Chapter 10 - The Conspirators Gather
The North Shore Yacht Club was a beacon of modern architectural luxury, sitting on a private peninsula jutting out into the stormy waters of Lake Geneva. Inside the private VIP lounge, shielded from the wind and rain by triple-paned bulletproof glass, Victor Thorne sat at a mahogany table nursing a glass of twenty-year-old scotch.
Across the table sat Salvatore Romano, the thirty-five-year-old heir to the Romano crime syndicate. Salvatore was dressed in a bespoke Italian silk suit, his fingers adorned with heavy gold signet rings, his hair slicked back with expensive oils. He looked nervous, his eyes constantly darting toward the antique grandfather clock ticking in the corner of the room.
“Your team is fifteen minutes late, Victor,” Salvatore said, his voice laced with agitation as he checked his diamond-encrusted watch. “If Vance’s men intercepted them at the compound, this entire operation goes to hell. My father committed twelve of our top enforcers to this grab. If they don't come back with that brat, Lorenzo will declare all-out war by sunrise.”
Victor took a slow, elegant sip of his scotch. Even in the middle of a high-stakes treasonous coup, he looked like a refined estate butler—calm, detached, and utterly confident in his own intellectual superiority.
“Lorenzo Vance is a creature of habit, Salvatore,” Victor said, his voice smooth as silk. “He relies on his walls, his biometric locks, and his unwavering faith in his own intimidation. He does not anticipate betrayal from within his own ledger. By now, my contractors have bypassed the residential alarms, neutralized Dante’s skeletal guard, and secured the boy.”
“And the mother?” Salvatore asked, leaning forward. “You said she was Matteo’s whore from the old neighborhood.”
“She is an irrelevancy,” Victor dismissed with a wave of his hand. “Kill her, dump her in the lake, it makes no difference. The value is entirely in the child’s genetics. With Matteo’s legitimate son in our custody, we present him to the National Syndicate Commission next month in New York. We prove that Lorenzo has been hiding the true heir to the Vance dynasty to usurp the leadership. The Commission will strip Lorenzo of his seat, name you as the boy's official protector, and the Chicago transit corridors fall into our lap without a protracted street war.”
Salvatore smiled, leaning back in his leather chair, his tension evaporating. “You really are a cold-blooded bastard, Victor. You served three generations of Vance men, and you’re selling them out for a retirement fund in Zurich.”
Victor’s eyes darkened, the polite veneer stripping away for a fraction of a second to reveal the festering, decades-old hatred beneath.
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“I did not serve them, Salvatore. I survived them,” Victor whispered, setting his glass down with a sharp click. “Old Don Giovanni treated me like an errand boy. Dominic treated me like a glorified accountant while he gambled away the family’s political leverage. And Lorenzo... Lorenzo is a rabid dog who thinks his scars make him a king. Fifteen years ago, I slipped five drops of aconite into Dominic’s tea in his greenhouse because he refused to let me buy into the casino operations. Five years ago, I sold Matteo’s travel itinerary to your father because Matteo was getting too close to discovering my offshore accounts. Taking down Lorenzo and his brother’s little bastard is not just business, Salvatore. It is my masterpiece.”
Before Salvatore could raise his glass in a toast, the heavy oak doors of the VIP lounge did not just open—they were blown off their reinforced steel hinges by a breaching shotgun blast that shook the entire peninsula.
