Chapter 6 - The Gathering at 4th Street
The warehouse on 4th Street was the same cold, unheated building where I had sat across from Ray Calder twenty-four hours ago.
The concrete floor was swept clean. Snow rattled against the corrugated iron roof like iron filings dropped from the sky. But today, the vast, cavernous room was not empty.
Forty men stood in the gloom—the iron spine of the Moretti syndicate.
Captains who controlled the rail yards, crew chiefs who ran the fuel depots, veterans who had fought alongside my father in the syndicate wars of the ninety's. They wore heavy wool coats, leather jackets, their faces weathered, scarred, marked by decades of survival in the Chicago underground.
In the center of the floor, standing on a wooden pallet under a single hanging lightbulb, was a laptop computer connected to a heavy satellite transmitter.
Beside it stood Delia Marlowe.
She had been brought from the hospital in a secure, armored van, wrapped in a thick fur coat my driver had brought for her. Her face was pale, her temple bandaged, but her posture was straight, unyielding. She stood beside me not as a victim, but as the chief witness for the execution of the Vandermark family.
I stepped onto the wooden pallet. The forty men went instantly silent, their eyes locking onto mine.
“Six years ago,” I began, my voice echoing off the iron rafters, “we buried Ewan Moretti. We were told he died in a territorial dispute. We were told the North Side had nothing to do with it.”
A low murmur passed through the room—a dark, rhythmic rumble of old memories.
“Four years ago,” I continued, “my father died of what we were told was a sudden brain hemorrhage. And three weeks from now, I was supposed to marry Celeste Vandermark to bring 'peace' to this city.”
I pulled the red ledger from my coat and held it high above my head under the bare lightbulb.
“This is Ewan’s ledger,” I roared. “Found this morning behind the altar of my mother’s house. Ewan didn't die in a gang war. He was shot by Celeste Vandermark at Pier 44 because he found out her family was using our docks to ship nerve agents to international cartels. My father didn't die of a stroke. He was poisoned by the Vandermarks’ doctor to put me in power while I was too young to see the truth!”
The warehouse erupted into a deafening roar of rage.
Guns were drawn, heavy boots stomped against the concrete, curses in Italian, Polish, and Irish echoed off the walls. Men who had served my father for thirty years were weeping with fury, their knuckles white as they gripped their sidearms.
“Silence!” I commanded, raising my hand.
The room snapped back to quiet, thirty men leaning forward, breathing heavy in the freezing air.
I turned to Delia. She stepped forward, took a flash drive from her pocket, and plugged it into the laptop.
A video played across the large projection screen set against the brick wall—a crystal-clear recording taken from the hidden security feeds inside the Vandermarks’ private club downtown.
It showed Celeste Vandermark sitting across from her father, Victor Vandermark, and the Chief of Police for the 3rd District. On the audio track, clear as a bell, Celeste’s voice rang through the cold warehouse:
“Leo knows nothing. He’s an arrogant fool who thinks he’s running the South Side while we use his routes for our chemical shipments. Once the wedding is signed, we will eliminate his captains one by one, attribute the hits to the West Side, and take total ownership of the Moretti assets within six months.”
The video cut out.
The silence that followed was far worse than the noise that had come before. It was the quiet of forty men who had just been handed their death warrants and were now deciding how many of their enemies they were going to drag to hell with them.
“We don't go to the police,” said Sal, an old captain with a scarred face who had run the fuel docks since 1985. “The police chief is in her pocket.”
“We don't need the police, Sal,” I said, looking every man in the eye. “Today at 4:00 PM, the Vandermark family is hosting their annual winter gala at the Drake Hotel. The Governor will be there. The Mayor will be there. The entire North Side elite will be sitting in that ballroom, celebrating thirty years of their fake nobility.”
I leaned forward, resting my hands on the wooden railing of the pallet.
“We are not going there to start a war,” I said. “We are going there to end one. Delia will present the evidence directly to the Federal Prosecutor who will be sitting at the head table as a guest of honor. And while the feds lock the front doors... my men will be taking the rear exits.”
A dark, terrifying grin spread across Sal’s old face. “And Celeste, Boss?”
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I looked at Delia. Her dark eyes were steady, cold, filled with the memory of her dead brother Thomas, her ruined medical career, and six years of living in the shadows.
“Celeste belongs to Delia,” I said.
