Chapter 24 - The Iron Crown
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Three weeks later.
The air inside the subterranean boardroom beneath the Grand Opera House was thick with cigar smoke and tension. Five men sat around an oval mahogany table—the Five Capos of the Yates Syndicate. They controlled gambling, human trafficking, dock freight, extortion, and high-level political corruption across three states.
They had met to decide what to do about the "girl" who had claimed her father's throne.
"It's a joke," muttered Sal Rossi, the gray-haired Capo who controlled the city's gambling dens. "Abraham is getting soft in his old age. He lets his crippled daughter sign the Charter, and we're supposed to bow down to a girl who can't even stand?"
"Careful, Sal," warned Marcus Vance, Arthur's younger brother and head of legal affairs. "The Charter is absolute. If she holds the seal, she holds the authority."
"The Charter was written for men!" shouted Capo Lorenzo, a broad-shouldered mobster who ran the union docks. "Not for some pampered socialite whose husband just broke her knees!"
The heavy iron doors at the back of the boardroom swung open with a loud, echoey slam.
Every head around the table turned.
I entered the room. I wasn't in a wheelchair.
I walked using two custom carbon-fiber leg braces that locked my knees straight, relying on a gold-headed steel cane in my right hand. Cooper walked at my left side, his dark leather harness held firmly in my left fist. Four armed enforcers in immaculate dark suits marched behind me like an execution squad.
I wore a tailored black pantsuit that hid the metal braces on my legs, my dark hair cut into a sharp, flawless bob that framed my cheekbones.
The entire room went dead silent.
I walked slowly, deliberately, the rhythmic thud-click, thud-click of my cane and braces echoing off the stone walls until I reached the head of the table. I didn't sit down. I stood towering over the five Capos, resting both hands on the heavy mahogany surface.
"My name is Emily Yates," I said, my voice cutting through the smoke like a razor. "And if any man around this table thinks my broken knees make me weak, he is welcome to stand up and test me right now."
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No one moved. Sal Rossi swallowed hard, his eyes dropping to the golden signet ring gleaming on my right hand—the ring of the Yates Patriarch.
"Good," I said smoothly, pulling a thick leather binder from under my arm and slamming it onto the table. "Now let's discuss why three of you have been stealing from my father's freight accounts for the last six months."
