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Unlike Amadeo, Umberto doesn’t look fazed by the death of his friend. Instead, he looks as though he couldn’t care less. He carelessly lifts his shoulders and shrugs. “I do not remember,” he says.
“You were to be there,” Amadeo hisses. “We’ve had this talk many times, Umberto. Many, many times, and each time you tell me you had to be with the boss.”
I shake my head. “No, he wasn’t.”
I should fucking know; I was with my father that night. That was the night my father got into business with the Buchanan’s. Since then, they’ve been a fucking pain in my ass.
Umberto’s eyes widen. “I-I-I was,” he stammers.
“No, you were not,” I say. “The night Davide Leone was shot and killed, and his wife and daughter vanished, I was at La Fiore,” I hiss. “My father received a call informing him of Davide’s death. You, Umberto, were not present at the restaurant for that meeting.”
Umberto’s eyes widen. The fucker never thought to even question who was with my father that night.
“So tell me, Umberto, what were you offered in exchange for not protecting the man who viewed you as his brother? Hmm? What did my father reward you with?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he fires back, crossing his arms over his chest. “I do not like these accusations.”
“Either answer the fucking question, Umberto, or I’m calling Niccolò, and he’ll make sure I get the answers I need.”
A slow smirk forms on my lips. “And we all know how Nico feels about having traitors among us, don’t we.”
Elio chuckles. “He’s no doubt chomping at the bit to have a go at you, Umberto. He’s always hated you.”
“You have a choice and you have precisely thirty seconds to make it. Tell me what my father offered you in turn for you not to be there, or I call Niccolò.”
Umberto clenches his jaw, and his eyes darken with rage. “Do you know that Marianna was mine?” he snarls. “That she was promised to me from the time we were five?”
“So you what, conspired with our father to have him killed?” Rocco asks, his voice vibrating with anger.
“No,” he growls, running his hand through his slick, greasy hair. “I worked for him. He was my friend. But he took her from me.”
“Tell us what happened,” I demand. I’m not standing here and listening to this sob story. It’s not fucking working.
“I spotted your father having a meeting with Scaffidi,” he says. “I saw them together. They were laughing and joking. Do you know what would have happened had the rest of the men found out that our boss was sitting down having dinner with our rival?”
We do know. The men would have turned against our father. He would have been killed for his treachery. Something that would have done the world a favor.
“So you concealed it? Hid it from us? For what reason?” Elio asks, his lips curled into a snarl as he glares at the man we once happily stood alongside.
“He assured me that we could work something out. He promised me Marianna’s hand in marriage, just as it should have been all those years before. All I had to do was not be at the Leone house on one particular evening.”
I shake my head in disgust. God, he betrayed his friend, and for fucking what? Nothing.
Rocco tuts, staring at him with such disdain that Umberto casts his eyes down to the floor. “Your father and our father made a deal a long time ago. It was never promised that Marianna would marry you. It was suggested, but your father wasn’t happy that Marianna’s father wasn’t a high-ranking made man. He wouldn’t allow it.”
Umberto shakes his head, his eyes wild as he glances at Rocco. “That’s not true.”
“It is,” Rocco assures him. “I was privy to many conversations between our fathers, Umberto. Your name was thrown around to marry many of our men’s daughters. Including Niccolò’s deceased wife, Maria. You were not promised to Marianna, Umberto. You were never promised to any woman.”
The man still remains unmarried. He’s a fucking bastard. No one would want their daughter to be married to him. We’re not deaf; we’ve heard the rumors. He frequents the whorehouses around the city of Chicago and he pays well, but the shit he does to the women is borderline psychotic.
“What?” he says, his voice a little shaky. “Why would you say that?”
“Because it is true. The moment my father made it clear that Davide would become an enforcer, Marianna’s father wanted the union between his daughter and Davide. The same happened when Niccolò was earmarked for becoming captain. Maria’s father wanted the union between his daughter and Niccolò. You know this world, Umberto. You know how it works. If you have a daughter, you know the higher in the ranks, the more respect you’ll gain. Tell me, why did you believe you were promised to these women?”
“Fuck that,” I snarl. “What made you turn your back on your brother, the man who looked after you? You watched over his daughter. You were their guard. Why did you do it?”
“He had everything I wanted, everything that was supposed to be mine,” he yells.
