AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Just checking on you. I’ve been informed that you’ve been staring at that room for an hour.”
Damn Totto and his big mouth. Yes, I’ve been sitting in the doorframe of my father’s library for a while, trying to decide where to start. This damn room needed to disappear. It was too depressing to stay like this.
“I need a sledgehammer. Find me one.”
“What for?”
“I want to start redecorating.”
“We can call someone to do that for you.”
“No. I feel like smashing something.”
Pietro took the whiskey glass from my hand and emptied it for me.
“Are you drunk, Salvatore?”
“No, but give me half an hour.”
“It’s only ten o’clock.”
It was all Grazia’s fault. She left and turned my world upside down, and of course, like it happened with every broken heart, her absence made honey taste bitter and whiskey taste so damn sweet.
“I was here to tell you that Don Pepito of the Calpurafamigliahas called. You forgot your phone in my car.”
“Good call?”
“Oh, yes. He was good friends with Uncle, but Pepito couldn’t make it to the funeral. He’s in some legal trouble.”
“House arrest?”
“No, but he can’t leave Rome. He’s under investigation for murder after that shooting in Tripoli.”
He did it. He shot dead seven men of a rival gang that dealt in his territory without permission. I knew it, the Carabinieri knew it, but they still had to prove it which was a damn hard job. Pepito always burned down all the traces. For a fifty-something year old man with a weak heart, Pepito was still dangerous. That’s why my father kept him so close.
“Rome became a police city. The Calpura family has problems all the time.”
“Yeah. Pepito extended an invitation for the next time you go to the capital. He wants to sit down with you.”
“Damn it. I have to go, don’t I?”
“You don’t want to insult one of your strongest allies, so yes. We can take a flight in the morning, be back in twenty-four hours. Old Pepi just wants a night out downtown.”
“And we will give him one, but first I need to take care of this fucking room.”
“You’ve already moved the books up into the attic. Why are you so obsessed with his office?”
“It always felt too much like a crypt to me. All my life, he retreated here to mourn his wife, like this room was some kind of grave. He sat at that desk and drank his weight in vodka in hopes to pass out and see her. I’m just…” afraid that I will do the same. Start coming down here, shut the door, and drown in liquor, because it was better than living life without Grazia.
“Sledgehammer it is. I’ll go find us a couple and we can start tearing down the walls.”
“I don’t need the company.”
“You’ve been drunk for the past ten days, Salvatore. You need the fucking company.”
“Watch it, Pietro. I’m theDonnow. I can do whatever the fuck I want. I’ll drink if I want to drink.”
“To the rest of them you are theDon, to me, you are my damn cousin.”
