the meeting to the historic private banquet room upstairs at Villa Venezia in the heart of the North End.
Because Grigori’s phone and Rocco’s radio had gone dead in the harbor explosion at five-thirty, Don Salvatore Bellini had no idea whether Enzo had narrowly escaped the pier blast before learning who was behind it, or if Grigori was holding the girl at a secondary safehouse waiting for wire confirmation.
Inside the upstairs dressing parlor of Villa Venezia, Jade looked at her reflection in the gilded full-length mirror and barely recognized the woman staring back.
Gone was the faded blue diner uniform and the chapped-knuckled waitress who kept her head down.
She wore a bespoke, lethal-looking emerald-green silk blouse beneath a tailored black wool trouser suit that Enzo’s private clothier had altered for her at seven that morning, her chestnut hair swept up into a sleek crown that left the scarred Roman numeral IX behind her left ear completely, defiantly exposed to the light. Around her neck hung her late mother’s silver wedding band on a thin platinum chain, and tucked inside the custom holster beneath her left arm was the suppressed Glock 43.
The door clicked open behind her, and Enzo stepped inside.
He had changed into a fresh, razor-sharp three-piece black pinstripe suit, a silver silk tie knotted at his throat, looking every inch the absolute monarch of the Boston underworld.
He stopped behind her at the mirror, his hands coming to rest warm and solid on her shoulders as his eyes met hers in the glass.
"When we walk into that dining room," Enzo murmured, his chin brushing her temple, "the other three captains at the table—Castellano, DeLuca, and Santini—are old-school North End men who loved your father Lorenzo like a brother. For twenty-three years, they’ve taken orders from Salvatore on the East Boston docks because they believed the Russians wiped out your family."
"And once they see Uncle Marco’s bloody ring, the 2008 photographs of Salvatore holding the gun, and Grigori’s intake ledger?" Jade asked quietly.
"Under Commission blood law, a man who sells a boss’s child to outsiders and murders a made brother forfeits his life, his seat, and every dollar in his vaults on the spot," Enzo said darkly. He turned her in his arms so she was facing him directly, his thumb tracing the sharp line of her cheekbone. "Wait until I call you in. Let Salvatore hang himself with his own tongue in front of the captains first."
Jade looked up at him, her heart beating fast—not with fear, but with the fierce, intoxicating heat that had bound them together in the dark beneath the burning pier.
"Just don't take all the fun for yourself, Moretti," she whispered, rising up on her toes to brush her lips briefly, teasingly against the corner of his mouth before stepping back. "Remember who saved your neck in the diner."
Enzo’s eyes darkened with a promise that made her pulse skip, his fingers catching her chin for three seconds to deepen the kiss until her breath caught in her throat.
"Two minutes, Elena," he growled softly against her lips, before turning and striding out toward the main banquet hall.
Inside the private oak-paneled dining room of Villa Venezia, the three senior captains of the Boston syndicate were already seated around the long white-tablecloth table alongside sixty-five-year-old Don Salvatore Bellini, who was calmly spooning sugar into his espresso, flanked by four of his personal bodyguards standing against the back wall.
When the double doors swung open and Enzo Moretti walked in completely unharmed—flanked by six of his own heavily armed soldiers—Salvatore’s silver spoon paused for a fraction of a second inside his cup before the old fox smoothed his face into an expression of paternal concern.
"Enzo, my boy!" Salvatore said warmly, spreading his hands. "We heard there was a gas main explosion down at your Charlestown garage before dawn! Thank God you weren't in the building!"
"A tragic accident with a fuel tank, Godfather," Enzo replied silkily, walking to the head of the table without sitting down. "Though strangely enough, when my harbor divers dredged the slip under the pier at six this morning, they didn't find broken gas pipes. They found twenty dead Russians—and the body of my soldier, Rocco, who seemed to have forgotten who signed his paychecks."
Around the table, the three older captains—Castellano, DeLuca, and Santini—stiffened in their chairs, exchanging sharp glances.
May you like
Salvatore dabbed his mouth with a linen napkin, his cold dark eyes narrowing behind his gold-rimmed spectacles. "The Volkov brothers have been getting bold on the waterfront, Enzo. I warned your father years ago that the Russians have no honor—just like when they took out poor Lorenzo Conti in 2003 and your Uncle Marco in 2008."
"Funny you should mention Uncle Marco and Lorenzo Conti, Salvatore," Enzo said softly, reaching into his breast pocket and tossing the blood-rusted gold Moretti signet ring and enlarged eight-by-ten glossy prints of Grigori Volkov’s 2008 study camera negatives right onto the center of the white tablecloth in front of the three captains!
