Page 84 of Mafia King
“When he hears you basically got the crown?” Damiano shakes his head and blows smoke. “Feel sorry for your ass.”
Emilio’s preference for me wouldn’t protect me from Cosimo, who could kill me in an instant. And if I killed him, I’d have to answer to Emilio, who’d probably kill me just to prove the preference didn’t exist.
“Don’t tell him,” I said. “Please.”
Camilla Moretti came down the long hospital hallway in a brown, ankle-length wool coat and black boots, hair flying behind her. Her strides were long and confident, as if she was the daughter of Altieri Cavallo, not the docile wife of a capo who was almost drowned.
“I won’t.” Damiano stamped out his cigarette. “Fuck, I’m pretty sure he’d slit my throat for being second in line.”
We shook hands on it just as Emilio’s wife reached us.
“Mrs. Moretti,” I said with a respectful bow. “We just got out. He looks good.”
“Did he give you the state bar license number yet?” she asked me without mentioning her husband’s health. “For the American lawyer?”
I wouldn’t know what she’s talking about for a few days, but I didn’t want to admit ignorance when she seemed to know more.
“No.”
She nodded and turned toward Damiano. “Your father is here.”
“Cool. I was just up there, so I don’t think I can go again.”
Shetsked. “He’s in first floor recovery. Just getting out of the ER. You should check on him.”
Damiano ran one way. Camilla calmly walked the other.
I finished my cigarette, thinking Emilio had put in the order to put Cosimo in the ER to tell the man who was in charge.
* * *
It had never occurredto me that Camilla was taking care of business while Cosimo playacted the role of boss. Not until I sit at the bar of an empty club with Damiano, watching Pellegrino bubble around fresh ice, thinking about the power of wives, did the possibility occur to me clearly enough to dismiss as nonsense.
The days to my possession of the crown are ticking away, and none of this old stuff will help me.
“What do you want?” Damiano asks, tapping his fingertips together like Venus’s clamshell gnawing on the goddess.
“The Tabonas? When they tried to grab my wife on Flora Boulevard? You came toMille Lucito tell me, as a friend.”
“I warned you in good faith.”
“I didn’t give you the appreciation you deserved.”
“Damn right.” He puts down his empty glass. “And now you called me here because you want something. So spit the toad.”
The roar of an industrial floor-buffer starts behind us.
“Call it off with Gia,” I say.
“What? Why?”
“Because I’m asking you to.”
“I just overlooked the whole broken flower thing,” he exclaims.
“You were going to anyway.”
“Fuck you.” He taps his glass and Robert pours him another finger of amaretto.
