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Julian Castellani sure is interesting.
But my report to my father tonight is more disappointment. I gloss over the encounter last night, try to play up the positives: Julian didn’t immediately try to kill me, for example.
“He needs to be brought under our control,” my father growls, once I’ve explained the night to him. “You need to work faster, Leo. You hear me?”
“It takes time to earn trust, Dad.”
“Don’t give me that bullshit. You’ve been at this long enough.”
My father knows that I’ve been shadowing the second Castellani brother, looking for an opportunity to talk, but he doesn’t know everything. He doesn’t know how far I’ve been willing to push, to follow his orders, to make his dreams a reality. It hurts to let him down, to let the Family down. I’m not going to let Julian Castellani get the better of me.
“I have other cards to play,” I tell him. “I’ll try one of those.” I know something about second sons, being one myself.
“Get it done,” Dad insists. “We’re not the only ones who see him as useful. The Espositos are moving in, too. I hear talk that Vincenzo Esposito’s been dipping his wick.”
I laugh. “Vinnie Esposito? If Julian’s been with him, it’s to use him, that’s all.” Still, it sparks an irritation in me. Vinnie Esposito, of all people? Thinking of that fucker’s hands on Castellani gives me a strange, sick wave in my lower gut.
My father reaches out to take my hand. “Leo. Listen to me.” He’s serious, grave, and not for the first time, I think about everything he’s sacrificed for this Family during his lifetime. “The Castellanis have us on the ropes. Half this town won’t do business with us any more thanks to Sandro, and the bitch who whelped him is making trouble for our international operations, too. I used to think God had cursed me when he made you—“ His mouth twists. “—the way you are. But now I see it was a blessing in disguise. Wemusteliminate Don Castellani if we are to have any hope of survival.”
“I know,” I tell him steadily. “I’ll get it done. One way or another.”
It’s time to let Romeo out to play again.
CHAPTER3
JULIAN
After the funat the docks, I’ve decided it might be time to make my reappearance in the Castellani Family. Whoever is watching me had a few opportunities during that kerfuffle to take me out, and didn’t. So they’re not an assassin.
Perhaps they reallyarejust a shadow, someone interested in my business.
I even consider—and discard—the idea that it might be Sandro’s lover, Teddy MacCallum. He’s a sly thing, a silent little mouse, as Sandro likes to call him. But it’s absurd to think Sandro would send him to watch me. It would make things extremely awkward if I killed Teddy MacCallum, and I don’t think Sandro would ever risk it.
He genuinely seems to be in love. It’s all rather touching.
Sandro inevitably called a meeting of his senior administration, but he’s given us all a day to decompress, lick our wounds, bury our dead. We lost a handful of soldiers at the docks. Fewer than the Bernardis, but more than Sandro will find acceptable. So perhaps it’s his own temper he’s been giving time to cool.
Either way, when I sneak back into my rooms at Redwood Manor late on Saturday afternoon, there is an invitation waiting there for me, stuck on the door to my wing.
Dinner and a show: the senior administration getting chewed out by my brother.
* * *
These meetings always happen at Redwood Manor, the Castellani seat of power.
My home.
Sandro might own it, as Ciro’s heir, but he’s never liked the place. Never really understood it. Not like I do.
As usual, the inner circle gather in the grand salon before Sandro arrives, and—also as usual—the four older members ignore me, after the first shock of seeing me.
“Where have you been?” Al Montanari grunts at me as I walk in, paying silent respects to my mother’s portrait up on the wall.
“Enjoying myself,” I tell Montanari. He might be our Family Enforcer, but he’d have his work cut out for him trying to keepmein line. He knows it, too, turning his back on me now.
Gene Lombardo, my father’s Consigliere and now Sandro’s, too, stands a little apart from the others, pouring himself out a whiskey and soda. I saw him give a start when I walked in, but his eyes don’t stray from the French doors that lead out to the gardens. He’s not the kind of man who enjoys the gossip, not like Montanari or Silvano Rizzo, the most senior CastellaniCaporegime. Those two are swapping war stories, comparing dick sizes.
Rizzo looks a little ill tonight, as he clicks open his ever-present plastic bottle of chewable antacids. He chomps down a handful, a medicinal, minty stink floating across to me as he fiddles with the container—click-click-click—and God, how I loathe peppermint. He knows he’ll be in the firing line for the fuck-up at the port. He’s just lucky Jack was there to help out.
