Page 66 of The Mad Don
Then he asked. “Do you have a plan?”
The curtain opens.
He steps through it. Zaki is a big man. He stands taller than I do, even with my leg braced. There is a ring on the third finger of his right hand.
He stops in front of me, and his bare foot comes down on my hand. I do not move; he puts his weight onto it. The brace on my leg makes it impossible to move, but I do not shift anyway. I keep my head down, and I keep my breath still.
One day, I think,I will repay every second of this.
One day, he will pay for putting me in this room on my knees.
Not Zaki. Giovanni. Every humiliation, every glare, every sneer, every time I have had to bow my head. I will pay it all back.
Zaki lowers himself; he stoops in front of me. His leg is still on my hand. He takes my jaw in his other hand. His grip is fierce.
“Two years, I have spent my time, my money, and my resources to introduce you to families and secure that seat for you. You —”
He squeezes my jaw, and I feel the pain.
“You told me it was foolproof; we poison the sister slowly. We keep him occupied with her.”
He pushes me back.
I fall onto my hip, and the brace stings. I am up again on my knees in a second.
He paces. “I admit,” he says, “you saved me the trouble of getting rid of him myself. And I have used certain routes, thanks to you. I will not pretend I have not gained.”
He stops and turns.
“But I do not like half wins,capo. I do not like investments that take years to mature into nothing. The victory I was promised was you in that seat, and the power for me. You said we would kill his sister, and we would weaken him in the mind, and then we would put him in the ground.”
He looks at me.
“Were you deceiving me?”
I bow my head fast.
“No. No. I would never.”
I keep my forehead down toward the floor.
I have always known I cannot take Giovanni in a straight fight. No one can. He is fast, clever, and a madman. I cannot beat him with force. But I have known since the day I saw him looking at his sister. I have watched him for years, and I know exactly where the soft spot is.
If I kill her quickly, he goes mad, and he burns everything and half of the country down with him before he dies. Quick is the worst possible move.
But if she dies slowly. If he watches her go and cannot stop it, tries every doctor, and burns through every favor, and still cannot stop it, then he goes down as she does. The mind goes first. The body follows.
That has been the plan from the start.
The drugs going into her each night are not the drugs in the bottles the doctor brings. They never have been. The drugs are a particular muscle relaxant cardiac patients use; given consistently, in doses just past the upper edge, it will hollow out the long muscles of the legs, then move inward. It looks likea chronic condition with bad flares. It looks like the thing the doctors keep diagnosing.
It is killing her by inches, which is what I needed. Her mental state being bad helped me. A side effect is that the medications suppress the mind too; it was working well for me. I made up the story about the Doctor. I knew he was the one person who could accurately diagnose that his sister’s legs should have healed long ago. I was the one handling every letter and email Giovanni sent to that doctor. None of them ever arrived. The doctor does not know Giovanni exists. I led him on a wild goose chase.
He has not caught me because she is the only thing he sees.
His sister is the only door into him, and it is also the only door out of his focus. When his eyes are on her, his eyes are nowhere else. That is the gift she has given me without knowing. Until the Russians came.
“We just need a change of plan,” I stammer.
