Chapter 7 - The Syndicate's Summons
The screen of Matteo’s encrypted phone flashed with a restricted caller ID—a frequency reserved exclusively for the Inner Council of the Chicago Syndicate.
He flipped the phone open, sliding the ledger closed with his free hand. "Speak."
“Matteo,” a raspy, aged voice hummed through the secure speaker, carrying the heavy, commanding cadence of Don Salvatore Rossi, the patriarch who had mentored Matteo's father. “Word travels fast through the underground. I hear you've cleaned house in your north wing tonight.”
"Calvin Mercer is currently residing in my basement," Matteo replied coldly, pacing across the antique rug. "He confessed to murdering my sister twelve years ago."
A heavy sigh echoed on the other end of the line. “Calvin was a fool, and his greed outgrew his utility. But Matteo... you need to understand the wider board. Calvin didn't move those millions alone. The asset drainage was backed by corporate proxies operating out of the financial district. Proxies tied directly to Dante Moretti’s old associates.”
Matteo stopped dead in his tracks. Dante Moretti was his uncle—a man who had supposedly retired to Sicily a decade ago after a bitter dispute over territorial expansion.
"My uncle," Matteo said, his teeth gritting together.
“Dante never left, my boy,” Rossi said grimly. “He’s been using your estate as a laundromat while you mourned your sister. And now that you’ve seized Calvin and frozen the accounts, Dante’s people are making a play. There’s a shipment of high-grade contraband entering the port tonight under Moretti Logistics branding. If Dante controls the port, he controls the family council by morning.”
"Where is the shipment docking?" Matteo demanded, his amber eyes narrowing as a cold, lethal focus took over his senses.
“Pier 44. South Chicago docks. But be warned, Matteo—Dante anticipated your move. He has forty armed mercenaries waiting in the container yards, and he’s holding someone very special as leverage to ensure you hand over the north wing ledger.”
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"Who?" Matteo asked, though a sickening premonition was already forming in his gut.
“The maid’s eldest child,” Rossi’s voice crackled softly. “Little Norah. They snatched her from the hospital nursery twenty minutes ago.”
