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Frankie Antonelli.
The footage jumped and rolled. Corrado pushed the tracking button, trying to straighten it out, but nothing helped. He gave up and sat back in his chair as Frankie started to talk, the sound cracking and buzzing when he turned up the volume.
“I, uh . . . I’ve never been a religious man. I come from a religious family, my pop’s a devout Roman Catholic, just like my granddad back in the old country, but me? Naw, I never believed it. I don’t believe in prayer or salvation, don’t believe in Heaven, but I do believe in Hell. I got to. I live in it.”
Frankie ran his hands down his face as he paused. “I don’t believe in confession . . . you know, asking for forgiveness and all that . . . but I get why the guys do it. We ain’t never gonna be forgiven for the shit we do, but it eases the conscience. It’s hard to walk around every day, carrying so many secrets. And I got secrets. I got plenty of sins in my book. And I ain’t asking to be forgiven for them, I ain’t asking to be saved, but I gotta get them out. I can’t carry them around anymore . . . not when I spend every day in this Hell, staring at them in the face.”
Corrado’s stomach dropped, coldness creeping through him. He felt the urge to eject the tape, throw it in the trashcan and set it on fire. What kind of wise guy—what kind of man of honor—breaks his vow of silence on video? He was disgusted, disgruntled, and downright angry.
But another part, deep down inside, rendered him immobile. Maybe it was curiosity, or maybe instinct, but something forced him to keep watching the tape.
For the next thirty minutes, Corrado stared at the screen, stunned speechless as a man he once considered a mentor, a friend, a brother, who turned into a traitor, a coward, a rat, spilled a secret that shocked even him. He had seen it all, he had done it all, but the words Frankie spoke, the horrific truth that spilled from his lips, was something Corrado couldn’t begin to fathom.
Unimaginable. Appalling. He felt sick.
Corrado’s disgust only grew with each word, his contempt now unwavering. Everything he believed, everything he knew, had been put into question by a shaky half hour of spineless confession.
“So, yeah, that’s the truth,” Frankie said quietly, shaking his head as if in disbelief at his own words. “I have to live with what I did . . . what I helped do. I ain’t gonna apologize for it, or like I said, ask forgiveness. I had to do what I had to do. But I carried it with me for a long time, and I couldn’t carry it anymore.
“If someone’s watching this, I’m probably long dead. I won’t be surprised if it’s this that gets me killed. I’ve been feeling it lately, the feeling that something’s going down that I don’t know about, so maybe it’s only a matter of time before this comes out. And maybe I deserve to die for this, but I ain’t the only one. No, if this is how it ends, if this is how I escape from this Hell to go to the next, I hope the devil goes down with me, too. It’s only fair, since he controlled it all.”
Frankie leaned forward and shut off the camera. Corrado stared at the black screen, the office swallowed in uncomfortable silence.
Shell-shocked. It was the only word to describe how Corrado felt.
Getting his bearings straight, he ejected the tape and locked it in a desk drawer. He unhooked the VCR and grabbed the cartoon, meeting the security guard in the hallway once more. “Where’d you get this?”
“Stole it,” he said. “Broke into a few houses down the block until I found one.”
Corrado shoved it back to him. “Return it.”
The guard blanched. “What?”
“You heard me,” he said. “What kind of jackass steals from a little girl?”
17
Time heals all wounds. Il tempo guarisce tutti i mali. It’s been said time and time again, but what they don’t talk about are the jagged scars left behind. What they don’t tell you is that sometimes, when ignored, the wounds fester.
What started as a scratch, barely scraping the surface, will turn into a gaping gash, ripping and tearing at the flesh, until all that is left is a jumbled mess of frayed nerves and broken organs. The pain demands to be felt, and you don’t even notice until it is too late. Until it cripples you, bringing you to your knees.
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The knock on the office door was so timid Corrado barely heard it over the music in the club. He ignored the faint tapping, his gaze trained on the dingy briefcase on the desk in front of him.
After a minute or so, another knock sounded. Still weak. Hesitant. Again, Corrado ignored it.
Mafiosi knew they were supposed to carry themselves with confidence, especially when dealing with the most dangerous of men. He didn’t care if his men were staring down Lucifer personally, surrounded by brimstone and hellfire leading them straight to eternal damnation. They needed to keep their composure, be prepared to fight, and never ever let their fear show. The streets were ruthless and their rivals wouldn’t hesitate to make a move at the first sign of weakness. Vulnerabilities were exploited, and the worst thing they could do was come off as uncertain. It didn’t matter if they were wrong—they needed to always appear right.
And Corrado, most certainly, was not convinced.
It took a while for the third knock to come. It was louder, more determined. “Come in,” he yelled, sitting back in his chair and glancing at his Rolex as Remy Tarullo entered, tentatively shutting the door behind him.
“You wanted to see me, sir?”
“I did,” he stated. “I told you to be here at nine. It’s nine oh three. You’re late.”
“But I was here,” he said defensively. “I was out in the hall.”
