Chapter 7 - The Metropolitan Club
At 2:45 PM, a convoy of three sleek black armored SUVs pulled up to the private rear entrance of the Metropolitan Club—a exclusive, fortress-like brick building in the heart of Chicago’s financial district.
The doors opened, and ten armed Moretti security guards formed a tight perimeter around the vehicles.
When I stepped out of the middle SUV, I didn't look like Emma Reed, the twenty-seven-year-old housekeeper who scrubbed marble floors for fourteen dollars an hour. Eleanor, Luca’s personal stylist, had spent two hours preparing me. I was wearing a tailored navy silk dress that fell past my knees, black leather heels, and my hair was styled into an elegant, polished twist at the nape of my neck.
Beside me, Rosa stepped out, dressed in a gorgeous wool coat with a velvet collar—a gift from Luca that morning. She held her worn leather purse tightly, her head held high.
Luca stepped out behind us, wearing a charcoal-gray double-breasted suit, his signet ring back on his right hand. He offered his left arm to Rosa and his right arm to me.
"Keep your shoulders back," Luca whispered as we walked up the grand stone steps. "The men in this room survive on fear. Show them none."
We walked through the heavy bronze doors, past two security checkpoints where men in suits scanned everyone with metal detectors, and entered the grand oak-paneled private council chamber on the top floor.
A massive oval mahogany table sat in the center of the room. Seated around it were five elderly, powerful men—the heads of the five major families that controlled the Midwest's underground commerce.
Behind one of the bosses stood Salvatore Bellini—a tall, arrogant man with silver hair and cold, hawkish eyes—and beside him stood Vanessa, wearing an ivory dress, looking smug and triumphant.
As we entered, the room went dead silent. The five crime bosses stared in shock as Luca Moretti walked into the most sacred executive chamber in the city arm-in-arm with a former housekeeper and a former maid.
"What is the meaning of this, Moretti?" demanded Don Carmine Lucchesi, the seventy-year-old head of the council, his deep voice rumbling through the room. "You bring house servants to a private tribunal of the five families?"
"I brought the witnesses, Don Carmine," Luca replied calmly, pulling out a chair for Rosa and then one for me directly across from Salvatore Bellini.
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Salvatore sneered across the table. "Look at this farce! Luca loses his mind over a low-class maid and an old woman, breaks a multimillion-dollar contract, and disrespects my family name! I demand the council sanction his docks until he honors the engagement!"
"The engagement is dead, Salvatore," Luca said, leaning over the table, his eyes locking onto Bellini's. "And before this council decides anything... you're going to watch what your daughter really is."
