That was another thing he’d changed: Giulio Fausto had kept his rooms like Italian royalty, full of heavy carved woods and gilt trimmings.
In public Paolo wanted people always to remember that he had killed Fausto brutally and claimed all that had been his, he wanted them to see him in Fausto’s throne, behind his ornate desk, and remember that body lying naked and emasculated across Mulberry Street, its head sitting apart, and remember exactly who had done it.
In his private space, however, he couldn’t relax amidst so much decadence. His roots were humble, and he didn’t know how to find comfort in excess.
He’d been born into the life of a shepherd. That life would have suited him well, once. But that had been stolen from him. The life he’d stolen to replace it chafed, like wrong-size shoes from the feet of a corpse.
But he was young, still. As old as he felt, he was truly still young. He would find a way to make this life fit.
Maria stood beside the table, her hands clasped humbly together and her eyes slightly downcast. Paolo knew what she wanted; he’d read interest in her eyes many times. But humble, grateful girls who cast down their eyes held no allure for him. They reminded him of his sister.
He had taken Maria off the streets, given her shelter, food, and work. Protection, too; now he was powerful enough that his shelter was a shield as well. The girl saw him as her savior. He was not.
His sister had thought him her savior once, too, but he had not saved her. Someone else had.
When Paolo had need for physical release, he sent word to Carmela. Either she herself came to service him, or she sent one of the older women, those in their thirties, sometimes older, who were jaded and hardened. Women who’d learned long ago that salvation was a delusion, and who held no delusions about him.
Those women, he would fuck.
“Grazie, Maria,” he said. “Buonanotte.”
Her shoulders sagged a little. Then she dipped, bending her knees in something resembling a curtsey, and left the room.
Paolo returned his revolver to its place and poured himself a glass of wine.
The night was dark, and agony made spirals and swirls in his vision, but Paolo could see. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t speak, but he could see, and he could hear. God, please god, give him back his strength or let him die. Give him the strength to save her, or let him die and escape the knowledge that he’d failed her.
Caterina, his sweet sister, and all those men pawing at her.
Through the pain, the horror, the sparkling swirls that seemed to cut through his brain, he saw her, lying in the filthy road. She was almost close enough to touch, if he could only reach for her. But his arm wouldn’t move. None of him would move.
She fought, and then she stopped. Paolo could see her, lying limply, her body rocking with the thrusts of the man on her, with the yanks and slaps and pinches of the men holding her down for him.
Her eyes were open. When he could see her face, mere glimpses among the shifting bodies of the men, he saw her eyes. Watching him. Like Mamma.
Like Mamma.
Mamma.
Now it was Mamma lying in the dusty road, her body rocking bonelessly as cruel men took their turn on her.
Men were holding Paolo back, wrenching his arms, covering his mouth with their filthy hands, punching him in the head when he bit down. Caterina was held back, too, screaming and begging, but Mamma only lay there, waiting for it to be over.
Caterina lay there, waiting for it to be over.
Mamma … Rina …
Black. Relentless, entire black. Stench. Skittering creatures. Biting, skittering, seeking.
Blood on his hands. Blood in his mouth.
Caterina drenched in it.
Mamma drenched in it.
Little Sophia, her head on the table, the hole through her forehead, the blood soaking into the reeds she’d been weaving. Her hair wet with it, drenched in it.
The blood.
The blood.
The blood.
Crashing waves of it. An ocean of it, crossing from the Old World to the New.
Take care of our women, son. You must protect them now.
Paolo! Paolo, help me! Paolo, please!
You are a murderer now, Paolo.
Murderer.
You are a murderer.
You are damned.
Paolo bolted upright into a dark room, his throat aching and his shout still ringing in the air. He was soaking wet, and his heart raced. As always when that dream came to torment him, his chest and belly, his face and arm, were filled with a fiery ache, a phantom pain centered on his old scars. The stab wounds in his belly had festered until the skin had gone black. Dr. Goldman had cut away the ruined skin and sewn him back up, but the scars were thick and ridged there. Even now, six years later, sometimes their pain was real and not the phantom shadow of a nightmare.
God, it was hot in here. He’d been raised in sunbaked central Sicily, and the humid boil and stench of August in New York was a misery he still hadn’t grown used to. The windows were open, but there was no breeze. Nothing came through but the heavy reek of night soil and the light waft of rotten fish.
He got up—he’d perspired so much the sheets clung to his skin, and he had to rip them off and wad them up to get free of them—and went to the bathroom. Though he hadn’t checked his pocket watch or the clock on the wall of his sitting room, it was still dark, and he’d gone to bed after two in the morning, so he couldn’t have slept long.
The glare of the bathroom light made him grunt and shield his eyes. He missed candles and oil lamps.
With his eyes squeezed mostly shut, he pissed, pulled the plunger to flush, and turned to the sink.
The mirror above it showed an old man. Paolo scrubbed his hands over his face and looked again. He saw himself, but his scars—the slash through his mouth, the ugly hook under his eye, the notch across the bridge of his nose—seemed deeper than usual.
He remembered every blow that had made those scars, and the ones on his belly, his ribs. He remembered every moment of that night. His pain, and Caterina’s.
And the night of their mother’s horror.
And the night he’d first killed a man. The night in the well.
And the day they’d thrown their mother’s body over the side of the ship.
And the day their little sister had been killed.
And the night their father had left them.
He remembered it all like the memories were fresh, because they were. They lived anew in his dreams, more nights than not.
Not even killing the men who’d destroyed Caterina and their hope for a new start in this New World had quieted the dreams.
Not even returning to Sicily and killing Enrico Cuccia, who’d destroyed their life in the Old World, had quieted them.
Nothing he could do would silence the devils cavorting in his soul.
You are a murderer now, Paolo, his mother had said. He couldn’t remember if those words were the last she’d ever spoken to him, but they were the last he remembered.
You are a murderer and a thief.
Had that been the moment when his life had turned to this path?
Or had it been their first night in New York, when Luigi Russo and his friends had beset him and Caterina and torn them apart in more ways than one?
Had it been when Dario, rescuing them both, had done for Caterina what Paolo had tried and failed to do?
Or had it been the night Don Cuccia had ordered their mother debased as punishment for what their father had done?
Or had he been simply destined for this life?
He was a murderer, it was true. Many times over, now.
He was not a savior, not a shield.
Perhaps he was simply a beast.
II
Late the next morning, Paolo sat in the downstairs parlor, slouched in the heavy red velvet chair that had once been Fausto’s, his arm resting on the arm of the chair and his head propped on his hand. He sought to appear
unperturbed, but truly he was tired. The dreams last night sat on his shoulders, more heavily than usual, and his thoughts of Long Island—of the business prospect there and what it might mean for Caterina and her family if his world neared hers again—were dark and tangled.
In the room with him were the three men he entrusted with the conduct of most his business: Aldo Tessaro, Nello Lippi, and Joey Scarpa.
All three were older than Paolo; Aldo and Nello were in their late thirties. Joey was two years older. They had been the first men to stand with him when he’d killed Fausto and to stand at his back to help him fight off those who would have killed him for it. Aldo had traveled back to Sicily with him to finally pay back the debt of pain, humiliation, and death he’d owed Enrico Cuccia.
These three men had helped him take this place. Now they reaped the rewards of his success. He trusted them as far as he trusted anyone.
They were making their weekly reports. Fausto had made his wealth and established his influence through the usual sins and vices that dwelt in the dark: women and gaming, and the wayward impulses that they engendered, such as theft and high-interest loans—and the consequences they invited, like blackmail and extortion. Paolo had maintained most of the same enterprises, with a few changes and exceptions. He no longer ran women who hadn’t chosen that life, for instance, and he did not steal. He would fence goods others had stolen, but none of his men stole for him.
His mother had called him a thief once, when he’d stolen only from the man who’d enslaved them. He disagreed strenuously that it was possible to steal from someone who’d stolen your freedom and more.
He was not a thief. He took what was owed.
His mother had also called him a murderer.
And he had killed.
But even then, he only ever took what was owed.
Joey, who had a keen head for numbers, was in charge of managing the money, particularly the loans. While he reported on the state of payments—which loans had been paid off, which were being paid as expected, which were not, who was seeking to borrow—Paolo tried to hone his focus.
“Abe Serafini was in yesterday, asking to meet,” Joey said in his fast, high-pitched voice. Joey weighed no more than a hundred and thirty pounds and looked like easy prey, but not even Paolo was faster with a knife.
Paolo considered the name but didn’t think he knew the man. “Who?”
“Abramo Serafini. He’s nobody. A bricklayer, lives a couple blocks up on Baxter.”
“Why is he looking to borrow from us?”
“His wife. She’s got the cancer. In her belly, he says, and it’s bad. They got six kids. He’s asking for money for the hospital and to bury her when it’s time. And to pay to bring her sister over to take care of the kids so he can work.”
“How much?”
“He’s asking for five hundred.”
At that, Aldo whistled and Nello chuckled.
Paolo sat up. That was a bold ask for a bricklayer. Five hundred dollars was as much as a bricklayer made in a year.
It was no secret that the loans Paolo offered were last-chance loans, with extremely high interest and penalties for nonpayment that could be, in the most literal sense, crippling.
Paolo didn’t care what gamblers and adulterers had to do to make their payments, and he didn’t care how they suffered the consequences when they missed or shorted on them. Those men had made their choices and brought their suffering upon themselves. But this laborer with six children and a dying wife? He had no stomach to threaten a man like that.
“How does he think he’ll keep up with the payments?”
“I don’t think he’s thinking about that yet. He’s desperate, don.”
“Of course he’s desperate. That’s what we deal in—loans for desperate people. How do we think he’ll keep up with the payments?”
Joey stared at him, his sharp Adam’s apple bouncing. He had no answer and was nervous about it.
Paolo considered the problem, ignoring the men who watched him think.
“Offer him ten percent interest on the five hundred,” he finally said.
It was Aldo who reacted first to that. He shifted his big body in his chair and leaned toward Paolo like he meant to tell him a secret. But when he spoke, he did so clearly. “Paolo, rispetto, but that’s lower than the bank. If word of that gets out …”
Paolo stopped him with a raised hand. Aldo was right—that deal was too soft. And unlike him. His trip to Long Island, and the thoughts of the past it had dredged up, had him still unsettled this morning. But he had no interest in compounding the suffering of this bricklayer.
He was better than the man whose place he’d taken. He’d cultivated that truth from the day he’d taken over.
Still, he was not soft, and couldn’t be seen to be. He focused on Joey. “Don’t offer him. Bring him in this afternoon. I’ll make the deal myself. Ten percent on the five hundred, and he owes me a service.”
“What kind of service?” Joey asked.
“What I need, when I need it. Whatever I ask, he owes it to me. Only once, but without question.”
He sensed Aldo and Nello exchanging a glance but ignored it.
Joey nodded. “Capisco.”
Then Paolo turned to Aldo. “I’m not gouging somebody like that. I don’t give a fuck what we do to men who gamble their savings away, or get caught out with a girl not their wife. We can let the streets run with their blood for all I care, as long as they’re still living to keep paying. They deserve it. But this man does not. He’ll pay the loan back, and we’ll earn on it. But he’ll pay in a way he can, that won’t ruin him. When word gets out, it’ll be that.”
Aldo nodded. “It’s good, Paolo. It makes sense.”
Paolo turned back to Joey. “What else?”
Fausto had maintained a friendly persona in the neighborhood. He’d enjoyed strolling down the streets with a big smile, greeting everyone as if they were all great friends. Truly, he had been no one’s friend, and no one had believed otherwise. The artifice had amused him, however, making threats and dealing out punishments as if he were offering gifts and favors. He enjoyed making the people who feared and despised him behave as if they enjoyed his company. He had been a singularly cruel man.
Paolo’s temperament was decidedly different. He was neither kind nor compassionate, those tendencies had been choked from his soul long ago, but he didn’t enjoy artifice of any kind and avoided pretense as much as he could. It was not his interest to pretend to be nicer than he was or to force people to grin at him.
Never would he be a man like Enrico Cuccia or Giulio Fausto. Those were the men who had destroyed the boy he’d been, and whom the man he’d become had replaced. He would, therefore, be better.
Not good. Goodness had no fit in him. But better than the men who’d made him as he was.
He was brutal. He was bitter. He was capable of causing great pain without a qualm. But he had no wish to be cruel. He took only what was owed.
The whole of bottom of Manhattan was a desolate place, populated by struggling people. He had no interest in abasing them further than the city already did daily. They need not fear him, so long as they kept their accounts in order and lived within their means.
Yes, he took protection payments from all the businesses in Little Italy and beyond. Yes, he made sure, with every firmness necessary, that the shopkeepers understood the benefits of making those payments, and the risks if they chose not to. But he didn’t prance down the street like a foppish monarch and expect them to fall on their knees before him. What he did was not a game.
When he sought to amuse himself, he did it on the backs of men who thought themselves his betters. The men uptown, who wouldn’t take money straight from the hands of an Italian man or shake his bare hand with their own. The men who pushed their women behind them, as if the mere sight of a man like him would sully them. Those men, he wanted to fear him. Those men, he wanted to suffer. Those men, he wanted on their knees.
&nbs
p; Money, goods, respect, or fear, he took what was owed.
But when he walked through his own neighborhood, among the people who’d come to this hostile New World and struggled to find their place in it, he had no wish to be feared.
Respect was what he sought.
And power. Always that.
He had men who collected payments, and others who exacted consequences, so Paolo had no particular need to tour the neighborhood the way Fausto had. But there was one thing that old bastard had been right about: it was, in fact, important to be seen. More than that, it was important to be seen being respected. When he walked down the street and a shopkeeper packing up his crates under his awning turned and doffed his cap, or reached out with both hands to take Paolo’s, that meant something to everyone in view, and everyone they might tell.
That Paolo was so young made it more important to be visibly respected. So he took his tour. Not as often as his predecessor, but often enough.
Fausto had always traveled with a group, his own small parade everywhere he went. For a short while, Paolo had been part of that group. Its formation had an intentional, rigid structure, and Fausto had claimed that to show how many people followed him was a move of power, but Paolo had come to understand the real truth behind that pretense: Fausto was afraid. He went nowhere without a group of men to defend him because he was afraid he would be attacked and defenseless without them.
He had been a coward at heart, Don Fausto.
Unless he had specific need of anyone to join him, Paolo usually walked through the neighborhood alone, like any other resident.
As he strolled up Mulberry Street on this hot, too-bright late August afternoon, he stopped before a storefront he knew bitterly well, though he hadn’t been inside the shop any more often than any other. Once the signs painted on the windows had proclaimed this place the Laterzas’—the family that had taken Caterina in after Paolo had failed to protect her. The family she’d married into.
Since that family, Caterina’s family, had moved to Long Island, away from this place, the painted name had changed. It was still a bakery, still promised Fine Breads, Desserts, & Baked Goods, but the name above that legend was now Benedetto.
Il Bestione (The Golden Door Duet Book 2) Page 2