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Or how to get me out.
6
ELIO
It’s beena week since I handed Caterina off to her prison in Florida, and Marco definitely knows what I’ve done.
Between him and Gia, my phone has been buzzing nonstop for the past few days. Marco’s texts and voicemails are largely angry. He’s vowing revenge, cursing my name, promising pain and torture for holding his sister hostage.
He is an idiot.
Soon, I’ll place my demands. If he wants to see his sister again, then he’s going to have to comply with them.
He’s going to have to admit his guilt.
And then I’ll be able to have my revenge.
Most people assume that in organized crime, there are no rules. They think us to be brutal, animalistic killers who relentlessly pummel each other and the world around us.
For the most part, they’re probably correct. However, attacks on family are personal. You can do anything you want, in terms of the business or the soldiers in your organization.
You cannot kill someone’s mother and expect to get away with it.
If you don’t think you’re going to get caught, and you want to deal someone a personal message, it is effective, sure.
But no one can retaliate, as is their right, unless they know that you committed the crime. If they did, then they would be just as wrong as the original perpetrator. It’s an old-fashioned concept, but it is a concept that fundamentally shapes the world we live within.
However, just because Marco was willing to break the rules, doesn’t mean I can. I am bigger than he is. My people outnumber his ten to one. The rules of engagement for him include guerilla warfare.
Mine do not.
I have to physically work to unclench my jaw.
Marco rings again, and I press the button to dismiss him.
He can wait.
The phone stops vibrating on my desk. I close my eyes for a moment, breathing deeply. I lean back in my office chair, wincing as it creaks.
I hate the New York office. It reminds me so much of my father that it hurts. This was his place of refuge, and everything about it screams at me to remember what was done to him.
It’s his pictures that line the shelves, his taste that decorates the whole room in shades of wood that range from dark to darker. There’s even a picture of me, Gia, and him that rests on the corner of the desk, right next to one that’s a highly stylized and filtered version of my mother when she was young.
I haven’t moved it.
There’s a discoloration on the wood of the desk from where the pictures cast a shadow, the wood that touches the light faded, in the rare instances that sunlight filters into the room. I can picture both perfectly in my mind, and the thought of adjusting either makes me physically sick.
I will never let Marco get away with this. He took my parents from me, and threw me into a world that I wasn’t ready for.
Eventually, the phone stops buzzing, and I peek out the window at the shipyards below.
It’s too cold here. I miss my villa in Tivoli, or even the apartment in Rome.
Hell, I’d take the massive mansion sprawling in Florida over this gloomy New York winter.
Even if it does contain the one woman that I’ve vowed to never lay eyes on again.
The phone buzzes again, and I look down. Gia’s been calling and texting just as much as Marco, and I do actually feel a little guilty about that.
