Chapter 5 - The War Cabinet
By three in the afternoon, the grand dining room of the Valenti estate had been converted into a command center.
Six of Adrian’s top lieutenants—men who controlled the docks, the construction unions, the waste management firms, and the private security networks across New York—sat around the long mahogany table.
On the main screen at the end of the room, the contents of Marcus’s thumb drives were displayed: wire transfer receipts totaling over fourteen million dollars, encrypted emails detailing Valenti supply routes, and audio files recorded in secret inside the estate’s private offices.
Marco finished brief overview, setting his tablet down on the table.
“It’s clean, Boss,” Marco said. “The feds don't even have this. Renata was funneling twenty percent of our dock revenues directly into Carmine Falcone’s personal account in the Cayman Islands for a decade.”
The lieutenants muttered in anger, their hands instinctively moving toward their suits.
“Where is Renata now?” asked Dino, a grizzled old veteran who managed the Brooklyn docks.
“In the gatehouse,” Adrian replied from the head of the table. “She doesn't know we have the drives yet. She still thinks she’s being held for framing a maid.”
“Kill her,” Dino said simply. “We put a bullet in her neck, throw her body in the bay, and hit Carmine’s warehouse in Queens tonight before he knows we’ve unlocked her network.”
“No,” Adrian said.
The room went silent.
“No?” Dino repeated, surprised. “Adrian... she sold out your father. She sold out your docks. She’s a snake inside our house.”
“And snakes are useful when you want to poison an enemy,” Adrian said, a slow, dark smile spreading across his face.
He stood up, walking toward the window overlooking the wet gardens.
“Carmine Falcone thinks he has us on the defensive,” Adrian explained, his tone measured and calculating. “He thinks we are scrambling to protect a maid and her child. He thinks Renata is still his secret asset inside these walls.”
He turned back to his men.
“We are going to let Renata 'escape' tonight,” Adrian revealed.
Marco blinked. “Boss?”
“We will leak a false security patrol route to her guard,” Adrian continued. “We will leave a car unlocked near the service gate. She will run straight to Carmine Falcone, thinking she’s saving her own life. And she will give Carmine the exact location where I am supposedly keeping Elena and the 'ledger' tonight.”
Dino’s eyes lit up with sudden understanding. “An ambush.”
“A slaughter,” Adrian corrected coldly. “Carmine will bring every gun he has to the old iron foundry in New Jersey, thinking he’s going to execute Elena Brooks and secure his offshore accounts. But when he opens those doors...”
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Adrian looked around the table at his six lieutenants.
“...he won't find a helpless woman,” Adrian finished. “He will find the entire Valenti family waiting for him.”
