Six hours later, after the preliminary trust documents cleared and Miriam flew me east, I entered the New York clubhouse.
"You have no seat at this table, Mrs. Rizzo."
Rocco's voice cut through the stale cigar smoke of the New York clubhouse. He sat leaning forward in one of the five heavy leather armchairs arranged in a strict semi-circle.
I didn't stop walking until I reached the center of the Persian rug. Four men occupied the seats. The fifth chair, positioned on the far right, sat completely empty.
"My name is Elena," I corrected him, keeping my hands out of my pockets.
"Not according to the bulletin we received an hour ago," Silas chimed in from the adjacent chair. He tossed a crumpled sheet of paper onto the mahogany coffee table. "Bianca Rizzo sent a priority alert to every syndicate on the East Coast. You are an exiled traitor. A thief."
I glanced at the paper. It bore Dante's official family seal. My execution order, broadcasted for the entire underworld to see.
"If you trust Bianca's bulletins over your own ledgers, Rocco, you have already lost control of your ports," I told him.
Rocco stood up, his massive frame casting a shadow over the table. "You come into our house carrying a Rizzo name and question my ports?"
"I question your intelligence," I shot back. "Arturo warned me about a leak in this family before he died. He knew someone here was feeding information to Chicago."
Silas let out a harsh laugh. "You forge a twelve-million-dollar cargo transfer, get caught by your own husband, and now you want to blame a New York ghost?"
"I didn't forge anything," I stated. I pulled the Cicero freight yard manifest from my jacket and dropped it directly on top of Bianca's traitor alert. "Read the routing numbers."
None of the four men moved.
"Read them," I demanded, tapping the center of the page.
A third capo, an older man with a scarred chin, leaned forward and squinted at the text. "It is a standard interstate haul. Prefix NY-7V."
"Exactly," I said, holding his gaze. "NY-7V is a Valenti transit code. I retired that specific prefix eighteen months ago when I completely restructured Dante's logistics network. No one in Chicago uses it."
Rocco frowned, his eyes darting to the paper. "What are you getting at?"
"The person who framed me didn't just guess a random route," I explained, my voice echoing off the wood-paneled walls. "They pulled an old file. A file that connects Chicago's current shipments directly to New York's archived ledgers. The forger had access to both cities."
"That proves nothing," Silas argued, crossing his arms. "You ran the Rizzo books. You knew the old Valenti codes. You could have drafted it yourself."
I reached into my bag and pulled out the scratched titanium key casing. I threw it onto the polished wood. The metal clattered loudly against the table.
"My physical authorization drive," I announced. "Someone jammed it into a terminal to clone my digital signature while I was having dinner with my husband. I want it independently appraised by your best technicians."
Silas scoffed. "Why should we waste our resources clearing a Rizzo's name?"
"Because if the rat accessed the archive to frame me, they also have access to your current union contracts," I countered. "Unless you enjoy bleeding money, you will appraise the drive."
The room went dead silent. The older capo rubbed his scarred chin, staring at the titanium casing.
"If I am the traitor, audit me," I challenged, stepping closer to Rocco. "But we apply the exact same standard to the entire table. Every capo in this room seals their access logs tonight. We check who opened the archived transit files in the last forty-eight hours."
Rocco's jaw tightened. "You want to freeze our operations based on a hunch?"
"I want to find the rat who sold out twelve million dollars to the cops," I said. "Unless you have something to hide in your port manifests, Rocco?"
He didn't argue. He glared at me, the muscles in his neck straining against his collar.
I stepped back from the table, letting the tension settle over the remaining men. My eyes drifted to the empty fifth chair on the right.
"Who holds the transport seat?" I asked.
"Dominic," Silas answered, his tone guarded. "He missed the summons. His phone goes straight to voicemail."
I walked over to Dominic's vacant spot. A heavy crystal ashtray sat on the side table next to the armrest. Inside lay a crushed cigar stub.
And three half-burnt matches.
I stopped. I stared down at the glass.
The matchsticks were distinct. Pale purple wood with bright white tips.
White lilac matches.
Bianca Rizzo ordered them custom from a private boutique in downtown Chicago. She kept boxes of them in her purse, her car, her office. She lit her cigarettes with them on the estate patio every single morning.
My pulse drummed a heavy rhythm against my ribs. Bianca's contact had been sitting in this exact chair. Dominic didn't miss the summons. He fled before I arrived.
I didn't reach for the glass. I didn't point the matches out to the four men watching me. If I accused Dominic right now, Rocco or Silas might tip him off before I secured the digital evidence. I needed the server logs frozen immediately.
I turned toward the heavy oak doors at the back of the clubhouse. Miriam stood by the threshold, her hands resting at her sides.
"Lock the doors," I ordered.
Miriam didn't hesitate. She threw the heavy iron deadbolt into place. The loud metallic snap echoed off the vaulted ceiling.
Rocco stepped around the coffee table. "What the hell do you think you are doing?"
"Initiating a family audit," I told him, my voice dropping to a dangerous calm. "No one leaves this room. No one makes a phone call. We wait for the technicians to pull the server logs."
"You don't have the authority to hold us hostage," Silas barked, rising from his chair to join Rocco. "You are not the head of this family."
"I have Arturo's final directive," I replied. I didn't flinch as the two men closed the distance.
Miriam stepped away from the door. She walked straight down the center of the room, bypassing the angry capos entirely. She stopped directly in front of me.
She reached into her dark trench coat pocket and pulled out a heavy gold ring. The band was thick, textured with a raised snakeskin pattern, framing a dark, polished onyx stone.
She set the metal down on the mahogany table, right next to my scratched titanium key.
"Put it on," Miriam said. "And you can no longer just be Dante Rizzo's wife."
