Chapter 7 - Council of Knives
At eight o'clock the following morning, the grand dining hall of the Rossi estate was filled with heavy smoke, expensive cologne, and tense silence.
Twelve men—the capos who controlled the five boroughs of New York—sat around a twenty-foot mahogany table. They were hardened killers, millionaires, and street bosses who had spent decades spilling blood for the Rossi family.
At the head of the table sat Don Salvatore Rossi.
He was an old man, eighty years old, with sunken eyes, a silver cane, and a face carved out of bitter granite. Despite his age, his presence was suffocatingly dark.
Stefano stood at his right hand, looking immaculate in a charcoal three-piece suit.
And sitting at Stefano's right hand was me.
I was wearing a tailored burgundy suit that Stefano's staff had brought to my room at dawn. My hair was swept up into a sleek knot, and my mother's vintage gold locket hung around my neck.
Whispers broke out among the capos the moment I sat down.
"Who is the woman, Stefano?" one of the younger capos from Brooklyn demanded, leaning forward. "We were called here for an emergency council, not a coffee date."
Don Salvatore slowly lifted his hand. The room fell dead silent instantly.
The old man turned his head, his cloudy, yellowed eyes fixing onto my face. He looked at my jawline, my nose, and finally my eyes.
"Clara," the old man rasped, his voice sounding like dry leaves scraping across pavement. "You look just like your mother when she was young."
A collective gasp echoed down the table.
"This is Elena Vance," Stefano announced, his voice booming clearly across the room. "Daughter of Clara Vance and Salvatore Rossi. She is the legitimate bloodline heir to the Rossi family."
"She's a bastard!" the Brooklyn capo barked, slamming his fist onto the table. "Clara ran away thirty years ago! The girl knows nothing about our business! You expect us to bow to an archivist?!"
Before the capo could finish his sentence, Stefano was already behind him.
In a move so fast it blurred, Stefano grabbed the man's hair, slammed his face into the heavy mahogany table with a sickening thud, and drew a silenced pistol, pressing the barrel directly against the capo's ear.
"Speak about her with disrespect again, Marco," Stefano whispered, his voice ice-cold, "and I will paint this room with your brains before the guard at the door can draw his weapon."
Marco coughed blood onto the polished wood, his hands trembling. "I'm sorry... I'm sorry, Don Stefano..."
Stefano released him, stepping back to my side as if nothing had happened. He looked down the length of the table at the remaining eleven capos, who were sitting rigid with terror.
"Salvatore is old," Stefano declared, his dark eyes sweeping the room. "His decisions have lost us thirty percent of our territory to the Chicago syndicate in the last six months. Effective today, he is stepping down into retirement."
Old Salvatore didn't scream. He didn't draw a gun. He simply stared at Stefano, a bitter, cruel smile spreading across his wrinkled lips.
May you like
"You think you can take my throne so easily, my son?" Salvatore rasped. "You forgot one thing."
