Chapter 7 - The Shadow Council
By Sunday morning, news of the failed hit on Adrian Vale had sent shockwaves through the Chicago underworld.
The Moretti crime family had pulled their soldiers back into their fortified stronghold in the meatpacking district—a massive, six-block industrial complex surrounding the old Chicago Abattoir.
Inside the private wine cellar beneath Vale Manor, six men sat around a heavy oak table. They were the senior lieutenants of the Vale syndicate—men who controlled the docks, the unions, the waste management, and the gambling dens.
They were arguing loudly, their voices raised in aggressive panic.
“Moretti has eighty shooters locked inside the abattoir!” one captain yelled, slamming his fist on the table. “If we go in there, it’s a slaughter! We need to negotiate!”
“Negotiate?” another spat back. “He tried to burn Vale’s house with his kid inside! There is no negotiation!”
The door at the top of the cellar stairs opened.
Adrian Vale walked down, dressed in an immaculate charcoal suit. But he didn't sit at the head of the table.
He stepped aside, holding the door open.
Mara Sullivan walked down the stone steps. She wore a simple black sweater that hugged her large frame, heavy dark trousers, and her dark hair pulled back into a neat combat braid. She didn't look like a mob boss. She looked like an executioner who had taken a day off.
The lieutenants stopped talking. They stared at her with open disbelief.
“Who the hell is this?” the first captain snapped. “Adrian, why are you bringing a housemaid into a war council?”
Mara walked straight to the head of the table, pulled out the heavy oak master chair, and sat down. The chair groaned under her weight, but she didn't care.
She leaned forward, resting her thick forearms on the polished wood.
“My name is Mara,” she said, her voice quiet, heavy, and absolute. “And as of ten minutes ago, I am running tactical operations for this family.”
A lieutenant named Sal laughed out loud. “Is this a joke? Vale, you’ve lost your mind! You’re letting some fat cook tell us how to fight Dominic Moretti?”
Mara didn't raise her voice. She reached down, pulled a heavy iron meat hook from beneath her sweater, and drove it two inches deep into the oak table directly between Sal’s fingers.
Sal shrieked, pulling his hand back as splintered oak flew into the air.
“Dominic Moretti thinks in terms of street fights,” Mara said, her eyes locked on Sal’s terrified face. “He thinks he can hide behind eighty men with rifles inside a meatpacking plant.”
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She looked around the table at the frozen lieutenants.
“I spent six years designing breach strategies for fortified installations in the Persian Gulf,” Mara continued smoothly. “A meatpacking plant is not a fortress. It is a slaughterhouse with refrigeration pipes. And tomorrow night, we’re going to turn off the cold.”
