Chapter 7 - The Boardroom Table
At eight o'clock the following morning, the top floor of the Moretti Logistics building in Lower Manhattan was silent.
The boardroom featured a thirty-foot mahogany table overlooking the harbor. Seated around it were eight regional port directors, three corporate attorneys, and at the head of the table sat Don Carmelo Valenti—the seventy-two-year-old head of the Valenti crime family, flanked by two heavy-set guards.
Valenti was sipping espresso from a china cup, looking relaxed, believing that my absence over the last twenty-four hours meant I was either dead at the bottom of the bay or broke under Sal’s pressure.
The heavy oak doors of the boardroom swung open.
I stepped into the room.
I was dressed in a tailored charcoal suit, my hair combed back, my bruised eye visible but my posture completely rigid and commanding. Behind me walked Frankie Lucchesi and six heavily armed security operatives.
The room went dead silent. Valenti froze, his espresso cup stopping halfway to his lips.
“Dominic,” Valenti said, recovering his composure slowly. “We were told you were... indisposed.”
I walked to the head of the table, pulling out the grand leather armchair directly across from him. I sat down, leaning forward, resting my hands flat on the polished mahogany.
“Sal and Paulie had a bad morning, Carmelo,” I said, my voice smooth as silk and cold as ice. “They thought they could tie me to a chair and force a signature on the Red Hook port leases.”
Valenti’s eyes narrowed. “I don't know what you're talking about, Moretti. Sal works independently—”
“Don't insult my intelligence,” I interrupted, throwing a thick paper folder onto the center of the table. “In that folder are the digital wire transfers showing your family funding Sal’s operation through offshore accounts in Panama. More importantly, it contains sworn affidavits from your own lieutenants.”
I leaned in closer, my dark eyes locking onto his.
“You broke the treaty, Carmelo. You brought violence onto my docks, and you targeted my family.”
Valenti snorted softly. “Family? You don't have a family, Dominic. You’re a lone wolf who lives in a big house with old ships.”
“I have a daughter,” I said, every word dripping with lethal quietness. “Her name is Lily. And if any man associated with your organization so much as looks at the street she walks on, I will not call the police. I will not hold a meeting. I will dismantle every warehouse, every shipping line, and every asset you own until there is nothing left of the Valenti name but dust.”
Valenti looked at the faces of his own directors sitting around the table. He saw the cold, unyielding reality in my eyes. He realized, with sudden clarity, that the man sitting across from him was no longer just protecting a business—he was protecting a child.
Slowly, Valenti set his cup down. He slid the port lease documents across the table toward me.
May you like
“The Red Hook leases remain yours, Moretti,” Valenti said quietly. “We have no dispute.”
“Good,” I said, standing up. “Now get out of my building.”
