Chapter 4 - The Maid's Strike
The impact sounded like a baseball bat hitting a sack of wet concrete.
Vincent was thrown sideways off his feet, his body crashing into the heavy walnut dining table, sending glass goblets, silver cutlery, and expensive bourbon crashing to the floor in a chaotic cascade.
His silver revolver tumbled from his coat pocket, skidding across the wet marble floor toward Dominic’s feet.
Dominic didn't hesitate. He stepped on the gun with the heel of his leather boot, pinning it against the stone. He picked it up with a smooth, practiced motion, pointing the barrel straight at Vincent’s chest as his younger brother lay groaning on the floor, holding his bleeding temple.
In the middle of the room, Claire stood holding the heavy oak kitchen chair. One of the chair’s wooden legs had snapped cleanly upon impact, but her posture remained upright, her apron unruffled, her breathing completely steady.
Every capo in the room stared at her in utter shock.
Paulie’s mouth hung open. Frank Bellini looked at the broad-shouldered fifty-year-old woman as if she had suddenly transformed into a six-foot-four hitman from New York.
Claire adjusted her reading glasses, looking down at the broken leg of her chair with a slight sigh of disappointment.
“That was a good chair,” Claire said quietly. “I’ve had it since 2012.”
Dominic looked from the revolver in his hand to Claire, a rare, faint glint of genuine admiration passing through his dark eyes.
“I’ll buy you a new chair, Claire,” Dominic said softly. “Twelve of them, if you want.”
“Thank you, Mr. Moretti,” she replied, stepping back toward the service doorway. “Oak would be preferable. Pine splits too easily.”
Dominic turned his focus back to the floor. He cocked the hammer of the silver revolver with his thumb. The loud, metallic click resonated through the room, cutting off Vincent’s painful groans instantly.
Vincent looked up from the floor, blood trickling down his cheek from his shattered hairline. His eyes were wide with pure, unadulterated terror as he stared into the barrel of his own gun.
“Dom... please,” Vincent rasped, holding up his hands. “We’re blood! We’re brothers! Pop made us promise on his deathbed that we’d never draw iron on family!”
“Pop didn't know you’d sell his organization to line your own pockets in the Caymans,” Dominic said coldly. “Pop didn't know you’d pay a doctor to let me bleed out on a operating table.”
Dominic looked up at Frank Bellini.
“Frank.”
“Yeah, Dom?”
“Take Martin Keller and my brother down to the wine cellar,” Dominic ordered, his voice steady as granite. “Behind the third rack where they hid my chair. Lock the iron gate. Nobody talks to them. Nobody feeds them. I’ll deal with them after I clean up the rest of this house.”
Frank Bellini nodded grimly. He gestured to four heavy-set soldiers near the door. “You heard the boss. Get them up.”
Two soldiers grabbed Martin Keller under his arms, dragging the weeping attorney out through the side entrance. Two more hauled Vincent to his feet, pulling his arms behind his back despite his thrashing and screams.
“Dom! You can't do this!” Vincent screamed as he was dragged toward the back stairs. “The captains voted! The organization is mine! You’re a cripple, Dom! You can't run this city without me!”
The heavy oak doors slammed shut, cutting off Vincent’s screams, leaving only the sound of rain beating against the high stained-glass windows of the grand dining hall.
The remaining thirty capos stood in complete, rigid silence. The gold Montblanc pen lay forgotten beside the unsigned authority papers on the whiskey-stained tablecloth.
Dominic walked slowly to the head of the table.
He picked up the heavy, high-backed leather chair—his real chair—and pulled it out. He lowered himself onto the thick red leather cushion. His shattered leg rested comfortably beneath the mahogany wood. The crest of the Moretti family rose behind his head like an iron shield.
He looked at the thirty men standing before him.
“Sit down,” Dominic said.
Every capo in the room moved instantly, pulling their leather chairs in with sharp, synchronized movements, sitting straight with their hands placed flat on the table.
Dominic picked up the silver remote transmitter Claire had pulled from under his chair. He set it in the center of the table.
“This house has been compromised,” Dominic said, his eyes scanning every face in the room. “My brother was a snake, but he didn't have the brains to set up an offshore network and a military-grade wire tap on his own. Someone gave him the hardware. Someone in New York... or someone sitting at this table.”
Nobody moved. Nobody dared to breathe.
Dominic turned his head toward the service door.
Claire was standing near the pantry entrance, holding a damp linen cloth and a silver tray, preparing to clean up the shattered glass from Vincent’s fall.
“Claire,” Dominic called out.
She paused, holding the tray against her waist. “Yes, Mr. Moretti?”
Dominic motioned with his hand, gesturing for her to approach the head of the table.
“Leave the glass,” Dominic said. “Come here.”
Claire set the tray down on a side sideboard and walked over to the head of the table, stopping beside Dominic’s high-backed chair.
Dominic reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a heavy gold ring set with a black onyx stone—the seal ring of the Moretti patriarch—and laid it on the table beside the silver transmitter.
He looked up at the fifty-year-old maid.
“You’ve lived in this house for fourteen years, Claire,” Dominic said clearly, his voice carrying to every corner of the silent hall. “You know every door, every wire, every secret, and every man who walks through that front gate.”
“I pay attention, sir,” Claire replied simply.
“Starting tonight,” Dominic announced, his eyes locking onto the capos at the table, “Claire Bennett is not part of the domestic staff. She is the head of my personal security detail for this estate.”
A ripple of disbelief passed through the younger lieutenants, but after watching Vincent get dragged away and seeing Claire shatter a heavy chair over a man’s head, not a single voice rose in protest.
Paulie swallowed hard, leaning forward slightly. “Dom... with all respect... she’s a maid.”
Dominic looked at Paulie with eyes like cold iron.
“She was the only person in this room who had the courage to give me a seat when I was bleeding,” Dominic said softly. “And she was the only person smart enough to find the trap you were all walking into.”
Dominic turned back to Claire.
“Where do we start, Claire?”
May you like
Claire adjusted her reading glasses, pulling a small black notebook from her apron pocket.
“We start with the garage, Mr. Moretti,” Claire said smoothly. “There are three black sedans parked outside that don't belong to any of your capos. And the drivers have been sitting in the security room with their engines running for the last forty minutes.”
