Chapter 12 - The Whisper of Rebellion
Absolute power is a heavy crown, and there will always be those foolish enough to try and steal it.
The Bennett family had absorbed the remnants of the Moretti empire with ruthless efficiency.
However, sixty percent of a massive criminal organization is difficult to digest without a few bones catching in your throat.
A minor capo named Lorenzo, who controlled the illegal gambling rings on the West Side, decided to test the new waters.
Lorenzo was an old-school brute who had been blindly loyal to Don Carlo for decades.
He was deeply offended by the fact that he was now forced to pay a forty percent tax to a woman.
He believed that the Bennetts had simply gotten lucky with a surprise attack.
He mistakenly thought that our lack of street violence was a sign of weakness.
On a freezing Tuesday night, Lorenzo made his first fatal mistake.
He refused to hand over his weekly tribute to the Bennett collectors.
Instead, he sent the collectors back to our warehouse empty-handed, along with a deeply insulting message.
He told my men that he did not take orders from a scorned housewife.
Julian was furious when he heard the news.
He immediately wanted to mobilize a strike team and burn Lorenzo’s flagship casino to the ground.
He argued that we needed to make a bloody, public example of the rogue capo to keep the others in line.
I sat at the massive oak table in our war room, listening to my brother’s violent proposals.
I shook my head slowly, pouring myself a glass of scotch.
I told Julian that violence was the easiest and least creative tool in our arsenal.
I explained that if we burned his casino, we would simply lose the revenue it generated.
I wanted to destroy Lorenzo completely, but I wanted to do it without firing a single bullet.
I spent the next forty-eight hours utilizing the vast intelligence network I had built during my marriage.
While Vincent had been busy sleeping with Sophia, I had been paying attention to the ledgers.
I knew every dirty secret, every hidden bank account, and every weakness of the Moretti capos.
Lorenzo had a very specific, carefully guarded weakness.
He had been secretly skimming money off the top of his gambling operations for five years.
He had hidden millions of dollars in offshore accounts without Don Carlo’s knowledge.
If the other capos found out he had been stealing from the family pot, they would rip him apart themselves.
I instructed Julian’s hackers to infiltrate Lorenzo’s private banking network.
It took them less than a day to bypass the rudimentary security and access his hidden accounts.
I did not steal the money.
Instead, I transferred every single cent of Lorenzo’s stolen fortune into the personal accounts of the other four capos.
Then, I sent a highly encrypted, anonymous file to the same four capos.
The file contained undeniable proof that Lorenzo had been stealing from them for years, and that the money had finally been recovered.
By Friday evening, Lorenzo was no longer a problem for the Bennett family.
He was summoned to a private meeting by his former brothers in arms.
He walked into a dark basement on the West Side, expecting to rally them against me.
Instead, he was met by four furious men who realized he had been robbing them blind.
The details of what happened in that basement were never officially confirmed.
However, Lorenzo was never seen in Chicago again.
The gambling rings were immediately handed over to a younger, much smarter lieutenant who eagerly paid the Bennett tax.
I sat in my penthouse, looking out over the glittering city lights, sipping my scotch.
I had eliminated a rebellion, secured a steady revenue stream, and instilled absolute terror in the remaining capos.
I proved to the underworld that I was not just Arthur Bennett's daughter.
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I was a grandmaster playing chess on a board where everyone else was playing checkers.
And my enemies were beginning to realize that they could not win.
