Chapter 6 - The Whispers of the Syndicate
While the sun shone brightly on the DeLuca estate, forty miles south in an abandoned meatpacking district of Cicero, Illinois, the shadows of Chicago’s underworld were gathering in the dark.
Inside a windowless, cigar-smoke-filled boardroom behind a butcher shop, five men sat around a heavy mahogany table. These were the leaders of the remaining Outfit crews—men who had built their fortunes on illegal gambling, extortion, and narcotics before Julian DeLuca had forced them out of the city.
At the head of the table sat Dominic "The Hammer" Moretti—a fifty-two-year-old mobster with a scarred face, cold yellowed eyes, and a reputation for ruthless violence that made even his own lieutenants flinch.
“Look at him,” Moretti spat, throwing a copy of the Chicago Tribune onto the table.
On the front page was a full-color photograph of Julian DeLuca standing beside Nora and Lily at the foundation gala, smiling under the sun.
“The last DeLuca,” Moretti sneered, pouring himself a shot of cheap whiskey. “His father ruled this city with an iron fist. And now the son is giving away our shipping ports to build dance schools for orphans. He’s weak. He’s soft. He’s completely abandoned the bloodline.”
“He’s clean, Dominic,” one of the lieutenants warned nervously. “The feds closed all their files on him last month. If we touch him now, every law enforcement agency in the state will come down on us like a ton of bricks.”
“The feds don't run the streets, Jimmy!” Moretti snapped, slamming his fist onto the table so hard the glasses rattled. “Julian controls thirty miles of prime lakefront real estate that belongs to the Outfit. He holds fifty million dollars in Swiss bearer bonds that his father hid before he died—bonds that Thomas Bell promised to deliver to us before he went and threw himself off a balcony!”
Moretti leaned forward, his yellowed eyes burning with a cruel, predatory light.
“Julian thinks he can just walk away from this life,” Moretti whispered. “He thinks a little girl and a pretty maid can clean the blood off his hands. But you don't leave the syndicate until you’re in a wooden box.”
“What’s the plan, boss?” Jimmy asked cautiously.
May you like
Moretti pulled a black leather folder from beneath the table and tossed it across the wood. Inside were high-resolution surveillance photographs of Lily Bennett walking to her new private kindergarten in Lincoln Park, accompanied only by a single driver.
“We don't hit Julian directly,” Moretti smiled, a sickening, jagged expression. “We take the little girl. When Julian comes to trade his Swiss bonds for his daughter’s life, we bury them both in the concrete foundation of the new shipping terminal.”
