CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
AXEL
Arbitration Day
Meeting One: Sebastian Lombardi, Italian Outfit, and Hugh Flannery, Irish Outfit, from Pittsburgh
“I’ve been shmoozing the county official for fifteen months, handling all the influential work and waiting for this sanitation contract to open up,” Flannery begins once we’re all seated with drinks, “and then he busts into my bar and chokes—”
“It’s my fucking territory,” Lombardi bellows. “End of.”
“Brilliant,” I deadpan, putting my glasses on to study the map, the boundary lines for the contract, and each family’s jurisdiction, “but that’s not how this is done. Are you still open to arbitration?”
Lombardi grunts his consent.
My gaze flicks up with a reminder. “You sought the meeting and agreed to my intervention. I’m giving up my time to settle the dispute. If you go against my verdict when you leave here, your membership will be suspended for a year, and you will never receive a private meeting again. Understood?”
“Understood,” he growls, chugging his whiskey.
My six security guards, positioned on the perimeter of the room, have weapons in hand, but when you get past Lombardi’s penchant for smashing people’s faces in, he’s all bark, so this will be painless.
Flannery’s ears are red, but his temper is a slow simmer. We’ll finish before he heats up.
“Sixty-five percent of the contract area falls in Lombardi territory, but Flannery’s prep work should not be overlooked.
” I pull my glasses off and look at both men.
“Lombardi gets the contract, but Flannery can have twenty no-show jobs on the work at one hundred thousand per year for a two-million-dollar payout for the life of the contract.”
A no-show job is when someone is on the payroll that isn’t required to show up, so twenty Flannery men will have positions in Lombardi Sanitation, get paid, and never lift a finger for him.
It’s not the answer Flannery wanted. There is a lot more money to be made with the contract, but he knew it wasn’t his territory, so it’s better than nothing, bloodshed, or destruction of his property.
The latter two would have been the escalation Lombardi eventually resorted to.
Meeting Two: Kyle Turner, Owner of Turner Construction, the leading construction company for the Western Seaboard
I shake Kyle’s hand and take a seat while one of my guards pours us both some Remy Martin Louis XIII—a La Lune Noire staple and Kyle’s favorite.
“Thank you for accepting a private meeting, Mr. Noire.” He rubs his hand over his mouth, stress evident in the gesture. “I’m in some trouble.”
“Well, you came to the right place,” I assure him. “How can I help?”
“I did a job for a high-profile family last year. Since then, they’ve found themselves the subject of an investigation, and in turn, I’ve got Feds everywhere. They’ve bugged my home. They stop by my job sites. They intimidate my foremen. It’s unnerving and also bad for business.”
Turner Construction builds stunning homes and specialty buildings, but most notably, the company helps several groups that occasionally need to misplace things. Like bodies.
I swirl the cognac around my snifter. “Have they found anything?”
“Not that I’m aware.” He sips his own drink, settling his nerves. “I am … thorough.”
Despite Kyle’s jittery demeanor, he’s carved out a niche in the underworld. He makes his own special cement—all organic. It is truly the foundation of his wealth.
“Got any agent names for me?”
“Sanders, Fillmore, and Patel,” he supplies.
“I think I can take care of it. Let me make a call.” I pull out my cell and dial a contact.
“Yeah?” Agent Matthew Colehorn—aka Cole—clips.
“I have a colleague who would prefer your attention on his business over Sanders, Fillmore, and Patel.”
“Those motherfuckers?” He crows a sardonic laugh. “I bet. And this is my problem, why?”
“Ah, Cole, how easily you forget that you owe me.”
“I’m having fucking déjà vu,” he snarls, though he’s harmless. This is all part of his shtick. “Haven’t we had this conversation?”
“Often, but you always crawl back for more.”
“That’s me. A cheap and greedy whore.” He huffs because the man has little self-discipline. “Business?”
“Turner Construction,” I offer as Kyle takes another swill of his drink.
Cole clucks his tongue several times as his fingers frantically peck a keyboard. “I’ve got it. I can move those guys to a juicier case so they won’t complain. And I’ll put Armstrong and Mason on Turner with me. I’ll even do a sweep for any plants myself, so consider it done and us fucking even.”
“You got it.” A smile plays on my lips as I dip my chin to Kyle to let him know we’re good before I challenge Cole. “Until you need your next seven-card-stud fix.”
“Exactly.” He chuckles, helpless to yet another of his many vices. “See you next month. I’ll need a high-stakes private game.”
“Done.” I end the call and tuck my phone in my suit pocket. “You should have relief quickly. Let the dust settle while Cole checks everything out before you alert your clients that it’s safe to move forward.”
“Thank you.” He exhales what must be nearly a year’s worth of anxiety. “You used a favor. I really appreciate it.”
I stand, button my suit jacket, squeeze his shoulder, and latch my gaze to his. “It’s fine. You’ll owe it to me now.”
Meeting Three: Killian Ryan, Irish Mafia, and Bruno Torrez, Mexican Mafia, from Chicago
I spend about four minutes listening to them bitch about a nine-block radius of ambiguous territory, which they both want to claim for their dealings.
In that time, they divulge that nine of their men and six of their women are dead as a result of them battling over it for the last several months.
That isn’t an unusual story among my members, but it is a sore spot with me, which all of them know.
I slam my fist down to shut them the hell up, grab a red marker, and draw a line through the map they provided of the nine blocks, cutting it directly in half. “Next time, book a meeting fucking sooner. Women shouldn’t die because men are throwing tantrums.”
Meeting Four: Lev Popov, Russian Outfit, and Angelo Barone, Italian Outfit, from New York City
This is the final arbitration of the day, but I am in a shit mood after the last meeting, and this one is sure to piss me off.
The groups are volatile, and neither of them would sacrifice their pride to consult with me unless it was dire.
They’ve warred on and off for decades, so the thought of what constitutes dire is alarming.
The men have been stripped of their weapons, given cigars (Gurkha Black Dragon, which is Lev’s guilty pleasure) and glasses of The Macallan 72 Year Old in Lalique (Angelo’s preferred single malt scotch).
They’ve caught me up on the carnage. Friction has worsened since they began fighting over the territory left vacant by the loss of the Makarov crime family, which was decimated a little over a year ago.
“He fucked my wife,” Angelo growls.
“Ah.” Lev waves that off. “Your first one. That was years ago. She’s not even alive anymore.” He sets his deranged gaze on me, his gruff tenor devoid of emotion. “Seven months ago, he killed my daughter.”
“Jesus Christ, Angelo,” I hiss.
Angelo plucks his cigar from his lips and roars, “She married my son and squealed to the goddamn Feds!”
Lev shakes his head, but his face says he would’ve done the same. Betrayal is always a ticket to the grave in this line of work.
Their finger-pointing carries on for another ten minutes. Back and forth, they spit about one transgression after another. Angelo’s temper threatening to blow the roof off. Lev’s unbothered demeanor infuriating him further.
“It’s never going to stop,” Angelo finally drones, slamming his empty glass on the table. “The marriage was meant to bring peace. It made things worse. We’re both bleeding out, short too many men. Our businesses are at risk. There was a false news report released—”
“False news report?” I ask them both, but stare down Lev. “How does that work?”
He glowers at me with an arched brow, not buying for a minute that I’m in the dark about this. “Makarov had an in with a media conglomerate who could infiltrate the news. Since he is no more, I’m employing some of his special contacts now.”
“The stronzo released a story that my restaurants had fucking roaches!” Angelo howls.
Lev hitches his shoulder, blowing a thick plume of smoke and an air of indifference across the table. “Better than shooting your daughter as payment. Maybe we’ll fix this by giving her to my—”
“Enough. Both of you.” I level them with a leer that quiets the room.
“Let’s discard the notion of marriage between the families.
It’s not something I barter with in my arbitration, and obviously, it didn’t work for you.
I’m going to look over your businesses, your areas, and Makarov’s old territory and propose a split and joint ownership of his dock.
This is the end, a peace treaty.” I stuff the cigar I never lit in my suit pocket with my phone and rise.
“You’ll have my verdict in your inbox by tomorrow before you leave. ”
I walk toward my security guard, who will usher me into the passageway first, but turn back nonchalantly, as if my statement were an afterthought. “Lev, send me the media conglomerate contact.”
He nods his agreement, announcing, “Will do,” before the door closes.
This is where things get dicey with me being in a trusted position to handle members’ most confidential dealings and being a KORT chair.
When I acquired the seat, I was clear that I wouldn’t betray my La Lune Noire role unless there was a direct threat to KORT.
But anything surrounding this media issue straddles lines because there are only three people who can access the media conglomerate and, in turn, rewrite news stories across multiple platforms. Two are part of KORT; one is the unidentified person—or people—threatening Rena and her family.