The Name of Honor

by Susan Fanetti

  She’d called all the made men together. The room in the cellar was too small to accommodate the capos and soldiers comfortably, so she’d closed the billiard hall for the night, and they were meeting in the main room. Bruno had ordered associates to arrange the cheap four-tops together down the throughway between the game tables, and the effect was a long conference table, with Giada at the head and Bruno at her side. Men had served themselves beer on tap, but Giada hadn’t provided food yet. Though it was custom to break bread together before business, in this case, there were good reasons to wait until after.

  After Bruno called the meeting quiet, Giada contemplated the men ringing the table before her. Some of them were older, of her father’s era or close to it. They still had about them the shadow of the old ways, but they were tired and past their prime. Some were about her age, made in her father’s time but brought up with her brother. They were rougher around the edges. Some were still professional, but others were more like Tommy, and Fabio, confusing cruelty with strength. These, she thought, were the real problem—the men who’d called Tommy their friend. And some were young, in their twenties or early thirties. They’d had no influence but Tommy, no education in the right way to be in their world, but they might be young enough to learn.

  Giada had to figure out a way to lead these men, to bring them under her control and have their respect. She’d been voted in, and she’d taken the vow, but her work was only beginning.

  What she did tonight would set the board, and she’d have only this chance to declare the don she’d be.

  “I called you here tonight because there is business to discuss that affects the whole family. Before we begin, however, I want our table to be closed and complete.” She turned to Bruno, who nodded and then turned to face the whole table.

  He didn’t say a word, but a sudden commotion burst up at two points on the table—swift movement, heavy thuds, male screams of agony, all in tight harmony as if it had been rehearsed, and then another burst of general shock around the table as the others saw what had been done.

  Two enforcers, Steve Abano and Mike Rossi, had, on Bruno’s cue, at Giada’s direction, slammed knives through the hands of two other men at the table: Danny Ferrari and Tonio Manelli. Ferrari and Manelli’s screams still resounded through the cavernous room, overwhelming the shocked cries of the men around them.

  “What the fuck, man?!” Manelli shrieked when Rossi grabbed his loose hand back as he tried to free himself from the blade. “What the fuck?!”

  Rossi didn’t answer. No one did. Giada sat quietly, watching, until the fuss abated, and the room was quiet except for the groans of the pinned men.

  Danny Ferrari and Tonio Manelli were both in their early forties, made by her father but brought up in her brother’s shadow. Men who’d called Tommy friend.

  When all eyes were on her, she said, “Danny, Tonio. You were working with Fabio. You helped him plan the hit on me. You helped him open fire at me, on church grounds, out in the open, while I was standing with my sister-in-law, my nieces, and my uncle. My uncle took the bullets meant for me. You helped Fabio kill Vincenzo Sacco.”

  “That wasn’t supposed to happen. You weren’t supposed to hide behind an old man like a stupid cow. What was supposed to happen was justice. You killed your own brother. Our don,” Ferrari snarled defiantly. “So get off, bitch.” He scanned the men around the table, turning his sweaty, pale face to and fro. “C’mon, stand with us! Do you really want to follow this chick? She killed Tommy! Did you all give up your balls?”

  The other men at the table remained silent. Giada said nothing, but she shifted her eyes to Steve, standing at Ferrari’s side, making sure he didn’t free himself. When Steve met her eyes, he stepped behind Ferrari, and dropped a coil of wire from one hand.

  On her orders, while the whole of the Sacco Family looked on, Danny Ferrari was garroted to death.

  He fought, struggling mightily against the bladed twist of the wire. But Steve was big and powerful, and he kept Ferrari in his seat, though it rocked and bucked.

  It went on forever, the span of a lifetime. Ferrari’s face swelled and purpled, his eyes bugged, his tongue popped out like a meaty bubble. He fought so hard he managed to pull his pinned hand from the table. Blood streaked his neck, gushed over his scrabbling hands, soaked his shirt. Finally, it was over, and the silence in the room was so complete it seemed unnatural.

  When Steve made to pull the body from the table, Giada raised a hand and stopped him. Then, with the misshapen face of a traitor on the table, she turned to Tonio Manelli. “Contrition gets you a bullet instead.”

  Still pinned, Manelli stared across the makeshift conference table at his dead friend. Then his gaze traveled around the room, to the other men. He circled back and forth without meeting Giada’s eyes.

  Then he did. He stared with wide eyes. Giada saw resistance become despair, and then resignation.

  “Perdonami, donna. Ti prego, perdonami.”

  She nodded, and Mike Rossi yanked his blade from Manelli’s hand, dragged the man from the table, threw him facedown on the floor, and put a bullet in his head.

  Then she let her enforcers remove the bodies, and she faced the rest of the men. “I am a Sacco, but I am not my brother. I am not needlessly cruel. I’m not impulsive. I’m not stupid. And I do not sneak. When I seek justice or retribution, you’ll see me do it. You’ll know why. But I will seek it. This is my family. You are my family. I will keep us strong and whole, and I will not tolerate anyone who might try to weaken us. Tonight, during this meeting, the floor is open if you want to question what I’ve just done, or what I will do. But when this meeting is over, after that I will not be challenged by any but those I’ve tapped as advisors. Capite?”

  After a beat of quiet, a muted chorus of various assents wrapped the table.

  “Do you have questions now?”

  No one spoke up.

  “Bene. Then we’ll move on. I’m naming my circle. Bruno will be underboss. All capos will report to him. Soldiers will report to capos, as always. I’m making no changes at this time to that leadership. But I will remind you that I’m not my brother, and we’ll all be held to a standard of conduct that’s been lacking for some time.”

  Before she said the next thing, Giada needed a breath. She took it as discreetly as she could, not wanting to seem nervous to say what she was, in fact, nervous to say. “I’m naming Angelo Corti as my consigliere.”

  As she suspected, though she’d intimidated the hell out of the men by dealing with the traitors as she had, that news got their tongues moving. First, it was a general flare of shock, nearly as acute as when two of their own had been pinned to the table.

  She waited it out. Then men started to ask her questions and make challenges, all at once, in a cacophony. She waited that out, too, and let Bruno get the men under control.

  “Sit, simmer down,” he said. “One at a time, and remember who you’re talking to.”

  A hand went up, and Giada nodded. “Connie?”

  “I gotta ask the obvious question—he’s a Pagano man. How’s he sitting next to you?”

  “Because he’s with me. Angie and Don Pagano have parted ways.”

  “He broke his vow?”

  Giada didn’t see who asked that, but she turned in the direction the question had come from. “No. The don did.” She leaned forward. “Look, I understand that you might have questions about a man from another family moving into ours at such a high level. There’s a limit to how much of my personal life I’ll give you, even now, while I’m entertaining your questions. But know this—we are together, he is at my side, and he will be advising me. I’m not making him a capo, not giving him any responsibility or profit from our business at this time, not until he’s proven himself as a Sacco man. But I want him to take our vows, and to be bound by them.”

  “He killed Fabi. That was family business. Not for him to handle.”

  Giada recognized that voice and found Frank Bello at
the table.

  “Yes. Of all the guards and armed men at that church, Angie Corti was the one who saw Fabio coming for me. No one in this room saw. Angie and my uncle are the reason I’m alive, and I am the reason Don Pagano turned him away. So I’m bringing him in. The question for you is whether he’ll be bound by honor and blood to us. As is our way, that is subject to a unanimous vote.

  “And you trust him?” Frank asked.

  She trusted him more than anyone in this room. “I do. Completely. If you trust me, then you’ll make him a Sacco man.”

  ~oOo~

  On a bright spring morning, with birds twittering in the trees, Giada sat beside her uncle’s new grave. The fresh earth smelled rich and warm, like the promise of a newly planted garden, but what was planted here was long past its flowering. The strong floral scent wafting around them came from the hundreds of cut flowers in the lavish arrangements clustered where his headstone would be.

  His gleaming walnut casket, draped with an American flag, rested on the scaffold that would lower it into the ground soon.

  Enzo had served in the Marines and been to war, and he’d been prouder of that service than anything else in his life, so Giada had arranged for his burial in the Massachusetts National Cemetery, and for his funeral cortege to travel the sixty or so miles from St. Leonard’s. His headstone would be a simple cross rather than the elaborate monument of the family plot, but that was the best way to honor him. Enzo had been the best of them.

  He had served the Sacco Family all his life, and been influential during her father’s long years as don. Though he’d been pushed from the family, and most of his compatriots had passed before him, his funeral Mass packed St. Leonard’s solid, and most of those stayed to follow the hearse to the cemetery. A sea of black surrounded Giada. And there was real grief for this loss, unlike for Tommy. The difference was palpable.

  And security was super-sized. In addition to the extra security Giada had ordered, every major player had doubled their own guards.

  Giada sat and stared at the casket, studied the weave and stitching of the flag. Angie sat beside her, his arm protective around her shoulders, and she felt his presence like a talisman. But inside the cocoon of his warm care, Giada was numb.

  Enzo was a man she’d loved every day of her life, and she missed him desperately, but she sat at the graveside with dry eyes. She was weary and sad, but tears were nowhere near. Since the night of Tommy’s funeral and Enzo’s death, when Angie had stormed away from her, she hadn’t cried at all.

  She couldn’t afford the weakness of tears.

  There was too much going on, too much she needed to be strong for. Taking control of the family. Winning over the Council and facing down Sicily. Dealing with the fallout of Fabio’s treachery, ferreting out the other traitors in their midst.

  And bringing Angie to her side. He was now a Sacco man, sworn in blood. The men had voted him in unanimously, if not enthusiastically.

  She’d meant what she’d told her family—she wouldn’t make Angie a capo yet, or give him any real role in the day-to-day operations of that business. He would have to build rapport and trust with the men first. For now, he was a true consigliere—her close advisor. And she was considering options for bringing him into Sacco Development. He’d been COO of Pagano Brothers Shipping for years; he had skill and experience that would be useful in her company. Her own COO had been with her for years, however, and she wasn’t prepared to push him out.

  For now, there was enough going on to keep Angie busy simply as her consigliere. Every day brought a new challenge. Tommy’s reign had been messier than she’d even known. And that mess had made dangerous holes she now had to locate and repair.

  So no, she couldn’t afford the weakness of tears.

  The priest finished the service, and the Marines in their dress uniforms and bright white gloves lifted the flag from the casket and folded it, moving in the practiced choreography of ritual. When it was a snug triangle, one of the Marines came and knelt before her, presenting the flag to her.

  She nodded her thanks and took it. It was heavier than she’d expected, the fabric richer. She hugged it to her chest and let her head fall.

  Angie’s arm tightened around her, and she wanted desperately to turn into his embrace. Instead she lifted her head and set the flag on her lap.

  She couldn’t afford the weakness of grief.

  ~oOo~

  Giada held Enzo’s wake in his own house, the brownstone in Back Bay he’d lived in most of his life. He’d been a fastidious man with impeccable taste and a style with an Old World flavor. It seemed fitting that for the last stage of his farewell, his mourners should be surrounded by the man he was—or, at least, as much of that man as he’d ever felt safe to be.

  For the rest of that whirl of a day, Giada held court, accepting condolences, understanding that there was more than sympathy to most such encounters. Though the shock and scandal of her rise still frothed through the social and business circles of their world, she had been accepted as don of the family. She’d heard whisperings and knew there were more than a few who expected her reign to be brief. It didn’t bother her. Those men would learn otherwise.

  In the meantime, they paid her the respect of her station, at least to hedge their bets. Dons and other bosses from important organizations, as well as dignitaries of the Boston mainstream, took their turn to kiss her cheek and offer their sympathy—and to note that they’d like to talk business when the time was right.

  Angie stayed nearby but didn’t hover. He seemed to know when to be close and when to give her space. Rumors flew, too, about his move from Pagano to Sacco, and his obvious closeness with Giada, and throughout the day she saw plenty of eyes watching their interactions.

  She was the center of a lot of gossip these days; she’d shaken their world like a tornado. The scheme she’d cooked up months ago to get the underworld’s attention had certainly paid off, though the costs had been far steeper than she’d been prepared to pay.

  Nick had attended Enzo’s Mass and burial, of course, and was at the wake, too. So was Donnie Goretti. To Giada, Nick was warm and cordial as ever. He didn’t acknowledge Angie at all, and she saw how badly the snub hurt.

  Donnie, however, did greet his friend, and even pulled Angie aside for a few minutes of private talk during which Angie’s head had hung low. But they’d ended with a long hug.

  Nick noticed that conversation and didn’t seem to take exception to it. When it was over, he showed no coolness with Donnie, but no more warmth to Angie. Still, if Nick would allow Angie at least some of his friendships, Giada thought that might be an encouraging sign. Angie had taken the Sacco vows and could never be a Pagano man again, and she was glad to have him at her side. But if Nick might someday be made to see he’d been cruel without cause, maybe the friendship could be repaired.

  She would do what she could to make that happen.

  ~oOo~

  Finally, the last hand had been shaken, the last hug accepted. The caterers had cleaned up, packed up, and headed out, and the only people left besides Giada and Angie were Bruno, who’d sent his family home earlier, and Shorty, who had become her main body man. Two other guards stood watch outside, at the front and rear exits.

  She stood at the long table in Enzo’s Queen Anne living room and flexed her shoulders and neck. God, she was tired.

  Angie came up behind her and set his hands on her shoulders, squeezing gently, pulling her back to rest against him. He bent close and put his lips at her temple.

  “You were amazing today.”

  “Hmm,” was the only response she could muster.

  Bruno came into the room. “I had some interesting conversations this afternoon we should talk about.”

  “Not tonight,” Angie said.

  Bruno’s eyes flicked to Angie and back to Giada. He’d readily accepted her call to move him to underboss and keep Angie close. The only challenge he’d made was to suggest she think carefully about how to tell
the family about the situation—and he’d been right.

  But he’d also made it subtly clear that he wasn’t entirely thrilled to have a man who’d been so close to Nick Pagano suddenly poised to know all the Sacco business. He treated Angie not with overt suspicion, but with a sense of alertness.

  As far as Giada was concerned, it was matter of simple trust. She trusted Angie. As Nick should have.

  “Yes, not tonight,” she agreed. “Enzo deserves at least this one whole day, Bruno.”

  He nodded. “Capisco. Do you need anything else, donna?”

  “No. Go home to your wife and kids. We’ll talk tomorrow. And send Shorty home, too.”

  “Giada, a don needs real security. You can’t just send your guard away because it’s a little inconvenient.”

  She stood up straight. “Can’t I?”

  Bruno stared but didn’t answer. Giada stared back.

  “I got her, Bruno,” Angie said. “She’s guarded. Keep the guys on her apartment building.”

  Bruno’s eyes stayed on Giada. When she inclined her head, he sighed and nodded. “Okay. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Buonanotte, donna.”

  “Good night. Thank you, Bruno,” she said, giving him a smile.

  When he was gone, and they were finally alone in Enzo’s big, dark museum of a house, Angie kissed her shoulder and said, “He’s not wrong, you know. Security isn’t just about keeping you safe, not when you’re don. A family gets thrown into a tailspin when its don is lost—or worse, taken.”

  “I know.” She turned and faced him. “But I can’t imagine being safer with Shorty lurking in the shadows when I’ve got you right here at my side.”

  He grinned, though the expression had lost some of its devil-may-care sparkle since his exile. “That’s true. I’ll keep you safe.”

  They were alone. Exhausted, Giada allowed herself the luxury of sagging forward against Angie, letting his arms encircle and support her.

  He held her close and kissed the top of her head. Such a simple gesture, but it brought with it memories of her childhood, of being in Enzo’s arms, feeling his kiss in the same place. Enzo had never known the things Tommy had done to her, because she never had said those things aloud to anyone, and never would. She’d pushed Tommy until he’d outed himself in front of his capos, so now that secret was known, in vagueness, among them, but she had not spoken it herself, and the men who knew had not mentioned it in her hearing.