Chapter 6 SIX
༺ VAELIA ༻
"What the fuck? Kaelith Vespero."
The words just came out of my throat. I couldn't breathe, couldn't blink, just stared at the man standing in the shadows of my concrete hell, my mind violently still trying to process what in the world was happening.
Kaelith Vespero.
The man my father had sworn to kill with his own bare hands. The man whose name was a curse word in the Corvanis household. For the last three years, their two empires had been locked in a brutal, bloody territorial war that left the streets of Chicago stained red almost every single fucking day.
And now, I was standing in his presence.
My chest was moving fast. And the damp, moldy air of the cell was burning my lungs. I knew exactly who he was. I'd seen him once before…years ago, at a Commissione summit in Naples. Back then, I was just a seventeen-year-old ghost trailing behind my Uncle, before his death and before my dad took over. He was dressed in black and commanded men with so much authority. I had never spoken to him. I didn't even know his first name back then. But I remembered the moment our eyes clicked across that crowded room.
I remembered his eyes. They were lifeless. Pitch black. Devoid of any humanity, any warmth, any fucking soul. Back then, I had thought he was just a naive, young heir playing dress-up in his father’s empire. I had looked away, dismissing him. God, I was so stupid, I didn't know that the same man would grow up to be this. A brutal, calculating, merciless killing machine. The monster who had just T-boned my friend's car at eighty miles an hour.
As I stared at him, the terrifying reality of the Chicago underworld map snapped into focus in my mind. I knew exactly why he had taken me. This wasn't just about revenge; it was a hostile corporate takeover.
Kaelith Vespero controlled the Vespero-Vaneer Alliance. He was the king of the "white-collar" underworld. He owned the deep-water ports on Lake Michigan, the shipping logistics at O'Hare, and the high-end, RICO-proof gambling syndicates in the North Shore suburbs. He operated like a Fortune 500 CEO. His empire was clean, algorithmic, and entirely untouchable by the FBI.
My father, Viktor Corvanis, controlled the Corvanis Syndicate. We were the "blue-collar" monsters. We owned the rusted, bleeding industrial zones of the South Side, the underground fight clubs in the West Side, the ethnic neighborhoods and the Calabrian-Albanian human trafficking rings that operated out of the ethnic enclaves. We ruled through blood, pizzo (extortion), and somewhat, brutal violence.
Kael didn't just want to kill my father. He wanted to replace him. He wanted to seize the port authority assets to monopolize international smuggling. Whoever controlled the ports controlled what entered Chicago—guns, cocaine, heroin, counterfeit medicine, stolen luxury cars, illegal weapons, even people. The ports weren't just docks. They were the city's heartbeat. And he wanted to dismantle my father's trafficking rings because they were drawing too much FBI heat, threatening Kael's pristine, corporate empire. He also wanted to gentrify the mafia. And I was the leverage he needed to force my father to sign over the ports and bleed his empire dry.
But it wasn't just a one-way street. My father wanted Kael just as badly.
Viktor Corvanis, my father was drowning in dirty cash from his trafficking rings and extortion rackets. He desperately needed Kael’s pristine, RICO-proof gambling syndicates and port logistics to launder his blood money. More than that, my father wanted legitimacy. He wanted to drag the Corvanis name out of the rusted, bleeding South Side and plant it firmly in the lucrative North Shore suburbs. He wanted control of the deep-water ports to bring in his own illicit shipments without paying Kael’s exorbitant "taxes." He wanted to crush the upstart Hungarian-Italian hybrid who dared to think he was better than the traditional families.
It was a war of old-world blood against new-world algorithms, and both men were willing to burn Chicago to the ground to win.
The realization hit me all over again. The name kept ringing in my head. I suddenly came back to reality, turned around quickly, my feet sliding on the floor then looked around wildly in the empty room.
"Lily?" I choked out "Lily! Where are you Lily? Both of us were in that car, so where is she? This can't be happening, what am I to do now?"
She wasn't here. She wasn't anywhere.
Lily. My sweet, brilliant Lily. The woman who gave me the warmest smiles, sang off-key to 80s pop songs in the bathtub and was supposed to get married in three weeks. I was supposed to be standing beside her in a pastel bridesmaid dress, holding her bouquet, crying happy tears. She was supposed to have a future, playing around with her kids after surviving her wedding night…and she is nowhere to be found.
"No, no, no " I said, my voice shaking. My hands went to my hair. I grabbed it really tight that it hurt my scalp. I didn't care but was so scared of what might have happened to her. The fear was like a really heavy weight on my chest, that at some point, I found it hard to breathe."What have I done? What did I do?, God, please, God, take me. Cut my throat, burn me alive, do whatever you want to me, but let her be okay. Please, God, let her be okay. She has done nothing to deserve this, I am the sin, please spare her."
If Lily died... if Fina lost her daughter... if Maya lost her sister... it would be my fault. My blood, my cursed, mafia-ridden blood that had dragged them all into the crossfire. My mind spun, fracturing into a million jagged pieces. I could see Fina’s face, shattered and weeping over a closed casket. I could see Elias, his golden-brown eyes turning dead and hollow.
“No, no nooooooo! Where the fuck are you Lily?”
