Chapter 12 - THE DECODED CONFESSION
Zeus didn't bark.
He didn't growl.
He crossed the twenty feet of polished floor like a strike of blue lightning.
A hundred pounds of solid muscle collided with Don Carmine’s chest.
The impact sounded like a car hitting a brick wall.
The mahogany table splintered under the weight.
Carmine’s revolver discharged into the ceiling plaster with a deafening CRACK.
Plaster dust showered down over crystal chandeliers and terrified mob bosses.
Zeus pinned Carmine to the parquet floor, his massive front paws planted on the old man's shoulders.
Carmine screamed, thrashing beneath the beast, his hands clawing at Zeus’s thick leather collar.
Zeus bared his teeth.
His fangs dripped with saliva two inches from Carmine’s jugular.
"Call him off! Call him off!" Carmine wailed, his bladder letting go, soaking his bespoke wool trousers.
"Dominic, call the hound off!"
Dominic didn't move.
He stood beside his mother, his hand resting gently on her shoulder.
His expression was as cold as a granite tombstone.
"Nora," Dominic said softly, without taking his eyes off Carmine.
"The decision is yours."
The entire room turned to look at me.
Seventy mob bosses.
The most dangerous men in North America.
Waiting for an unemployed animal behaviorist to pronounce a death sentence.
I looked at Carmine weeping in the dirt.
A pathetic, greedy coward who had murdered a young man and tried to burn thirty shelter dogs to save his stolen empire.
Then I looked at Zeus.
Zeus’s yellow eyes flicked toward me for a fraction of a second.
He was waiting for my command.
If I let him bite, he would become the monster they had trained him to be.
He would be an executioner.
And he would spend the rest of his life carrying that darkness.
"Zeus, out," I commanded.
My voice was quiet.
Steady.
Carrying the absolute authority of love over violence.
Zeus froze.
His jaw closed.
He stepped backward off Carmine’s chest, keeping his eyes on the old man, and walked slowly back to my side.
He pressed his heavy head against my thigh, letting out a long, shuddering sigh of relief.
He was clean.
He hadn't crossed the line.
Don Falcone slowly stood up from the New York delegation.
He looked at Carmine crawling across the floor like a broken beetle.
Then he looked at me and Zeus.
A slow, profound respect softened the lines of the New York boss's hardened face.
"The council has heard the evidence," Falcone declared, his voice booming through the ballroom.
"Under Article Nine of the Grand Charter, Don Carmine is stripped of his title, his territory, and his protection."
"He is declared an outlaw to the Five Families."
Falcone looked at Dominic.
"Dominic Castellano holds the seat of the Midwest Commission."
"Uncontested."
Two arbiters stepped forward, grabbed Carmine by his cashmere lapels, and dragged him kicking and screaming through the service pantry.
His reign was over.
His empire was dust.
Dominic walked across the floor to his mother.
He knelt before her chair.
Helena reached out with trembling, wrinkled hands and cupped her son's face.
"Julian is at peace now, Dominic," she whispered in Italian, tears finally spilling down her cheeks.
"He's home, Mother," Dominic replied softly, kissing her knuckles.
Then Dominic stood up.
He turned toward me.
The seventy men in the ballroom stood in unison, bowing their heads in formal, chilling submission to the new Boss of Chicago.
Dominic ignored them all.
He walked past the billionaires, the capos, and the arbiters.
He stopped two inches in front of me.
He reached down.
His fingers slid gently between mine, intertwining our hands in the center of the Gold Coast Ballroom.
"You saved my family, Nora Vance," Dominic breathed, his dark eyes glowing with a devotion that took my breath away.
"I just kept my promise to Zeus," I whispered back, my voice trembling with exhaustion and relief.
Zeus gave a deep, contented yawn, sat down heavily on Dominic’s polished leather shoes, and leaned his entire hundred-pound weight against both of our legs.
A ripple of low, genuine laughter moved through the hardened room.
The war was over.
May you like
The sun had risen over Lake Michigan.
And the invisible server had just conquered Chicago.
