Chapter 6 - The Fall of the House of Vale
The next thirty minutes passed in a blur of surreal, terrifying tension.
Don Joe Moretti’s strike team—six heavily armed men dressed in dark suits, led by his top enforcer, Marco "The Hammer" Rossi—arrived at the Gold Coast mansion in two blacked-out Lincoln Continentals. They didn't ring the doorbell. They used a master passkey to open the front doors, their boots pounding heavy against the marble stairwell as they swept into the grand parlor.
When Marco Rossi stepped through the doorway, his broad, scarred face was grim. He took one look at the legal documents on the coffee table, picked up the certified toxicology report I had laid beside them, and scanned the pages with practiced, cold eyes.
"Thallium," Marco spat, tossing the papers onto the sofa. He looked at Frank Torrio with pure, absolute disgust. "You tried to poison a Boss in his own bed, Frank. Your grandfather would spit on your grave."
Frank didn't say a word. He stood with his hands raised, his eyes fixed on the floor as two of Marco’s men stripped him of his shoulder holster, his watch, and his signet ring.
"What about them?" Marco asked, pointing his shotgun toward Senator Vale and Vanessa.
Senator Vale stepped forward, trying to summon his political authority, his voice trembling with desperate outrage. "I am a United States Senator! You touch me, and the Governor will deploy the National Guard to tear your organization apart!"
Marco Rossi laughed—a short, dark, cruel sound.
"The Governor takes two hundred thousand dollars a year from Don Joe’s private foundation, Senator," Marco said coldly. "Your career is finished. By eight o'clock tonight, the Federal Bureau of Investigation will receive an anonymous package containing your Skokie lab receipts, your offshore wire transfers, and three wiretapped phone calls between you and Frank Torrio."
Vanessa fell to her knees on the rug, wrapping her arms around my boots, weeping hysterically.
"Jack! Please!" she begged, looking up at me with terrified, tear-stained eyes. "Don't let them take me! I love you! I was just confused! My father forced me!"
I looked down at her—at the woman who had sat beside my bed for four months, smiling while she dropped poison into my glass, telling me I was going to be fine.
I didn't feel anger. I felt only a profound, hollow disgust.
I pulled my boot gently out of her grip, stepping back.
"Take them out of my house," I told Marco Rossi.
"And Frank?" Marco asked, leaning close to my ear.
I looked Frank Torrio straight in the eye—the man who had carried me on his shoulders when I was twelve years old, the man who had sworn an oath to protect my family.
"The Council's rule, Marco," I said, my voice barely above a whisper. "No exceptions."
Frank closed his eyes and nodded once, knowing his fate was sealed. Marco’s men grabbed Frank by his arms and dragged him down the service stairwell toward the basement, while two other enforcers escorted the weeping Vanessa and the swearing Senator out toward the waiting Lincolns.
Within ten minutes, the grand parlor was empty again.
The house was quiet.
The heavy, suffocating cloud of treason that had hung over the Gold Coast mansion for months was gone, but the toll on my body was finally catching up with me.
The adrenaline that had sustained my trembling limbs through the confrontation began to bleed away.
My knees buckled.
The Sig Sauer slipped from my numb fingers, clattering against the parquet floor.
I collapsed onto the leather sofa, my chest heaving, cold sweat pouring off my forehead in freezing streams. My vision blurred, turning into a dim, watery grey as my heart fluttered erratically against my ribs.
Thump... thump... thump...
The world was spinning into blackness.
Through the fog rolling over my eyes, I heard the sudden, desperate sound of footfalls pounding up the front steps.
Not heavy boots.
Small, fast steps.
The grand parlor doors burst open.
Elena Ramirez ran into the room, her hair wet from the Chicago rain, holding a small black medical bag she had taken from Dr. Harris’s office downstairs.
"Jack!" she screamed, dropping to her knees beside the sofa.
She felt my neck, her warm fingers pressing against my ice-cold carotid artery.
"His pulse is down to thirty!" she yelled over her shoulder toward the hallway, where Dr. Harris was being pushed into the room by Marco Rossi’s remaining security guard.
"Get the antidote!" Dr. Harris yelled, his medical instincts overriding his fear. "Prussian Blue! It's in my diagnostic kit! Three grams orally immediately!"
Elena didn't wait for Harris. She grabbed a small glass vial of dark blue liquid from the kit, snapped the top off with her bare fingers, and lifted my head off the leather pillow.
"Drink it, Jack!" she sobbed, holding the glass to my blue, cracked lips. "Drink it! For me! For Isabel!"
The name of my daughter echoed through the fading shadows of my mind like a bell ringing through a fog.
Isabel.
I forced my throat to swallow.
The dark, thick blue liquid tasted like earth and iron, burning a warm path down my frozen gullet into my stomach.
Elena held my head against her chest, her arms wrapped tight around my trembling shoulders, weeping softly into my hair as the rain hammered against the grand parlor windows.
"I'm here, Jack," she whispered over and over, her warmth seeping into my cold skin. "I'm not leaving you again. I promise. I'm not leaving."
May you like
And as the darkness finally took me, for the first time in four months...
I didn't feel cold.
