Chapter 11 - THE COMMISSION’S COURT
The heavy mahogany doors of the Gold Coast Ballroom swung shut behind us.
The thud echoed like a gavel.
Six armed arbiters stepped into position along the perimeter walls, their hands resting flat against their jacket lapels.
No one moved.
The silence was so heavy I could hear the rhythmic ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner.
Helena Castellano lifted her head.
Her dark eyes, the exact same shade of espresso as Dominic’s, locked onto her son.
A flicker of relief washed across her lined face, but her posture remained sovereign.
Unbroken.
"Dominic," she spoke, her voice clear and resonant.
"Mother," Dominic answered with a slight bow of his head.
Don Carmine leaned forward, setting his crystal tumbler on the white linen tablecloth with a dull clink.
"You violate the Charter by bringing civilians into this chamber, Dominic," Carmine rasped.
"The girl leaves."
"The hound goes to the incinerator."
Zeus’s head lifted.
His nostrils flared as he caught Carmine’s scent.
A low, subterranean rumble started deep in his chest.
Not a loud growl.
A warning.
I placed my palm flat against Zeus’s muscular shoulder, my fingers exerting gentle, steady pressure on his acupressure points.
"Easy, Zeus," I murmured, keeping my voice below the room's frequency.
"Steady."
Zeus’s ears twitched, and the rumble subsided.
Don Falcone, the gray-haired boss of the New York faction, leaned forward from his seat on the right wing of the horseshoe table.
His sharp eyes studied Zeus’s scarred face, then shifted to me.
"A hundred-pound fighting dog standing down with a whisper," Falcone observed, his voice thick with a Brooklyn rasp.
"I haven't seen an animal with that kind of discipline since my grandfather kept Mastiffs in Palermo."
Falcone looked at Dominic.
"Who is she, Castellano?"
"Her name is Nora Vance," Dominic announced to the seventy men in the room.
"She is a licensed animal behaviorist and surgical trauma specialist."
"And she is the only person who touched the evidence extracted from this animal three hours ago."
Carmine scoffed, waving a dismissive, liver-spotted hand.
"Lies and theater!" Carmine spat.
"Julian died because he stole six million dollars from the Detroit port union!"
"He fled like a rat into Moretti's kennels, and Victor put him down like he deserved!"
"Julian didn't steal from Detroit," Dominic said.
He reached into his jacket.
Six arbiters instantly shifted their weight, their hands tensing.
Dominic moved slowly, deliberately.
He pulled the titanium cylinder from his pocket and set it squarely in the center of the white linen table before the elders.
Beside it, I stepped forward and laid my leather-bound surgical logbook and my encrypted tablet on the cloth.
"Exhibit A," I said, my voice ringing clear and steady through the cathedral of wealth.
Every mobster in the room stared at me.
A server from a South Side diner, speaking to the rulers of the American underworld as if they were interns in my clinic.
"This titanium capsule was extracted from the subcutaneous tissue of the dog's left thoracic wall at 1:42 AM," I explained, tapping the tablet screen.
High-resolution macro images projected onto the room's presentation monitors.
"The fibrous encapsulation around the metal indicates the cylinder had been embedded for a minimum of seventy-five days."
"The surgical incision was closed with vintage braided silk sutures—the exact material used in Victor Moretti's Detroit veterinary supply kits in August."
"This evidence was not fabricated tonight, gentlemen."
"It was carried out of Detroit by Julian Castellano before he was executed."
Murmurs exploded across the horseshoe table.
Don Falcone squinted at the monitor, his brow furrowed in intense concentration.
"Carmine," Falcone rumbled.
"You told this table that Julian was killed in an alley behind a casino."
"You never mentioned Moretti's kennels."
Carmine’s face flushed an ugly, mottled purple.
"Are you going to take the word of a kennel girl over forty years of my service to this council?" Carmine roared, slamming his fist against the table.
"I am taking the word of science, Carmine," Falcone replied coldly.
Dominic stepped closer to the head table.
He pressed the play button on the tablet.
An audio file began to stream through the ballroom’s high-fidelity speakers.
Static hissed.
Then, Carmine’s distinctive, gravelly voice echoed through the chandeliers:
"Julian found the shell company in the Cayman logs... Tell Moretti to feed him to the pit hounds. Make sure the body is burned beyond recognition, and tell Dominic his brother died a thief."
A second voice answered on the tape:
Victor Moretti’s voice:
"What about the big blue dog Julian was hiding?"
Carmine’s voice:
"Kill the dog too. Leave no witnesses."
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Men who had killed dozens of enemies looked at Carmine with open disgust.
In the mafia code, you could execute a rival for territory.
You could execute a traitor for speaking to the FBI.
But to frame a boss's younger brother as a thief and feed him to fighting dogs was an unspeakable, unforgivable violation of the blood-truce.
Helena Castellano slowly rose from her velvet armchair.
She looked at Carmine with eyes that were entirely devoid of fear.
"You drank wine at my table two weeks ago, Carmine," Helena whispered.
Her voice cut through the silence like a razor through silk.
"You held my grandson at his baptism."
"And all the while, you had my youngest son's blood on your shoes."
Carmine realized the ground had vanished beneath his feet.
His coalition was dead.
The New York families were already reaching for their phones to freeze his offshore accounts.
Desperation twisted his wrinkled face into a feral, rabid sneer.
He reached inside his bespoke cashmere vest.
Not for a small pocket knife.
He pulled a compact, high-caliber snub-nosed revolver.
He pointed the barrel straight at Helena Castellano's chest.
"If I go down," Carmine shrieked, "the Castellano bloodline dies with me!"
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Before he could pull the hammer back, a blur of blue-gray fur launched across the twenty feet of open marble.
Zeus.
