Chapter 17 The Capos
Chapter seventeen
The Capos
Santino fought the urge to rub at his aching shoulder and instead raised his chin higher—as if he weren’t already looking quite literally down on every fucker in the room—when the door slammed behind Aronne.
One of the hanging overhead fluorescents squeaked and swayed, just a bit, from the impact.
“Took your sweet fuckin’ time, Aronne,” Ciro, Santino’s third capo, said in his usual agitated tone.
Aronne came to stand on Freddie’s open side, angled to talk around him and bark back at Ciro. “So sorry one of us was getting our dick wet tonight. Shame they don’t make medicine for your problem.”
Freddie closed his eyes. “If you two start arguing over me like I’m fucking invisible, I’ll slit both your goddamn throats.”
Ordinarily, Santino would have laughed at that type of comment.
In the moment, he didn’t even have it in him to fake the amusement.
He settled for clapping his hands in a loud, obnoxious manner that thoroughly overshadowed the next half-formed declaration, drawing the proper focus of all three men.
None of whom had been expecting the near-midnight summons.
He really didn’t feel bad about that.
“Gentlemen,” he said with a deliberate, sarcastic emphasis, “this isn’t high school. Have some self-control, hm?”
Freddie straightened his posture while the other two squared up on either side of him.
“Sorry, Boss,” Ciro offered with a low grunt.
Aronne still looked rather disquieted, but he said, “Yeah. Sorry.”
How moving. Santino pretended to accept the words at face-value for the moment and settled his hands on his hips.
He knew they would be able to make out Armando’s outline a few feet behind him, and possibly the shape of something else on the edge of veritable spotlight, but also knew that was all they’d see from their positions.
And, for the time being, that was how he wanted it.
He tilted his head just a bit and narrowed his focus on Aronne. “It doesn’t take half an hour to get here from your place, Aronne.”
Aronne’s lips thinned. “I was pre-occupied, Boss. I couldn’t exactly—”
“You could have,” Santino interrupted. “It would have sucked for you, I’m guessing, but you could have.
” He paused and let a cruel smirk lift his lips.
“I mean, unless you were the one all tied up. Then I guess you’d have had to say your safe word first, and I do realize you’d rather eat a bullet from me than lose your pride on that. ”
The light overhead was bright enough to see the way Aronne’s face flamed red as he sucked in hard breath. “I wasn’t told it was urgent.”
Santino’s amusement fled as quickly as it had come.
“I called and demanded we meet. I believe I even used the word ‘immediately’. How much more do you need to hear? Should I have explained the entire situation over the phone while you were balls deep in some poor college girl? Or should I have started talking dirty to you to help you come faster?”
Aronne balled his hands into fists. “That’s not what I—”
“What he’s saying,” Freddie cut in with a side-long glare at his compatriot, “is that you should have assumed.”
“Goddamn right,” Ciro muttered.
Aronne huffed. “I made a mistake. I said I was sorry.”
Santino found it in him to smile again, though he doubted the expression was reassuring.
“Yes, Aronne, you did. But I’m going to be honest, the real reason I’m pissed has nothing to do with standing around here shooting the shit with these two.
” He turned and paced away, feeling their stares track his movement.
“Let’s get to business, shall we? There’s something we all need to discuss, but you, Aronne, in particular have some explaining to do. Because I have had quite the evening.”
He stepped up to the covered lump that surely looked to them like a shadowed sack, and before his fingers could touch the sheet the next overhead light flicked on. He did so appreciate a man who paid attention.
In their line of work, it was hard not to realize what that form was under improved lighting. The sheet didn’t quite obscure the chair legs, or the human legs, beneath, and it most definitely did not obscure the slowly expanding pool of blood that continued to drip onto the concrete.
Of course, experienced capos didn’t make shouts or verbal exclamations of shock. They sure as hell weren’t appalled at the notion of a person hogtied under a sheet. So, for a fleeting moment, the room hung in silent, suspended shock.
Then Santino ripped the sheet away, tossing it toward the still-dark edge of the room where his invisible backup lined the wall.
But he didn’t watch it flutter; didn’t spare the men he couldn’t properly see any glances.
Rather, he faced his capos and clamped a heavy hand onto Tito’s nearest shoulder.
Tito had been slumped forward, still less than fully conscious, and not reacted to the removal of the sheet.
So, for good measure, Santino dug two fingers into the sloppily bandaged gunshot wound near Tito’s shoulder.
That, of course, woke the little rat right up and had him choking on a scream behind his gag.
Ciro and Freddie remained fairly unmoved by the scene. A flicker of confusion on one face, a flash of calculation on the other.
Aronne had a different reaction. “What the fuck is this?” He swept his arms out so wide he nearly backhanded Freddie. “Boss, Tito’s one of ours!”
That got something out of the other two. Both capos pivoted almost like synchronized dancers, Freddie’s brows finally leaping up his forehead, so they could better watch Aronne without losing sight of Santino.
Santino kept himself focused forward and his hand on squirming Tito’s shoulder. “Is he now?”
Tito struggled weakly in his restraints.
The effort was admirable, considering his broken ribs, blown out knee, and what had to be a minor concussion in addition to the gunshot wound.
The little fucker hadn’t so much been sturdy as he had just been hard to pin down.
Although even that was only because Santino hadn’t wanted to kill him yet.
Santino squeezed tighter thinking about the ache that was surely representative of a bruise forming on his arm.
Nowhere near the worst injury he’d ever taken, or would again, he was sure.
But for him to get injured at all the first time he went out for work and left Reiko home was only going to teach her to worry, when he was trying so hard to teach her to be strong and confident.
“He’s part of my crew,” Aronne said, taking a single step forward. “I recruited him myself maybe four years ago. He’s got kind of a mouth on him, sure, but we all do. Whatever he did, he probably didn’t mean anything by it.”
Santino eased his grip, and Tito visibly relaxed. Santino kept his stare on Aronne. “Batting awfully hard for this one, considering you don’t know what he did to piss me off. Sure you wanna put it all on the line?”
Aronne swallowed hard and flicked a nervous glance to Tito. “Obviously,” he finally said, “it’d be good to know. And I don’t mean you aren’t within your rights to punish him how you see fit, Boss. I only meant … maybe it wasn’t what it looked like.”
Santino let his hand drop from Tito entirely and took one deliberate step forward, bringing himself within arm’s reach of Aronne. “Hm. So, you’re suggesting I misjudged the gun he swung in my face, after we’d been chatting plenty long enough that it was clear he knew who I was?”
Ciro made an angry sound and Santino lifted a hand, holding him off.
“Or,” Santino continued, “are you suggesting I misheard this piece of shit, right before he pulled that trigger, when he confirmed for me my suspicions?”
Aronne had started to tremble, but it was hard to tell if he was shaking with rage or fear. Or both. “Suspicions?” he whispered.
Santino did not whisper. “‘Thank God we got the Segretis, am I right?’”
An appropriate tension filled the room, the air practically sizzling with each of Ciro’s hard, loud breaths and the subtler rustling of fabric.
Santino didn’t look away from Aronne. He wasn’t completely sure about the loyalty of any man in the room, except for three. Armando, of course, Tito, and Aronne. Tito had sung like a canary when he’d thought it might keep him alive.
Aronne was the one who’d recruited Tito into the Guerra mafia years earlier, and the two had similar enough personalities that they’d built a decent rapport.
Aronne gave him preferential treatment beyond what Tito’s experience and skillset might inspire.
Tito was also under the impression Aronne had cleaned up a couple of his mistakes over the years, too, to keep him out of trouble.
But the information Santino really gave two shits about—as bothersome as the rest was—was when Tito confessed that it had also been Aronne who’d approached him about “a regime change.”
Santino believed the statement because Tito was stupid enough to confess he’d had to Google regime.
Stupidity didn’t absolve Tito from the punishment coming to him. But leaving the spineless, moronic piece of shit alive long enough for this face-to-face gave Santino more ammunition. And Aronne knew it.
Doing all of this in front of the other capos was just an easy way to gauge the larger group’s loyalty. Risky as fuck, but also definitely faster.
“The Segretis?” Aronne finally repeated, a bit too loudly. He let out a hard, scoffing laugh. “He said that?”
“Not only has he been whispering those foul words to my good, loyal men,” Santino replied, “but he said something arguably more offensive.”
Aronne gave a shake of his head. “I can’t imagine.” He waved an arm toward Tito. “Please, Boss, let me put him out of all our misery. It’s the least I could—”
“He said he got the idea from you.”
Aronne froze.
“You motherfuckin’ rat!” Ciro exclaimed, moving so he could draw his gun without putting Santino in the line of fire.