Chapter 6 - The Fall of the Conspirators
Don Antonio Valenti jumped to his feet, slamming his palms onto the table, his hand twitching toward his waistband. "Roman! You are out of line! The Valenti family does not sit under armed threat from a rogue capo!"
Roman didn't draw a weapon.
He didn't yell.
He raised a single hand.
Frank Callahan, Roman’s chief corporate litigator, stepped through the smoke, followed by Special Agent Raymond Callahan of the FBI’s Organized Crime Strike Force, flanked by four armed federal marshals.
Frank slammed three thick, red-embossed evidentiary portfolios onto the center of the table with a concussive thud that rattled the china.
"Under Title 18 of the United States Code," Frank announced, his voice cutting through the hall like a broadsword, "Julian Kane and Don Antonio Valenti are under active federal indictment for Interstate Racketeering under the RICO Act, Attempted Premeditated Murder, Extortion, and Corporate Larceny exceeding one hundred and twenty million dollars."
Frank connected his tablet to the foundry's seventy-foot digital display wall.
The massive screens illuminated instantly in four-K clarity:
First came the encrypted bank wire transfers from Zurich showing Julian receiving twelve million dollars from Valenti’s shell companies to finance the internal coup against Roman; next came the unedited audio recordings of Julian and Vivienne Kane coordinating the physical assault on Bianca in the estate drawing room; and finally, the forensic shipping manifests proving Valenti was using the Red Hook terminals to smuggle military-grade narcotics.
The boardroom erupted into furious, deafening chaos.
Senior Kane caporegimes shoved their chairs back in open revulsion, shouting curses at Julian, stepping away from the conspirators as if they were covered in a lethal plague.
Julian panicked. He reached for the inside of his suit jacket, but Enzo Caruso moved with blinding speed.
Enzo’s iron grip clamped around Julian’s wrist, twisting the joint with brutal mechanical leverage that forced Julian onto his knees on the concrete floor with a sickening pop.
Julian screamed, clutching his broken wrist, hyperventilating as his expensive veneer dissolved into dust.
"Roman... please!" Julian wept, his hands coming up in a desperate, frantic plea. "Your mother told me to do it! Vivienne planned everything! She said the family couldn't survive with a Queens girl as Donna! I was trying to save our legacy!"
Roman walked slowly around the table, stopping twelve inches from where his cousin knelt in pathetic ruin.
He reached into his pocket, pulled out the pair of heavy gold tailoring shears that Vivienne had used to cut my hair, and dropped the cold steel onto the concrete at Julian's knees with a sharp, ringing clack.
"You didn't save our legacy, Julian," Roman whispered, his voice vibrating with lethal, absolute finality. "You ended yours."
Special Agent Raymond Callahan stepped forward, clicking heavy steel transport chains around Julian Kane’s and Antonio Valenti’s wrists and ankles.
As the federal marshals dragged the screaming, ruined traitors from the foundry forever, Roman turned to the remaining capos of House Kane.
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"The Valenti treaty is incinerated," Roman announced, his voice ringing with undisputed sovereignty. "And from this day forward, the Port of New York belongs to The Bianca & Lily Kane Sovereign Trust."
Every single man in that room dropped to one knee on the concrete floor, lowering their heads in unanimous, profound reverence.
