Chapter 5 - The Gathering of Storms
At two in the afternoon, the private back room of The Black Anchor—a dimly lit steakhouse on the riverfront that had served as the Vance family’s war room for three generations—was filled with heavy cigar smoke.
Eight men sat around the long mahogany table. These were the captains of the South Side: men who controlled the docks, the trucking routes, the union halls, and the gambling dens. They were older men with weathered faces, broken noses, and suits that cost more than most people earned in a year.
I sat at the head of the table. Frank stood behind my chair, his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes scanning the room.
"You called us on short notice, Julian," said Dominick Russo, the oldest captain at the table, leaning forward on his silver-topped cane. "Word on the street is the Vandermarks are mobilizing. Arthur has twenty men stationed outside his Lake Forest estate, and his ships at Pier 12 are unloading crate after crate without custom clearance. What’s going on?"
I set the silver iron key on the center of the polished table.
"The wedding is off," I said plainly.
The room went dead quiet. Several captains exchanged uneasy glances.
"Off?" Dominick repeated, frowning. "Julian, the alliance with Vandermark is the only thing keeping the West Side cartels from pushing into our territory. Your father spent ten years building that truce. If you break it three weeks before the ceremony, it’s war."
"It was never a truce, Dominick," I replied, resting my forearms on the table. "It was a conquest. Six years ago, Arthur Vandermark and his daughter locked my brother Ewan in a vault at Pier 44 and burned him alive."
A collective gasp echoed through the room. Dominick’s eyes widened, his grip tightening on his cane until his knuckles turned white. "Ewan? Pier 44 was an accident... the electrical wiring..."
"It was murder," I said, my voice echoing off the wood-paneled walls. "And for six years, Arthur Vandermark has been leeching off our shipping routes while plotting to take the rest of our territory. He used Celeste to poison my mother, and last night, Celeste attempted to murder my mother's nurse inside my own home because she found out the truth."
Dominick stood up slowly, his tall, imposing frame towering over the table. "If this is true, Julian... if you have proof..."
I tossed Ewan's journal onto the table. Dominick picked it up, flipped through the scorched pages, his eyes darting across his former boss's handwriting. As he read, his face transformed from skepticism to cold, vicious fury. He passed the journal to the captain sitting beside him.
"Ewan was a son to all of us," Dominick spat, looking around the room at the other captains, who were now standing up, their faces dark with outrage. "We swore an oath to your father to protect his blood. If Arthur Vandermark laid a hand on Ewan, Lake Forest will burn tonight."
"No," I said, raising my hand to quiet them. "Lake Forest will not burn tonight. Fire is noisy, messy, and alerts the federal authorities. We are going to strike them where it hurts most: their money, their legitimacy, and their pride."
"What’s the plan, Boss?" asked Leo, a younger captain who controlled the trucking fleet.
"At midnight tonight," I said, leaning forward, "we take Pier 44 back. Arthur knows the wedding is canceled. He knows I know the truth. He will send his best men to Pier 44 to tear up the sub-cellar concrete before we can recover the master ledgers."
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"We trap them there?" Leo asked, a dark grin spreading across his face.
"We don't trap them," I replied. "We let them break the concrete for us. We let them dig up the iron safe. And when they pull those ledgers out of the ground, we take them, we take their names, and we erase the Vandermark family from Chicago forever."
