Page 307 of Marcello

“Alright, I’ll take you there. No problem.”

The rest was logistics.

Dario and Lars crouched over the laptop with the old man, who pointed at the map as he explained the route to the mansion.

Niccolo asked if we should pay off Pasquale to cancel the remaining tours for the day.

I shook my head. “Anything out of the ordinary will raise a red flag. I doubt it would happen, but there’s an outside chance it could get back to Cesare and Lucrezia. Best to keep everything business as usual.”

Niccolo was still paranoid – that is, until ’o Munaciello offered to take everyone deeper into the tunnels where no one ever went. “You’ll just have to pay off the dipshit manager so I don’t have to work today.”

“I can do that,” Roberto affirmed.

I told everyone I needed to get back to the stash houses.

“Check in later,” Niccolo said. “We’ll know what we’re going to do by then.”

98

Schizzato

The house was fucking with me.

I’d stayed behind while Cesare, Lucrezia, and all the top guys went to Florence. And while they were gone, the house talked to me.

Whispered to me.

Made me feel like I was crazy.

Not everybody came back from Florence, but Cesare and Lucrezia did. The morning after they got back, I was finishing up night watch on the third floor of the mansion…

When I thought I heard somebody.

Not just the house…

But a person.

It coulda been the PCP in the joint I’d been smoking…

But I swore I could hear a bitch crying inside the walls.

As soon as my shift was over, I walked along the hallway, trailing my fingertips across the wood paneling.

The carved lines were all squirming like maggots…

But I could tell they were hiding something.

I just had to find out what.

I knocked on the wood paneling. It sounded hollow – like knocking on a wooden cabinet.

As soon as I did, the crying stopped.

Well, shit –

Now I had to find out what was going on.

The wood might’ve been hollow, but it was sturdy – so I went down to the garage, looked around, and found a sledgehammer.