Chapter 17 - The Syndicate Purge
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What followed was the most violent week in the history of the Chicago underworld.
Dominic didn't yell. He didn't throw things. He operated with a cold, surgical ruthlessness that terrified even his most hardened captains. He locked down the estate and unleashed a systematic purge of his own empire.
The chief medical officer of the fertility clinic disappeared entirely. The facility was quietly bought out by a dummy corporation, shuttered, and demolished within four days.
Silvio, knowing the wrath that was coming, had attempted to flee the country. Dominic’s men intercepted him at O’Hare. Out of respect for the man who had raised him, Dominic didn't kill him, but Silvio was permanently exiled to a remote village in Sicily, stripped of all wealth and communication with the outside world.
But the true reckoning was reserved for Rosa.
I watched it unfold on the local news from the safety of my suburban living room. "Gallow Family Restructuring," the headlines called it. Rosa was publicly stripped of her shares in the syndicate. She was forcibly relocated to an isolated, heavily guarded compound in the mountains of Montana, effectively placed under permanent house arrest by her own son. She would never see the grandchildren she had destroyed her family to acquire.
Adrienne, caught in the crossfire of a war she never understood, was handed a ten-million-dollar annulment settlement and a non-disclosure agreement. She was on a private jet to Paris before the ink was even dry.
Dominic tore down his own house to cleanse the rot. He dismantled the old guard, replacing them with fiercely loyal, younger captains who owed nothing to his mother's legacy.
He made the Gallow empire stronger, deadlier, and entirely his own.
But as the dust settled on the bloody purge, the king of Chicago realized that he was sitting on a throne entirely alone. He had avenged his past, but he still didn't have his future.
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On the seventh night, my doorbell rang.
I opened it to find Dominic standing on my porch. The army of SUVs was gone. The guards were nowhere to be seen. He was completely alone, standing in the freezing rain without a coat, completely stripped of his arrogance.
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