“You used to steak and potatoes?” I said.
“No.” She shook her head. “You can’t smell it? It smells Italian.”
I purposely went a little deeper when I inhaled. I nodded. “Yeah. It does.” After she pointed it out, I could smell garlic and tomatoes lingering underneath the heavy scent of red meat. It was almost on every plate.
“I would try the Italian dishes,” she said, “but I do not want to be disappointed.”
I laughed at her sour face. “Spoken like a true Italian,” I said. “No one’s cooking is as good as yours—or like your mamma or nonna makes.”
We passed a table where a woman had some kind of pasta dish. Alcina narrowed her eyes, studying the woman’s plate as if she was rating it mentally.
“What’s the verdict?”
“Hm?”
“The verdict on the pasta dish.” I nodded toward it. The woman gave us a hard look before she set her fork down, refusing to eat while two strangers stared at her.
“Ah. It looks pretty good.” She smiled. “Actually, sorprendente.”
“Since it looks amazing,” I said, “we’ll get a few things to try.”
We met the men who had gone in ahead of us to get a table. A man dressed in a suit, who introduced himself as Sylvester, told us to follow him. He led us to a room that was set off of the restaurant itself. It looked like it was used for parties. A table that fit no less than fifty sat in the center. A two-way glass was built in the wall.
“Compliments of Mr. Macchiavello,” Sylvester said, placing our menus down on the table.
I narrowed my eyes. “I’d like to speak to him.”
Sylvester nodded. “I will let him know.” He gestured to the table. “Enjoy your dinner, Mr. and Mrs. Capitani.” Then he left Alcina and me alone.
My men waited outside the door, since this was an outing with my wife. I wouldn’t mix business with pleasure, even though I could feel it starting to spill over in this fucking place.
“You want the door closed, boss?” Baggio asked, sticking his head in the room. He had been in Adriano’s crew before Adriano went to Sicily. He’d been promoted in Adriano’s absence.
I looked to my left a little, where Adriano stood. I made eye contact with him. Adriano told Baggio something, and instead of closing the door the entire way, he left a small crack open and then stood in front of it. Nunzio stood right next to him. I had asked him to come to New York for a while, to keep an eye on Alcina.
I pulled out Alcina’s chair, and she fixed her dress before she took a seat. I took the one next to her at the head of the table.
She looked over her shoulder. “That is interesting.”
“Yeah,” I said, watching as a woman stopped to check her lipstick as she passed. The mirror was on the other side. “You don’t see that often.”
We both checked out the menu, but I wasn’t really there for the food. A few minutes later, Sylvester came back in and took our orders.
I grinned when Alcina ordered three different items. I figured I’d have the steak, since it was my grandfather’s last meal.
“Good choices,” Sylvester said in Italian. “It will not be a long wait.”
As soon as he disappeared, a woman came with our drinks. Alcina took a sip of her water with lemon. She had been quiet ever since we left the burial.
I took her hand. “Tell me.”
“Tell you…?” She tilted her head, studying me.
“What’s on your mind.”
She sighed. “Something feels familiar about this place…the smell.” She inhaled. “Chocolate and lemon. It reminds me of Modica. The chocolate shop there.”
She was intuitive. I hadn’t even realized it, but it did. The day we went to drop off the pistachios and pick up her supplies, the shop had had that same unique smell. It was more condensed in this room, where there were only the two of us and not that many plates.
It brought me back to the guy with the tiger tattoo on his neck—Cash Kelly. I planned on paying him a visit soon. I recognized him. He was the son of one of the most infamous Irish bosses Hell’s Kitchen had ever seen. After Cash got out of prison, he started a war to get his streets back.
“Besides that,” I said.
She took a drink and then started to speak. “You have not cried over your grandfather. I know what kind of man you are, what you are accustomed to, but you have been conditioned to be so…unfeeling about death. Even to those closest to you.”
I had no fucking clue what she was talking about.
“He was my grandfather,” I said. “I’ll miss him. But life moves us all toward death. We accept it and keep moving.”
She was right. It was a fact of this life. We were conditioned to accept our fates. No one wanted it, and most men tried their best to avoid making stupid mistakes that would cost them, but in the end, it was what it was. We were all going to end up in the same place someday anyway.
“I understand that notion,” she said. “Still. The loss hurts. It’s okay to cry, to grieve. Those emotions make us human.”
“Emotions make us weak,” I said.
“I am not weak,” she snapped. “And I feel everything. That’s what makes me strong. I grow after I go through it.” She leaned back in her seat. “Grazie,” she said to the waiters who set her plates down.
Sylvester set mine in front of me, and Alcina licked her lips, her eyes growing big. “That smells good,” she said.
I grinned, cutting her a piece. I put it to her lips and she closed her eyes, opening her mouth. “How is it?”
She put her hand up to her mouth, signaling that she was still chewing, and then said, “So good.”
Alcina had always enjoyed eating, but ever since she found out she was pregnant, she was on an entirely new level.
“Shouldn’t you be sick right now?” I cut off another piece and took a bite. The steak was damn good.
She laughed, twirling the pasta around her fork like a fucking pro. “All pregnancies are different. Some women get sick.” She shrugged. “Others do not. I do get a little bothered by smells—raw chicken. But nothing severe, or you would know.” She twirled more, but this time she fed it to me.
I nodded. “Good, but not as good as yours.”
“My zie in Modica make a pasta like this.” She smiled. “Paired with the smells, it brings me home.”
We didn’t talk much after that. We enjoyed our meals in companionable silence, swapping bites and a little conversation every so often. We were sharing three plates of desserts when Adriano stuck his head in the room.
I could tell he was trying to inhale the food through his nose; his nostrils flared. “Company.”
I dropped my napkin on my empty plate, meeting his eyes.
“Silvio and some of the men.”
The sit-down wasn’t scheduled until tomorrow. I guess he got the feeling he was going to get walked into a room but never walked back out. He was fucking right. Why go ten rounds with a guy when I could knock him out in one? It was that fucking simple.
What wasn’t simple was having my wife with me.
Sylvester stepped back into the room and cleared his throat. “There is another room,” he said, pointing to the left. “Mrs. Capitani is more than welcome to wait for you in there, until business is over.”
I nodded at Nunzio and he nodded back.
“I guess you are sending me away,” she said.
“Just for a minute.”
She huffed and stood. When she was almost to the door, Silvio stepped in front of her. She stopped like she had run into a wall. Her eyes moved up to his and hardened. He couldn’t hide the shock in his eyes—he wasn’t expecting her. What she looked like.
“In a different league than Junior,” I said, forcing his eyes on me. “Makes sense now. Why he had to force her into something she didn’t want.”
Her lips moved without sound again, and I wondered if she was cursing him as Nunzio escorted her into the next room. If Silvio believed in what the old folks
said, he should have cupped his balls to ward off the malocchio. He had so much heat coming for him, though, that even cupping his balls wouldn’t have saved him from the evil eye.
“Sit,” I said, after she had gone. “Let’s talk.”
He moved deeper into the room, a few guys following behind him. They took their seats, and so did my men. Vito, the guy Silvio had appointed his underboss, as if the position was his even after I’d been inaugurated, refused to move his eyes from my face. He was Junior’s godfather.
I took a drink and set it down. “Our meeting is tomorrow. You’re a day early.”
“This is a personal meeting,” he said. “We’ll deal with business tomorrow.”
“Let’s get down to it.”
“I owe you for finding Junior’s wife.”
“No payment needed. I found my wife. The only record of marriage you’ll find for Alcina Maria Parisi is to me. Their sham of a marriage was never legal, nor was it consummated. It was forced, which means it’s void in the eyes of the church—and me.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “You have proof of this.”
Silvio thought he was slick. Part of the code was that we didn’t mess around with other member’s wives. We didn’t look at them the wrong way. We were never alone with them. We couldn’t even mess around playfully with wives, sisters, or claimed women unless we had honorable intentions.
Silvio thought he had me there, and even if he did—my grandfather would come back to haunt me for this—I would have broken the code for Alcina. The day I told her I would die for her in that pistachio grove, I meant it literally.
I grinned into my glass. “The proof was the loss of your son’s balls. He wanted her. She had a difference of opinion. When he forced the matter, after he beat her, she settled it. The only thing she did wrong was not going for his jugular instead of his balls.”
“No wonder the Scarpones wanted to rid the earth of the Palermos,” he said. “The only thing the Scarpones did wrong was not killing him before he had the chance to procreate. Luna was so in love with him. Stupidly so. I remember.” He touched his temple. “I didn’t know it was him at the time, but I know now. He left her for Maria, a girl from the old country.” He nodded toward the door. “A girl like that one.”
He grinned at me a second later. “Your grandfather didn’t want you looking for the Scarpones because he knew Vittorio Scarpone is still alive.”
Just because you were the smartest man in the room didn’t mean you had to flaunt it. Sometimes it was wise to pretend you were the dumbest. In this instance, it was wise to pretend I was the smartest.
I opened and closed my hands, as if to say, go on.
“You’re still looking for him. Looking to rid the world of all Scarpone blood. And if you’re looking for him, he’s waiting for you.” He shrugged. “He’ll take care of you and make things easier for me. You don’t stand a chance against a ghost.”
I matched his grin. “Bitterness doesn’t suit you, Silvio. What’s done is done. The family voted.”
“The family might have voted, but you’ll have to work to get me into a room with four walls and no way out.”
“I look forward to it,” I said.
He stood, and so did his men. I watched Vito carefully as they made their way toward the door. He walked behind Silvio, and as they reached the door, he did two things at once: he reached inside of his jacket, and he touched Silvio on the shoulder. Before Silvio could react and turn around, Vito put the gun he pulled from underneath his jacket to his best friend’s head and pulled the trigger. It had a silencer, but it couldn’t hide the bloodshed all over the wall and the floor.
Vito tucked the gun back inside of his jacket and turned to me. He took out a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his face. Our eyes met and held.
He would pay for this. The commission had ruled that it would be done on our terms, not his. Instead of following orders, Vito was telling me that even if he had to do it, he was going to do his way. Except he did it in a public place, which meant that it could cause trouble for my men and myself. I was the boss of my family, and without a head, the body fails. If this wasn’t a place that catered to men like me, I might have truly considered the implications. However, this wasn’t about the act, but about the blatant disrespect.
Vito and I had a problem.
Vito turned around and stepped over his best friend a second later, rushing out of the restaurant.
Sylvester appeared as soon as Vito disappeared, closing the door behind him. He had a card in his hand. He slipped it on the table. “Dinner is on the house,” he said. “Mr. Macchiavello will be in touch. Do not worry about this.” He nodded toward where Silvio bled out.
Dishes clanked next to me. Adriano had pulled Alcina’s plate closer, removing the plate he must have put on top of it so the blood wouldn’t splatter onto it, and was finishing her dessert. “I’m starving,” he said, shrugging. “The doc has me on steroids and I can’t get enough to eat.”
“Are you sure about this, cugino?”Adriano sat next to Baggio in the front of the car, narrowing his eyes against the windshield, trying to see past the rain coming down harder than it had two days ago.
“If I wasn’t—” I fixed my tie “—we wouldn’t be going.”
I took out the card Macchiavello had passed on to me through Sylvester, flipping it around with my fingers. Something shady was going on with him. He ran one of the most successful restaurants in New York. He owned one of the biggest nightclubs in New York. The Club. And none of these places were on any of the books.
He could have been a legitimate business owner, but he catered to too many high profiles. There was a certain kind of honey that was put out for men like us. Once we started hovering, we became comfortable, patronizing places we knew.
Some men got comfortable.
I never created patterns in my life. It was too easy to figure out people who did. One thing I learned in this life—we were all capable of the same amount of damage, so none of us feared each other. What was important was to be able to outsmart the next guy.
Mac Macchiavello was smart.
I was, too.
I had an uncanny ability to read every man in the room, his intentions, and to approach him in a way that would turn the situation in my favor. If not, I acted accordingly. Rarely did I lose my cool, though, because there was no need.
It was either to be or not to be. What was there to get upset about?
“You don’t get mad, Corrado,” my grandfather used to say. “You don’t even get even. You strive to rise above, no matter what it takes to get there. If the door refuses to open, go through a window. It’s as simple as that.”
My grandfather taught me early on what it meant to be a man worthy of this life.
What it meant to have respect, not only for men, but for women.
What it meant to be loyal. To respect a code put in place for a reason.
What it meant to carry on traditions. To honor our old ways and welcome new ones that would only make us stronger as a family.
What it meant to love as fiercely as we hated.
He was a product of that life.
So was I.
I wore the fucking suit.
Alcina felt that I was cold, even callous, and I was. I was a gangster, a mobster, a racketeer—a rare breed in this life, my grandfather used to say—and the boss of one of the largest and most powerful families in New York. I wasn’t even forty years old yet. I had started at the bottom just like everyone else, and I made my way up to the top with no problem. I was smart, and I rarely made mistakes.
Yet, despite who I was, I loved that woman more than a poet loved romantic words. Even more than the night sky loved the moon.
My grandfather used to say, “You can’t have a heart, Corrado. They’re too expensive.”
Alcina Maria Capitani was out of my price range then. Because I had a heart. It was that woman. And I’d never be able to afford her. I’d owe for the rest of my l
ife and beyond for her love.
Of course, my grandfather wasn’t referring to a woman, but to this life of ours. The only feelings you were allowed to have was for yourself. If you didn’t take care of the situation, the situation took care of you. But when my wife would say something to me, point out how callous I was, how cold, sometimes I could see the contrast between her world and mine.
I couldn’t truly see the darkness of the night without the moon’s light.
I took out the picture of Emilia from my suit pocket, sticking it in front of Macchiavello’s card. I flipped it over and over between my fingers, the dim light making her picture seem black and white.
Emilia had wanted me to marry someone like Alcina. Someone good and beautiful. Someone with heart and passion, but also a woman that took no shit. Wasn’t afraid to speak her mind.
She wanted me to go to school, graduate, get a 9-5 like the rest of the schmucks earning an honest dollar—a dollar that came from billion-dollar corporations, who were the most ruthless gangsters on the block, apart from the government. FBI—we all knew it stood for Forever Bothering the Italians.
It was never in my future to be the guy who got suckered. From the moment I knew what it was all about, I worked for the suit.
I stared out of the window, fat droplets moving like amoebas down the pane. The Cadillac shimmied when Baggio made a turn, making them move faster.
“So I says to him, ‘You fucking bum, my ma will out-cook your ma any day. Any. Fucking. Day.’ It’s as simple as that, ya know? Who da fuck does this guy think he is? Telling me his ma cooks better.”
“What kind of stuff does your ma cook?” Adriano said, turning to face him. “I could be the judge, if he decides to agree.”
These fucking guys.
I sighed, slipping Emilia’s picture along with Mac’s card back in my pocket. We were in Hell’s Kitchen, and I could see the building coming up.
Baggio smoothly parked the Cadillac in front.
“You wait out here,” I told Baggio. I nodded to Adriano, and he nodded back.
Baggio stepped out to smoke in the rain. Adriano and I walked up to the building.
“He’s not right,” Adriano said tapping at his temple as we made our way closer to the door of the warehouse. It had Kelly Enterprises painted in green on the side, with a tiger emblem. “Baggio, I mean. He’s the closest thing to a sociopath I’d ever met.” He grinned. “But he’s a lot of fucking fun.
Mercenary (Gangsters of New York Book 3) Page 17