Page 57 of Marcello

“Hold on, hold on!” I hissed.

Buzzcut raised his eyebrows like he was waiting politely. Yes?

I looked around.

There weren’t that many people around. Mostly just the school kids playing soccer and a few locals outside a café –

But there were still at least two dozen people.

“You’re going to shoot me in front of all these witnesses?” I whispered.

“I’ve killed people in giant crowds before,” Buzzcut said with a terrifying smile, “and nobody ever said shit to the cops, because they know who I am. Nobody’ll talk this time, either. I guarantee it. So… it’s either you or him. You choose.”

He wasn’t joking.

I could see the crazy in his eyes. He wanted to shoot me.

For him, this was fun.

I almost never got scared in moments of danger.

Fausto had made me frightened for my family, but not for my own safety.

But this?

This was one of the few times in my life I actually started to sweat.

I quickly considered everything For and Against.

In the Against column:

What Buzzcut wanted me to do was cold-blooded murder. Pure evil.

…but let’s just say I did go through with it.

If I failed, the other guy would kill me.

If I succeeded but got caught by the cops, I’d spend the rest of my life in jail.

Those were some pretty compelling reasons not to do it.

In the For column:

The guy I was supposed to shoot was a drug dealer – a piece-of-shit gangster. The world would be better off without him.

If I didn’t kill him, Buzzcut would kill me.

I didn’t have any illusions that this was a prank. Buzzcut would absolutely follow through on his threat, no question about it.

Also in the For column:

If I shot the drug dealer, I was IN.

I would get a job in the Camorra…

And I could make sure my family was safe from Fausto.

That was the biggest ‘For’ there was.