Chapter 6 - The Siege of Cicero
The Cicero social club—a sprawling, fortress-like brick building on 22nd Street that served as the primary operational headquarters for Victor Moretti’s faction—looked like any other tired Italian-American social club from the outside. Inside, behind reinforced steel doors and bulletproof glass windows, it was an armory and a command center for the bloodiest faction war Chicago had seen since the nineties.
At 11:30 a.m., Victor Moretti—a sixty-year-old predator with silver hair slicked back with pomade and diamond rings on three fingers—sat at a poker table in the back room, sipping espresso and laughing at a joke told by his chief enforcer, Rocco.
"The hospital is locked down like Fort Knox," Rocco reported, leaning against the mahogany wall. "Caruso survived the surgery, boss. And reports say Mancini hasn't left the trauma wing all night. Some civilian girl got mangled on the I-290, and Mancini’s personal security has taken over half the third floor."
Moretti smiled, showing teeth yellowed by cigars. "Let him sit by a dying girl. The Mancini line is dead anyway. Without an heir, without blood to pass the crown to, his empire will tear itself apart the moment a federal prosecutor drops a RICO indictment on his head."
The heavy oak door at the front of the social club didn't open.
It exploded inward.
The reinforced steel hinges sheared off their bolts with a deafening shriek of tearing metal, slamming against the interior brick walls and crushing the two guards stationed behind it before they could even draw their weapons.
Before the smoke from the breaching charges could clear, sixteen men in tactical black gear poured into the room, their suppressed submachine guns sweeping every corner with military precision. They didn't shout warnings. They didn't negotiate. They moved like ghosts through a slaughterhouse.
Rocco reached for his shoulder holster, but a 9mm round from Marco Vance’s Sig Sauer took him cleanly through the center of his palm, pinning his hand to the mahogany poker table with a wet crunch of bone.
Victor Moretti didn't move. He sat frozen in his velvet armchair, his coffee cup trembling against the saucer as the dark shadow of Luca Mancini stepped over the splintered remains of the front door.
Luca wore his midnight-black bespoke suit, the Vacheron Constantin watch gleaming coldly in the fluorescent light of the club. His face was a mask of absolute, terrifying serenity. He walked across the room, stepping over groaning enforcers without glancing down, until he stood two feet away from Moretti’s poker table.
"Victor," Luca said, his voice quiet, almost conversational.
Moretti swallowed hard, his face turning the color of curdled milk. He tried to force a crooked smile. "Luca... what is this? We have an arrangement—"
"You had an arrangement," Luca corrected, pulling a folded manila document from his interior jacket pocket and dropping it onto the poker table beside Moretti’s espresso cup. "Twelve years ago, you paid a gynecological endocrinologist named Heinrich von Berg to fabricate a medical file. You wanted to ensure the Mancini name died out."
Moretti’s eyes darted down to the document—the hospital’s genetic cross-match verification report from Rush University Medical Center, showing a 99.9999 percent parent-child linkage between Luca Mancini and Elena Vasquez.
"I... I don't know what you're talking about," Moretti stammered, sweat beading on his forehead.
Luca reached out, grabbed Moretti by the silk lapels of his suit, and hauled him entirely out of his velvet armchair with one hand, slamming him against the brick wall so hard the pictures rattled off their hooks.
"You tried to sterilize my bloodline," Luca whispered, his face inches from Moretti’s, his gray eyes burning like forest fires in winter. "You thought you had buried my future in a clinic in Vienna."
"Luca—wait—" Moretti choked out, his hands clawing uselessly at Luca’s wrists.
"My future was never in Vienna," Luca said, his voice dropping into a growl that vibrated through the brickwork. "My future was growing on Taylor Street. She survived your poverty, she survived your shadows, and last night, she survived an interstate collision because my blood was the only thing on earth that could keep her heart beating."
Moretti’s eyes widened with sudden, horrific understanding. "The girl... the girl from the I-290... that’s—"
"My daughter," Luca finished for him.
He didn't draw a weapon. He simply let go of Moretti’s lapels, letting the older man slide down the brick wall until he was crumpled on the floor like a broken doll. Luca turned his back on him, walking toward the shattered front entrance where Marco stood waiting.
"Burn the building," Luca said calmly, adjusting his cuffs.
May you like
"And Moretti?" Marco asked.
"Send him to Vienna," Luca replied without turning around. "Let him explain to the doctors there how a dead bloodline just took over his entire empire."
