Chapter 5 - The Commission’s Judgment
The Obsidian Club in downtown Chicago was an exclusive, subterranean lounge where the leaders of the Midwest underworld had gathered for fifty years to settle disputes, divide territory, and sentence rivals to death.
Tonight, the private back room was filled with cigar smoke and dark suits.
At the head of a massive mahogany conference table sat Dominic Valenti. Despite his gray hair and tailored silver suit, Valenti’s sharp blue eyes possessed the cunning of a predator who had outlived all his rivals.
Around the table sat eight capos from various secondary crime families across Illinois, Michigan, and Indiana.
“The situation is clear,” Valenti said, his deep, gravelly voice commanding absolute attention as he gestured with his cigar. “Adrian Romano has lost his mind. He executed Don Leo and Matteo Moretti inside a holy cathedral, ruined his own wedding, and brought a civilian woman into our world. The Moretti family is demanding blood, and Chicago is on the verge of total economic collapse.”
“So what are you proposing, Don Dominic?” a capo from Detroit asked, leaning forward. “We hit the Romano family?”
“We strip Adrian of his seat on the Commission,” Valenti declared smoothly. “We divide the Romano territory between the remaining families, and we appoint a new leadership structure to restore order.”
“A very generous offer, Dominic,” a cold voice echoed from the doorway.
Every man in the room spun around.
The double heavy steel doors of the back room burst open.
Adrian Romano walked in, flanked by Marco and twelve heavily armed soldiers clad in tactical gear, carrying suppressed submachine guns. The guards stationed outside the room lay bound and gagged in the hallway behind them.
The capos at the table scrambled to stand up, their hands instinctively reaching for weapons, but Marco’s team instantly trained twenty laser sights on their chests.
“Sit down!” Marco barked. “Every single one of you!”
The capos slowly lowered themselves back into their chairs, sweat glistening on their foreheads.
Adrian walked calmly to the foot of the mahogany table, pulling out a heavy leather chair and sitting down. He laid a sleek black folder flat on the polished wood.
“Adrian,” Valenti said, maintaining his calm, elder-statesman facade, though his knuckles tightened on his cigar. “You walk into a sanctioned Commission meeting with armed men? This is a violation of the high council laws!”
“The council laws were broken the moment you manipulated my wife into crashing my wedding, Dominic,” Adrian said softly.
Valenti’s eyes flickered with a brief, almost imperceptible flash of surprise before he laughed quietly. “I don't know what you're talking about, son. I mediated your treaty in good faith.”
Adrian slid the black folder down the length of the table. It stopped right in front of Valenti.
“Inside that folder,” Adrian explained, leaning back and resting his elbows on the arms of his chair, “are the GPS logs from your private security vehicle in Iowa. Photos of your agent dropping the note into Claire’s purse. And bank records showing a three-million-dollar wire transfer from your offshore account in Panama to Don Leo Moretti’s private account two weeks ago.”
The capos around the table gasped, looking at Valenti in shock.
“You paid Don Leo to poison the wine,” Adrian continued, his voice cutting through the smoke-filled room like a razor. “You knew Don Leo was greedy enough to take your money and try to eliminate me. But you also knew that if I died without knowing about the poison, my family would simply name a new Don and destroy the Morettis anyway.”
Adrian pointed a long finger at Valenti. “So you needed Claire. You needed a spectacle. You needed my pregnant lover to walk into the cathedral, expose the Morettis, and force me to execute Don Leo myself in front of two hundred witnesses. That way, both the Romanos and Morettis would be ruined, and you could play the peaceful mediator coming in to take everything.”
Valenti stared at the folder, his face turning ashen. The elder mob boss realized he had been completely outmaneuvered by the younger Don.
“You're smart, Adrian,” Valenti murmured, dropping his cigar into an ashtray. “Smarter than your father was.”
“My father trusted you,” Adrian said, his voice dropping into an icy register. “That was his only mistake.”
Adrian looked around the table at the eight terrified capos from across the Midwest.
“Dominic Valenti has violated the foundational trust of the Commission,” Adrian announced loudly. “He orchestrated a murder plot against a sitting Don, used an innocent woman and an unborn child as pawns, and attempted to ignite a war that would have cost all of your families millions of dollars.”
He rested his hand on the butt of the custom Colt .45 holstered at his hip.
“Is there any man at this table who dissents from my judgment?” Adrian asked.
The room was deathly quiet. Not a single capo spoke. One by one, they bowed their heads in silent submission to Adrian’s authority.
“Good,” Adrian said. He stood up from his chair.
May you like
“Marco,” Adrian said without looking back as he walked toward the exit. “Clean the room.”
As Adrian pushed open the steel doors into the night air of Chicago, the muffled, rapid pops of suppressed gunfire echoed behind him, signaling the final, absolute end of the old order in the Chicago underworld.
