Chapter 8 - The Syndicate's Reckoning
The night belonged to gunfire and freezing rain.
Enzo did not go into hiding like a disgraced boss usually did.
He strapped two automatic pistols under his arms and drove directly to the industrial park outside Cicero.
He knew Dante would be waiting there for his final payoff from the Tatalias before fleeing across the border.
The warehouse smelled of motor oil and rotting cardboard.
Enzo moved through the side entrance like a ghost through a graveyard.
The two Tatalia guards near the loading dock never heard the suppressed shots that took them down into the wet gravel.
Inside the office above the garage, Dante was frantically stuffing stacks of hundred-dollar bills into an army duffel bag.
Vincent Tatalia was leaning against the desk, smoking a cigarette and laughing about the morning news.
When the office door flew off its hinges from a shotgun blast, the laughter died instantly.
Vincent reached for his hip, but Enzo’s first round caught him directly through the collarbone.
He fell across the desk, scattering blood and loose money across the linoleum floor.
Dante raised his hands above his head, falling to his knees and begging like a dog.
He swore that it wasn't his idea, that Bianca had promised him three hundred thousand dollars to look the other way.
He swore that he never wanted the baby to die.
Enzo walked forward slowly, his boots crunching on the spent brass casings on the floor.
He stood over his former lieutenant, looking down into the face of the man he had trusted with his life.
He told Dante that sixty-six calls had gone through to his phone while Carmela was dying on West Archer.
He asked Dante if he remembered what Enzo had texted back from that school conference.
Dante began to sob, his forehead pressed against Enzo’s muddy boots.
Enzo pressed the warm barrel of the gun against the back of Dante’s neck.
He whispered that the only debt left to pay was the one owed to his wife.
The gunshots that echoed through the Cicero warehouse at two in the morning were drowned out by the thunder of the winter storm.
When the police arrived forty minutes later, they found Vincent Tatalia tied to a support beam, bleeding and ready to confess to murder.
They found Dante dead with sixty-six spent shell casings arranged in a circle around his body.
And Enzo Moretti was gone, his car abandoned three miles away near the edge of the lake.
He walked through the driving sleet for four hours until he reached the gates of the Romano estate on Sheridan Road.
This was not his house.
This was the fortress my father had built forty years ago, surrounded by stone walls and armed guards who owed allegiance to no one but my bloodline.
He stood outside the iron bars, drenched in mud and crimson, shaking uncontrollably in the sub-zero wind.
He looked through the trees at the warm amber light glowing in the second-floor library.
He fell to his knees in the slush, pressing his hands against the frozen iron, and screamed my name into the empty night.
No one opened the gate.
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No one looked out the window.
The guards on the perimeter wall simply stood in silence, watching the former king of Chicago freeze on the sidewalk like an abandoned stray.
