Chapter 10 - The Syndicate Meeting
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The following evening, the atmosphere in the private dining room of the heavily fortified Venetian Club was thick with cigar smoke and tension. The Five Families of the New York syndicate sat around the massive mahogany table, their bodyguards lining the walls.
Thomas sat near the head of the table, looking smug, arrogant, and entirely too comfortable. He was sipping an expensive whiskey, clearly anticipating the news of his cousin’s demise.
The heavy oak doors swung open.
Larkin walked into the room, immaculate in a dark, tailored suit, looking exactly like a man who hadn't been ambushed by a hit squad twenty-four hours earlier.
The room went dead silent. Thomas’s whiskey glass stopped halfway to his mouth. The color drained completely from his face, leaving him a sickening shade of gray.
But the shock didn't stop there.
I stepped into the room immediately behind Larkin. I wasn't wearing my gray slacks. I was wearing a sharp, tailored white pantsuit, my hair slicked back, my heels echoing sharply on the hardwood floor. I carried a sleek leather briefcase.
“Larkin,” Viktor Volkov grunted from the far end of the table, his eyes darting between us. “You are late. And you brought your... companion.”
“She is not my companion today, Viktor,” Larkin said smoothly, taking his seat at the head of the table. He did not ask for a chair for me. He simply gestured to his right side.
I stood exactly at his right shoulder, the traditional position of a syndicate underboss.
A murmur rippled through the room. Thomas slammed his glass down, his panic morphing into immediate, defensive rage.
“What the hell is this, Larkin?” Thomas barked, standing up. “You bring the hired help to a commission meeting? Have you lost your mind?”
Larkin leaned back in his chair, pressing his fingertips together. He looked at his cousin with the clinical detachment of a man studying a dead insect.
“Penelope is here to present the quarterly financial report, Thomas,” Larkin said quietly. “She has found some fascinating discrepancies that require the commission’s immediate attention.”
Thomas’s eyes widened. He looked at me, realizing the mouse he had tried to humiliate was actually the cat playing with his life.
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I unlatched the leather briefcase. The metallic click echoed like a gunshot in the silent room. I pulled out a stack of pristine, meticulously organized ledgers, and dropped them heavily onto the center of the mahogany table.
“Gentlemen,” I began, my voice clear, cold, and echoing with absolute authority. “Let’s discuss where your money has actually been going.”
