Page 161 of Marcello

Maybe I could bargain with Fausto. Steal a bunch of cash to pay him off.

I knew where Cesare and Lucrezia’s stash houses were – the places where all the drugs were stored. Stash houses also collected money from individual street dealers.

I was the one who went around to all the stash houses and collected the week’s haul.

Everybody who worked at them knew me, and everybody trusted me.

I could hit one and probably grab a million euros, fast –

If I was willing to kill for it.

The guys manning the store would never expect me to shoot them. Not good ol’ Romeo!

They’d never see it coming.

As horrible as it was to kill people who trusted me, I reminded myself that they were all murderers.

…like me.

There was a bigger problem, though:

Stealing from Cesare was suicidal.

The way we ensured the stash house attendants didn’t steal anything was having cameras inside, monitored by a crew offsite. If one of the attendants tried to steal drugs or money – or even acted shady onscreen – the entire clan would be tracking him down within half an hour.

If I just left town, I was pretty sure Cesare wouldn’t come after me.

But if I stole from him – even if I managed to get away clean – he would put a bounty on my head so big that I’d have to live the rest of my life looking over my shoulder.

Still, it was better than Fausto murdering my entire family.

It might be worth the risk to hit a stash house, kill the guys manning the store, and steal all the money inside.

But there was one thing I had to do before anything else:

I had to convince Giulietta to run away with me.

For the first time ever, I called her phone.

I paced nervously as it rang.

She didn’t answer. The message played – one of those generic recorded voices.

“If you would like to leave a message, please stay on the line – ”

I hung up and called again.

This time she answered.

“I told you never to call me!” she whispered angrily.

“It’s an emergency.”

Her tone turned wary. “What’s wrong?”

“Something’s come up. I need to see you immediately.”

There was a long silence – then –