In two and a half hours, three hundred of Chicago’s most powerful judges, federal prosecutors, port commissioners, and family capos would gather in the Gold Coast Ballroom of the Drake Hotel to watch Richard Bellini accept the chairmanship of the Katarina Moretti Memorial Shipping Trust.
I closed the steel vault case and looked at Daniel through the frosted glass: “Call the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois and the Cook County Homicide Cold Case Commander—tell them to bring six pairs of federal handcuffs to the Drake Hotel at 8:15 sharp.”
The Gold Coast Ballroom of the Drake Hotel was blazing with crystal chandeliers and white orchids when I walked through the central doors at eight o’clock sharp. Across the room, standing beside the podium beneath a ten-foot silver banner reading THE KATARINA MORETTI MEMORIAL FOUNDATION — 22 YEARS OF GRACE, stood Richard Bellini in a bespoke white dinner jacket.
He was laughing with an appellate judge, a glass of vintage champagne in his right hand, the silver serpent ring flashing under the spotlights.
When he spotted me walking down the center aisle alone, a look of smooth relief crossed his face. He clearly believed his men had handled St. Jude’s Hospital—and he had no idea his two hitmen were currently sitting in a federal holding cell singing like canaries to save themselves from a capital murder conspiracy charge.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Richard’s voice boomed warmly over the sound system as he tapped his microphone, drawing applause from the three hundred guests seated at round banquet tables. “Tonight marks twenty-two years since we lost our beloved Katarina—a woman of unmatched charity and devotion. As someone who loved her like a sister and stood beside young Gabriel on the darkest day of his life, it is my profound honor to accept the lifetime chairmanship of the Moretti Maritime Trust.”
I climbed the marble steps onto the stage. Richard turned with an outstretched hand and a paternal smile, expecting me to hand him the ceremonial crystal gavel.
Instead, I walked past his outstretched hand, took the secondary microphone off its stand, and looked out across the sea of silk gowns, tuxedos, and the four senior Chicago family capos sitting at Table One.
“Before we hand out lifetime titles,” I said, my voice cutting through the applause until the ballroom went dead silent, “my three-year-old friend Lily taught me something important this morning. When someone’s mother is crying for twenty-two years, you don’t ignore it. You take down the frame and look behind the wall.”
Richard’s smile froze. “Gabriel, what are you doing?”
I nodded toward the audio-visual booth at the back of the balcony, where Daniel stood beside the projection engineer. Instantly, the twenty-foot LED screen behind the podium flickered—and in place of the foundation logo appeared a high-resolution scan of my mother’s fifth letter, both halves joined together, with her final warning highlighted in crimson: Never trust the man who wears the silver ring with the serpent.
A collective gasp rippled across the ballroom. Automatically, thirty pairs of eyes at the front tables dropped straight to Richard Bellini’s right hand.