Chapter 10 - THE FALL OF ELMWOOD PARK
By midnight, the blizzard had cleared, leaving Chicago entombed under a silent, frozen crust of blue-white ice beneath a sky of cold, diamond stars.
In Elmwood Park, inside Don Carmine Lucchese’s sprawling, walled estate, the grand dining room was dead quiet.
Carmine sat at the head of the long banquet table, wearing a burgundy velvet smoking jacket, a glass of warm milk resting untouched before him. Flanking him were four of his oldest capos and six remaining soldiers with pump-action shotguns.
The telephone on the sideboard had not rung in four hours.
No word from Lower Wacker. No word from Nico. No word from the six shooters sent from the West Side.
“Call the garage again,” Carmine rasped, his liver-spotted hands trembling against the mahogany.
“Lines are dead, Don Carmine,” a capo answered, looking out the security monitors. “The cameras at the front gate just went to static.”
The heavy oak front doors of the mansion did not rattle.
They detonated inward in an explosion of splinters and sheared iron hinges as a hydraulic breaching charge blew through the frames.
Before the smoke could clear, twelve heavily armed tactical operators from the Richie family’s inner guard flooded the foyer, their suppressed weapons spitting silent, lethal fire that dropped Carmine’s six outer guards before they could raise their shotguns.
Through the shattered doorway walked Lorenzo Richie.
He was dressed in a pristine black three-piece suit, his arm in a clean sling beneath his jacket, his hair brushed back with razor-sharp precision. His pale espresso eyes were burning with absolute, final judgment.
Beside him walked Sienna.
She wore a long, tailored black wool coat over an ivory silk blouse, her dark hair pulled back into that severe, elegant crown of braids. In her right hand, she carried a heavy leather ledger stamped with the official seal of the Chicago Board of Trade.
Don Carmine didn’t reach for a gun. He was seventy-two years old; he had seen three regimes rise and fall in the blood-soaked streets of Cook County. He simply sank deeper into his high-backed leather chair, his breathing shallow and rattling.
“Lorenzo,” Carmine wheezed. “Nico?”
“Nico is asleep, Carmine,” Lorenzo said, his voice flat as a tombstone. “Beside our father in Mount Carmel.”
A single, dry tear tracked down the old Don’s withered cheek. “He was just a boy, Enzo. He didn't know what he was doing.”
“He knew enough to point a gun at my wife,” Lorenzo said, stepping up to the table, stopping three feet from the old man.
“Your wife?” Carmine croaked, his eyes darting toward Sienna.
Sienna stepped forward. She laid the heavy leather ledger flat on the mahogany table before the dying Don.
“These are the audit trails from your offshore accounts in Zurich, Don Carmine,” Sienna said, her voice ringing through the quiet room like a church bell. “The ones that funded the hit on Lower Wacker. The ones that paid off the port inspectors in Montreal.”
Carmine stared at the book with terrified disbelief. “How… how did you get these?”
“Arthur Penhalagan may be sixty-five, Don Carmine,” Sienna replied calmly, “but he taught the Zurich bankers how to encrypt their ledgers forty years ago. Thirty minutes ago, the federal magistrate signed twenty-two asset seizure warrants for every commercial building, warehouse, and restaurant owned by the Lucchese family.”
Carmine let out a broken, choking gasp. “You brought the feds into this? You broke the code!”
“There is no code for men who try to murder families in underground tunnels,” Sienna said, leaning down until her green eyes bored straight into the old man’s soul. “The Lucchese family is dissolved as of midnight. Your soldiers have already laid down their weapons on Taylor Street. Your capos are currently signing cooperation agreements with Arthur in the Loop.”
Carmine looked from the ledger up to Lorenzo. “And me, Enzo? What happens to me?”
Lorenzo reached into his pocket, pulled out an unlit Cuban cigar, and laid it gently on the table beside the old man’s untouched glass of milk.
“You’re going to retire, Carmine,” Lorenzo said softly. “To a private medical villa in Sarasota. You will have a nurse, a television, and a garden. But if you ever speak the name Richie again, the morphine in your IV will run a little too fast.”
Carmine closed his eyes, his head dropping onto his chest in total, unconditional surrender.
Lorenzo turned on his heel, offering his good arm to Sienna.
May you like
She slipped her fingers around his bicep, her head held high, and together they walked out of the ruined mansion, down the snow-covered stone steps, and into the waiting convoy of black cars beneath the cold Chicago stars.
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