MILAN
It wasunnecessary to repeatedly knock on somebody’s door. The act invited fatigue to the knocker, and it was scientifically impossible for the sound of the knocking to induce speed into the human inside and force them to answer the door faster.
Still, I knocked again on Don Giovanni Gioffre’s penthouse door for the fourth time in the forty-six seconds we had been standing there. Adriano’s face signified amusement with a small, sharp smile on his cheeks, but when Gioffre opened the door, he did not have a similar expression.
Gioffre would be the first Don to convert to my new rule as Capo dei Capi. He and Hugo had respected one another, and though I was assumed to be inexperienced with leadership, I had been trained by the very male he claimed to have respected, and I had been trained better than any other heir to exist.
My father had forced me to study his enemies, opponents, and even his friends for hours a day until I could name their weaknesses and habits in my sleep. He had instilled in me what it meant to be smart, how to identify clues in the way people walked and talked, but he had also shown me what it felt like to be betrayed, to be harmed by someone unsuspecting, like a father to a son.His knife had acquainted me with the dangersof what could happen if I was not alert, so I had ensured I was smarter than any of the other heirs.
From this, I knew Giovanni Gioffre’s weaknesses like I knew how to breathe. I knew that he spent more than he owned, that he found pride in cash, but more than that, I knew that being rich was a façade, a front, and that the Gioffre empire was falling fast.
He stared at me as I stood in his doorway, and though my internal programming rarely allowed me to react to external stimuli in the same manner that somebody neurotypical may experience, I was aware I was frowning.
I had known that the Don was overweight, but I had not quite graspedhowoverweight he was at the funeral.
He was…obese.
Morbidly.
This was not surprising given his lifestyle choices, but it still caused me to wonder how somebody could allow this level of greed to occur.Thatwas surprising.
I had studied the Don’s background and lifestyle in detail before arriving at his home and had noted his intense habits; it was my job to know that Giovanni’s sixteen-million-dollar Manhattan penthouse was home to his wife, Julia, and their twin eighteen-year-old heirs, Otto and Oratio, and that Giovanni had a false reputation of being akingbecause of his stock fraud business. What was most useful to me was that he was utterly incompetent at being a leader because of his greed for money, and that he had traded his security detail for luxury furniture and cigarettes.
His obesity, however, was not a factor I considered worthy of note at the time.
“What the fuck are you doing here, freak?” he spat, and the way he spoke only added to my discomfort at looking at him.
Gioffre was not a visually aesthetic male. He had lopsided, balding dark hair, a belly the size of his apartment, and a dress shirt that barely buttoned, and when his lip began to move up and down in a quiver, I suspected I would not be alone in determining that his appearance was visibly asymmetrical.
He also used the word ‘fuck,’ but unlike when Adriano said it, I found this unacceptable.
“Are you incapable of verbalizing in standard, well-mannered vocabulary?” I responded, causing Gioffre to make a hoarse sound like a dying animal.
“Fuck off,” he grumbled. “This is not your territory. I could have you killed for?—”
“Permit me to enter, Don,” I demanded before the sight of his disfigurement could cause me to malfunction.
Adriano puffed up his cheeks like a child attempting not to laugh before driving his shoulder into Gioffre and waltzing straight into his penthouse.I followed despite the fact that this was not our home, and we had not been authorized to enter.
My Consigliere turned his head close to mine as we entered and whispered, “You’re his Capo, remember.Youmake the rules. Every territory isyours.”
He was factually incorrect; I was not Gioffre’s Capo dei Capi, and I would not be unless he agreed, yet despite this fact, I felt a drive to behave this way after Adriano’s encouragement.
I allowed myself to look around the penthouse, and my lungs expanded to accommodate the painful inhale.
There were an excessive number of items filling the space.
In the center, a black leather couch held a minimum of sixteen turquoise cushions. In the adjacent kitchen, three bouquets of sunflowers sat on a glass dining table. Portraits and paintings hung on every inch of dark green wallpaper, and even the balcony pool outside had unnecessarily multi-colored tiles.
It made me want to return to my own house. My new, clean, empty house. It existed without chaos, Adriano’s presence was there, and there were no paintings or sunflowers or abnormally colored pools. There was nothing there but us, and this was a requirement for my mental stabilization.
“Why’s he doing that?”
My head snapped to the table at the new voice. Otto and Oratio Gioffre, the identical twin sons with a volatile reputation, inked skin, and peculiar brown hair with a shaved underside, sat side by side, occupied by mouthfuls of cereal and toast.
They did not appear to resemble their father in any way, though their appearances were still strange. If that was what the youths were like now, I was glad I was not one.
Oratio, the one I could distinguish from his twin because he had a silver nose ring, nodded to my hands. I looked down. They were wringing again. They clenched involuntarily. Unclenched. Clenched again.
