Page 53 of Mafia King
“What is that?”
“And if I don’t allow the marriage,” Santino continues without answering me, “Damiano will tell everyone in the four corners of the earth who has this thing. Then a war with Cosimo Orolio will look like a game of cards.”
“What do you have?” I demand.
“I have nothing.” He holds out his empty palms. “You have it.”
14
SANTINO
There’s no going back now. Once I tell her that she’s the target, the value, and the center of the universe, I can’t leave her in ignorance.
“What do I have?” she asks. “And it better not be a dumb metaphor for your love or a sweet pussy or something.”
I laugh, because that was my one way out before I spilled everything I’ve been trying to keep in my control. “We should go inside.”
“No.” She crosses her arms. “It’s been a terrible night, and now things are happening with Gia—like, I want to go back right now and make sure she’s not getting sold—and you’re saying this is happening to her in the first place because of something with me. And inside the house is one step farther from her. So I’m staying in this car. If you tell me something that means I need to get to her, either you’re driving me or I’m going to murder you and push your dead body onto the driveway.”
“Are you serious?”
“Of course I’m not serious, but I expect you to take me seriously.”
I nod and settle in. Over the front door, the motion sensor lights flick off, and when we’re in complete darkness, I tell her everything about how Emilio promised her sister to me in the hospital. Then I tell her about the first and only time I was in the presence of her inheritance.
* * *
I was borndecades after thepartisanoshanged the fascistIl Duceupside down in Milano, but Italy had still not been restored. Churches and museums had been looted and burned. World War Two shredded Italy of its history and culture. Artifacts were stolen, missing, never to be recovered, and smaller, regional wars went on and on.
There were few prospects on the other side. A boy could be a merchant, a scholar, or a soldier. If he chose soldier, he chose to fight for Italy or thecamorra.
Like the father I never met, I was born a soldier. He fought for Italy, so when I was fourteen, I vowed to fight with the Cavallos. But like my father, I took up arms in the middle of a war I didn’t understand. All I knew was that it started soon after Altieri Cavallo gave his daughter, Camilla, to Emilio Moretti. Half of Naples seemed to be at the wedding. Damiano and I were sneaking amaretto behind the Venetian table, and the world was woozy.
Soon after that, maybe a week, I was woken by gunshots. A scream. Sirens. A symphony that played a few times a week and seemed a universe away until Dami and I started running packages for Emilio. I had to stand and wait as a man was beaten into chopped meat. I was threatened with a serrated knife. I saw a man’s throat cut under the chin so Damiano’s dad, Cosimo, could pull his tongue from the slash. I heard the man choke to death. I felt the floor bump when he writhed. Cosimo looked at his watch and asked me what the fuck I was looking at.
Then Altieri Cavallo was tortured and killed, and our boss becametheboss.
“Did you hear what Nazario said?” Damiano whispered, dropping a bag of plastic bottles into the trash.
“I’m not here to listen.”
We were barely old enough to have hair under our arms, but we’d been trucked out to the warehouse in Vicaria the same as everyone else who worked for the Cavallos. Forty hours later, I was tired from running food and water to the guys pulling crates off the shelves and tearing them open. I didn’t know who owned the warehouse or what they were looking for. All I knew was that it was buried pretty deep in tons and tons of boxed-up shit, and I wasn’t there to listen to gossip.
Emilio should have been out fighting Cosimo to be capo, but instead he’d brought us all to the warehouse of the devil.
“He said it’s the Iron Crown of Lombardy,” Damiano said.
“Bullshit.”
The crown Napoleon had put on his head to make himself emperor was behind alarmed glass in a cathedral in the north. Everyone knew that.La Corona Ferreawas made of nails taken from the One True Cross and was the size of an armband. Sections had gone missing and the circle reset to be smaller soon after the death of Constantine.
“Altieri passed it to Emilio through Camilla—”
“It’s up by Milano,” I cut off my friend. “Unless the Northerners are lying, which is possible.”
“No,stupido.” He takes a handful of plastic bottles out of the ice bin and puts them in a sack slung over his shoulder. “The missing pieces of it. The ones with the Holy Nail.”
That got my attention, because it was both plausible and sacrilegious.
