Page 85 of Mafia King
“Listen.” I turn to face him, because I’m not interested in trading insults anymore. “Twice now, you asked to come back. As friends. As business partners. Like it was.”
“It was good.”
“It was. I’ve been thinking, I have no one in my organization I can use when things expand.”
With a single, sharp nod, his whole demeanor changes from guarded and suspicious, to excited. “Which they will. When you get thecorona, boom. World at your feet.”
“And that’s coming soon.”
“So you know how to get it?”
Damiano’s willing to marry a woman he doesn’t know to get on my side of the veil. The admission I’m about to make proves my good faith by shifting the veil just enough for him to trust that he’ll be inside my world.
“Yes,” I say. “I know how to get it.”
“Wow.” He clicks his glass with mine. “Salute, coglione.”
Calling me a jackass just as he finds out I’m close to the crown is a sign he’s going to be casually disrespectful when no one’s looking. I drink my Pellegrino rather than correct him. There will be plenty of time for that.
“So what are you thinking?” he asks. “That school over the river, maybe? What’s the play? Those kids don’t carry cash, but there’s plenty of receipts.”
“True. It could work.”
“And I have an angle on the real estate market over there.”
“Good. But first…” I wedge the lime between my teeth and pull off the pith. “I’m going to end the‘mbasciata.”
“What?” He blinks hard, eyeing me sidelong as if my stupidity can’t be looked full in the face. “You’re serious?”
He thinks I’m an idiot, but I’m not. I’m just a fool blindly chasing love over a cliff.
“With theCorona Ferrea,you can expand your territory to the four corners, butthiscrazy shit is what you want to try to do?” he asks.
“There will be no more debt brides.” I jam the sucked-dry peel into the ice. “Starting with yours.”
He laughs, then waves, rocking in his seat as if his body can’t contain everything he wants to say.
“Man,” he says, shaking his head with false regret, “I’d really like to take you up on that. But you’re just not getting it. This entire thing with Gia? It’s out of my hands now. That’s not my money. It’s a deal I brought to my father, and it was good enough for him to smile on me. That’shismoney, and if you have the choice between insulting him and walking away with your life, or insulting him and ending up in the ground? You shit on his lap. You kick his dog. You fistfuck his mistress, but you donotthrow his money back in his face.”
“We’ll see about that.”
He gets off the stool and slaps my shoulder. “Call me.”
I’m left with a choice I never wanted to make. My wife or a war.
* * *
“I’m going to miss dinner,”I tell Violetta on the phone as I get into the Alfa.
“Okay. I need to go to the store for the party and some woman things.”
“Make Armando a list.” I’m being more terse than I want, but I have bigger problems on my mind than her feminine products.
“For the party stuff, it’s fine, but for the other stuff… it’s the kind of thing a woman does for herself.”
Especially now, with her birthday so close, I don’t want her outside alone. “Celia can go with you.”
“She’s off tomorrow.”
