Page 65 of The Mad Don
I bow my head. “I apologize, Don. Forgive me. I only mean to say that I think it is a bad idea to have her so close to Miss Lucia. Anything could happen. The Russian is not someone we should trust so easily.”
I look up, and he is staring at me. I hate those eyes so much, I dream of ripping them out myself. The smile is still on his face, but his eyes are not part of it.
“What about you? Can you be trusted, Fabiano?”
I do not move.
“You did seduce my fiancée.”
He looks at me for a long moment, then laughs. He claps me on the shoulder hard enough that I take a small step to keep my footing, and the laugh trails behind him as he turns and starts going up the stairs again.
“Don’t be so serious, Fabiano. Always so jumpy.Rilassati.”Relax.
He hums something under his breath as he climbs. I stand at the bottom of the steps with my hand still on the rail.
I wait until the hum is gone, then I take out my phone. I go down the corridor toward the side door, the brace on my leg making me slower than I want to be tonight.
“I am coming to see you now,” I say. “I think he is getting suspicious.”
I end the call.
I look back once at the house. The windows on the upper floor are pitch-dark. I push open the side door and go.
* * *
After an hour’s drive, I am on my knees on a tile floor in a hotel room — a first-class hotel suite. In front of me, a curtain is drawn across the middle of the room, a heavy fall of red fabric, and behind it the shape of a man stretches out on a bed. A second shape is over him; it’s a woman’s figure rubbing his back in slow strokes.
His voice comes through the curtain.
“I thought you said you could handle him?”
I lower my head further.
“Forgive my incompetence,Signore. I managed everything well. But since the Russian came into the house, he has been behaving out of character.”
He coughs, and the hands behind the curtain pause.
“Continua,” he snaps at her.
The hands resume. He turns his head toward me again. I see the shadow of the movement on the curtain.
“So. What is your plan,capo?”
When it all started, Giovanni and I were nobodies. He was thinner than I was. He took the worst jobs because he was faster on his feet and because he was already, even then, the kind of boy who said yes to anything that came with food at the end of it. He had a sister to take care of. We were the same, errand boys for mafia families, doing toe dirt poor work. Polishing guns, stacking drugs, and pushing them into trucks, replacing bullets, and cleaning up pools of blood. He was a nobody, a rat in the streets begging for leftovers.
We were the same, and then we were not.
He was greedy. That is the simple word for it. He says everything he does is for his sister. But I knew him on the street. He has always wanted more; he was a mad man, greedy for power. We slowly grew in ranks, handling complex melee tasks for more pay, and then he began meeting with families behind our oldDon’s back. He asked me to join him so that he could change our lives. I told him it would get him killed. He didn’t listen, so I avoided him; the Don was dead within four months. That was when I learned that Giovanni played his winning cards before he showed me his hands. By the time the older man’s body was cold, Giovanni was wearing his ring, and I was standing in a hallway with my mouth dry. I could only strive to win his favor. I played the loyal dog and stuck by his side, then I took a bullet for him during the first attack at the mansion, shortly after he became Don. He had men to spare, and I did not need to be the one to step into the line, but I did.
He made me Capo after that. It was the first step of my plan; I would take his seat the same way he had gotten it.
If he could do it, I could do it.
I learned from him. Slowly, the way he had been with the old Don. I slowly mingled with families he had not been able to bring to his table. I made small promises and kept them without leaving a room to be discovered, anything to make the families who opposed him know I was on their side. Then I met the man in front of me.
Zaki.
His family handled ammunition that went from the United States down through Italy, and the ammunition that came the other way from Italy to the US- Zaki’s grandfather ran it. The American firearms industry allegedly had men who answered his call. The best was that Giovanni had given his favoredfamilies priority; Zaki was not on that list, and it cut into his revenue for three years. He was the ally I needed. It took eighteen months to reach him. He did not show me his face that first time. He did not show me his face the second time. By the fifth meeting, he let me see his face as he walked out the door. He had been ready for years to remove Giovanni, but the families behind him would not accept a Zaki on the chair. He needed a face to be Don while he worked in the dark and got what he wanted. I offered myself.
