AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Just as he reaches for the doorknob, it opens. It’s almost comedic how Giulio and Lauro nearly crash into each other.
“Oops, hey, Lauro!” Giulio puts his arm over Lauro’s shoulders and starts leading him back into the restaurant’s private room. “You would not believe the traffic I hit coming in.”
At six on a weekday evening, it’s even plausible as an excuse. But Giulio is almost forty minutes late, and last I saw him, he’d been a ten-minute walk away from the restaurant. I doubt it was traffic that had kept him.
Lauro shakes Giulio’s hands off him. “Fuck off, Pavone.”
Giulio grins and holds his hands up. “Oh, man, you can’t call me that. It sounds like you’re talking to my old man.”
Lauro sneers at him. “Your old man never would’ve been late. You’re nothing like him.”
He says that like it’s an insult, but Giulio beams at him. “Yeah, I know. It’s refreshing, isn’t it?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I notice the other person in the room fidgeting. Young Nilo Romano, pulled along again to… witness how to do business. How to deal with allies you hate. Or simply to toughen him up.
“Stop stalling!” Lauro yells. “You need to answer for your fuck-up.”
Giulio laughs and saunters over to sit down next to me. He picks up my coffee, although as soon as he takes a sip, he wrinkles his nose. “Damien, you did not ask them to put chili powder in this, did you?”
“He put it in himself,” Nilo says. He regrets drawing everybody’s attention immediately, judging from his expression, but he recovers by sitting up taller.
“Giulio, please stop derailing,” I say with a sigh. “Lauro, let’s simply focus on the most pressing matter. I’ll update Giulio on the drug territories later.”
I probably could have dealt with all of it myself and simply given Giulio the highlights of interest, but Lauro had insisted on a face-to-face confrontation with Giulio, despite how the last meeting turned out.
I suppose there’s less risk of grenades, real or not, in a restaurant during the full evening rush.
Giulio makes a disappointed noise. “Fine! What’s so urgent you had to see me again so soon? Aren’t you still cleaning up after what’s-his-face died?”
Lauro scowls at that, obviously not appreciating the reference to his dead consigliere. There’s less of a chance of casualties here in the restaurant—which is probably why he insisted on a relatively public place to begin with—but with how sour his mood is, it’s probably better for us. “The whole reason you get a cut from our deals is because you’re supposed to do your fucking job and protect the product. Our last shipment went missing.”
Giulio keeps smiling although his eyes harden. He glances at me. “Is that true?”
I nod. “The men who were helping deliver it are gone too. Normally I would suspect they ran with it, but… they had to drive through Benton City.”
Lauro slams his hand onto the table. “Victor fucking Corvi again! You said you were handling the situation! That’s why I trusted you! But you’re nothing but an immature brat, playing at running his father’s empire.”
There’s a second where I fear Giulio is going to respond to the insult with far more violence than warranted. I take note of the windows in the room, how nervous Nilo looks. Nobody’s wielding a gun… yet. I have two on me, and I’m sure the others are armed, too. If Giulio decides to create a complication here, I can probably get us out the window.
“Victor fucking Corvi,” Giulio repeats, slowly. “I thought it would take him a bit longer to rally. How much was lost?”
“A half million’s worth,” Lauro snaps. “It’s not just a little bit we’re talking about here. And two of my good men are just gone. There haven’t even been any threats or taunts. They’re just fucking missing.”
“Just watch, he’ll send the men in small pieces,” Giulio says. Then he shakes his head. “Half a million. Yeah, that’s worth being angry over. Umm…” He leans back in his chair and meets my eyes. “Do we have that much product ourselves?”
“Not on-hand, no. We can move a few things, call in favors, but it doesn’t stop a significant chunk of it from being with Corvi.” I’ve been trying to figure out how we can fix this problem, but short of getting Corvi’s head on a platter…
Lauro makes a disgusted noise. “You’re useless. Why do you think you deserve to have part of New Bristol? Emilio kept everything in line. None of this shit happened under him.”
Now Giulio’s expression darkens. “Yeah? But my old man got done in real good by Victor Corvi. I got a nice photo. Want to see?”
He doesn’t wait for a response, but pulls up the photo on his phone like he had it ready to go.
I’ve seen it before, but I’m still not entirely prepared for the grotesque sight. Emilio’s white tuxedo is almost entirely red with blood, especially around his crotch, where they’d pulled his penis out and… and castrated him. The remains of his testicles are visible in his open mouth.
The cause of death would have been the bullet to his chest, but it looks so insignificant compared to the rest of the carnage.
Nilo goes completely pale when he sees the photo, covering his mouth and swallowing hard. Lauro looks shaken for a moment, but he recovers fast.
