Page 29 of Mafia Queen
“Well, I didn’t come for the Strega.” Dario pours the rest down his throat and puts down his glass. I pick up the bottle, and he nods. As I fill his cup, he leans forward with his elbows on his knees, rubbing his palms together. Blue eyes. Part Northern.
He and I are equals. I am the sole capo of a small territory, and he has a piece of a much larger pie that’s harder to defend.
“I heard you were dead,” he says.
“I was.”
“How was Hell?”
“Hot.” I offer nothing else. I’m not going to ask him what he’s doing here again.
Smiling, he pushes his weight back. “I’m lying low. Trying to draw some people out.”
“Did you die too?”
“Not yet. But it’s getting tense. Very tense…” He takes a barely perceptible pause. “With the Colonia.”
I practically spit my Strega.
“You want to draw out the Colonia?” I put my elbows on my desk. If I’m six inches closer, maybe I’ll hear him right next time. No one wants to draw out the Colonia. The world is in balance as long as they stay underground.
“It’s safer than going in to get them,” he says as if it’s obvious. “So since you were dead, I figured I’d come around and see if you had guys looking for a change of pace. Guys too loyal to work for whoever put you under. Guys who wouldn’t mind paying four grand a month to live in a broom closet.”
“But I’m not dead, and you’re still here.”
“Paying my respects.”
“Sure.” I polish off half my drink. It burns going down. “You come halfway across the country to pick over my carcass and decide to have a drink instead? Going home empty-handed is no problem? Come on. What do I look like?”
“That a rhetorical question?”
Fucking Northerners and their fancy ideas. I don’t even know what he’s talking about.
“You still need guys,” I say. “You need faces no one over there recognizes.”
“Could be.”
“And you’re supposed to be someplace else. Prison?” When he smirks, I know it’s not that. No one would believe Dario Lucari went to prison. “You still have that thing in St….” I snap my fingers, trying to jog the name loose.
“St. Eustatius.” He says the name of a Caribbean island so obscure I can’t even remember it a second after it’s told to me.
“Grazie,” I say. “They think you’re there. But no. You’re here to pick meat off my bones. Then you come home early…with an army.”
He shrugs as if I’m a genius who somehow got him, but it was all too easy. I may be partly right, but if I guessed every nuance of his plan against the Colonia, he’d try to kill me in my seat.
“You want a piece?” he asks. “I could use you.”
Ten years ago—maybe even five—I would have restored order here and flown to New York City to take him up on it. Now, though, that would mean leaving Violetta. I cannot leave her behind any more than I can dash her hopes that I’ll give her the normal life she dreams of. Once this is past us, I might see it her way.
First, this has to be over.
“Thank you for the offer,” I reply. “I cannot. My wife is delicate. She might worry.”
This is an act. She’ll worry, and then everyone in her sights will find out what a lie her delicacy is.
“I heard you married.” He lifts his glass. “Tantiauguri.”
“Grazie. But, to business. You still need men. Good men. That’s why you’re here. Right?”
