Chapter 1
Giorgio
Iwas behind the wheel with Lars’s new wife in the passenger seat.
I’d been a driver for the Rosolini family ever since I started working for them, but I was only pretty good at driving fast.
We were in a sports car with a manual transmission, which allowed me to shift gears at will. We’d spent the last few minutes on some twisty roads in the Alps, and now shit was about to get real.
“Okay,” Rachel said, “you handled the mountain passes at high speeds. Now I want you to weave in and out of the cars up ahead.”
I sped up as I zoomed around the first car, tires squealing slightly.
“Tires talk,” she warned. “Listen to them. Squealing means you’re pushing too hard. Quiet means you’re in control.”
I tried to keep the tires from squealing as I maneuvered around the second vehicle.
“Remember, don’t fight traffic – use it,” she said. “Think two cars ahead.”
I nodded.
Suddenly, there was a gunshot behind us.
My adrenaline spiked along with my heart rate.
“You knew this was coming,” Rachel said. “Use your side mirrors. Glance left and right every few seconds, just to keep tabs on where your attackers are.”
I tried to keep calm as a black BMW roared into view behind us. A man’s arm was hanging outside the passenger window, his gun pointed right at us.
I swerved around the next car before he could fire, my tires squealing.
“You need more control,” Rachel said. “Downshift – downshift – ”
Before I could throw the engine into a lower gear, the road took a hairpin turn –
And we skidded sideways.
Now my heart really was beating hard.
“TURN INTO THE SKID – TURN INTO IT!” Rachel shouted.
But I didn’t do it in time –
And we crashed through the guardrail.
The entire car shuddered violently –
And then we were sailing over the side of the mountain.
“FUCK!” I yelled as the entire world outside turned upside down and the seatbelt pulled hard against my body.
There was a brief instant as jagged rocks rushed up at us.
The entire car jolted as we landed hard –
And the words ‘SIMULATION OVER’ appeared on the windshield.
“…and we’re dead,” Rachel said drily.
“That was the hardest one yet!” I complained, my ego wounded.
“I know. You’re getting better, though.”
Suddenly, Lars’s voice came over the simulator’s speakers. “He killed you. Don’t COMPLIMENT him, for God’s sake.”
Rachel laughed. “Why don’t you get in here and show us how it’s done, then?”
“I think it’s better for everybody if I stick to being a sniper.”
“I drive well and I’m a sniper,” Rachel pointed out.
“Yes, well, not everybody’s as talented as you.”
“Goddamn right,” she said cheerfully.
“Can I do another run, boss?” I asked Lars.
“No, Adriano’s here.”
“Okay,” I said as I opened the door and climbed out of the simulator.
It was a monster – basically a six-foot-tall metal box with an interior like a sports car. Photorealistic graphics played on all the computer-screen windows, and special hydraulics made it rattle and shake exactly like a real car – especially when you crashed.
It couldn’t quite make you feel like you were really upside down, though. The best it could do was tighten the seatbelts.
And thank God it didn’t actually kill you.
The Rosolinis had bought the simulator three weeks ago for millions of euros. It currently sat in the garage with the family’s sports cars and fleet of bulletproof Mercedes. Ever since the simulator had arrived, Lars had made all the foot soldiers start using it as part of our training.
We all sucked at it, so Rachel volunteered to ride along and teach us. Under her guidance, I had improved tremendously in just the last three sessions.
Which wasn’t quite enough for Lars.
He was standing next to the simulator, where he’d been watching my practice session on an exterior computer screen. He raised one eyebrow and said humorously, “Stop killing my wife.”
“Sorry, boss.”
“She looks alright to me,” Adriano said as he walked into the garage.
“Live fast and leave behind a beautiful corpse, right?” Rachel joked as she got out of the simulator’s passenger side. “What’re you boys up to today?”
“I got business in Florence, and Gorgeous George here is on puttana duty,” Adriano said as he slapped my shoulder.
‘Puttana’ was the word for whore.
A more polite way of putting it would’ve been prostituta…
But ‘polite’ and Adriano were like oil and water: they didn’t mix.
“Hey,” Rachel said sharply.
“What?”
“Do you have to call it that?”
“That’s what it is,” Adriano said, irritated. “No need to sugarcoat it.”
‘Puttana duty’ was how Adriano referred to Don Rosolini’s orders: go around to all the prostitutes in the family’s territory and offer them 5000 euros to start a new life.
The orders had actually come down seven months ago, back when Dario Rosolini became Don. He’d wanted to clean up the family business by getting out of drugs and prostitution.
It was a job that primarily fell to the foot soldiers.
We started by threatening all the pimps in Tuscany and telling them to get lost. A few broken legs later, word got around, and almost all the pimps fled.
Most went to Florence, though, where the Agrellas still controlled everything at the street level.
‘Puttana duty’ came to a standstill when the Turk and Mezzasalma attacked us – and then we fought Aurelio and Fausto Rosolini.
Now that the brothers’ enemies were all dead – including the Agrellas – we’d gone back to the original mission: cleaning up Tuscany and Florence.
It wasn’t easy. Drugs, in particular, were now being peddled by dozens of different street gangs. Piece-of-shit nobodies were coming out of the woodworks, trying to make bank after the Agrellas got whacked.
Trying to stop the gangs, though, was like stomping cockroaches in a city dump. You might get rid of one, but there were another hundred waiting to take its place.
We’d scared most of the pimps out of Florence, but the prostitutes were another matter entirely. The family’s foot soldiers had talked to hundreds of them. I personally had spoken to at least 80.
Unfortunately, very few women had taken Don Rosolini’s 5000 euros… but he insisted we keep trying.
I thought it was pointless, but orders were orders. I kept my opinions to myself.
“Just don’t let Dario hear you call it ‘puttana duty,’” Lars cautioned Adriano.
“That’s what I call it around him all the time.”
“That’s probably why he keeps making you do it.”
“Probably,” Adriano mused, then slapped my shoulder again. “Which is why I keep passing it off to Gorgeous George here, cuz shit rolls downhill. Come on, let’s go.”
“Thanks for the help, Signora,” I said to Rachel.
“Keep practicing,” she encouraged me. “And ignore my husband. He’s just jealous.”
“Of what, his driving ability?” Lars asked sarcastically.
“Of him getting to spend time with me.”
“Okay, that much is true,” Lars said with a smile, then looked over at me. “See you, Giorgio.”
“See you, boss.”
We walked over to one of the bulletproof Mercedes and got in.
One of the things I liked about Adriano was that he didn’t give a shit about looking like a bigshot. He just opened the backseat door himself.
That may not seem like a big deal, but I’d seen a lot of rich and powerful people – most of them not nearly as big as the Rosolinis – make their employees act like servants.
Let me open that door for you, sir.
Let me get that package for you, ma’am.
You want me to kiss your ass? Okay.
Adriano was running Florence behind the scenes, but he never lorded it over anybody.
It impressed the hell out of me, anyway.
As I slipped behind the wheel, Adriano joked, “No need for any of that fancy driving Rachel was teaching you. Just get me to Florence in one piece.”
“You got it, boss,” I said as I pulled out of the garage.
We drove past a bunch of foot soldiers doing calisthenics out on the lawn. Lots of new faces.
We needed them.
We lost 14 men the day Massimo rescued Lucia in Venice.
After the brothers killed Fausto in Rome, we finally had time to replenish our ranks, and the brothers began hiring like crazy. The OG foot soldiers helped whip the new guys into shape with exercise and running, and then Lars instructed them in firearms and hand-to-hand combat.
A lot had changed since I’d started working for the brothers – some of it good, some of it bad.
But I was proud that I’d gone through the fire with them and come out the other side.
I was one of the Rosolinis’ best men, and they knew it.
Just a few months after I was hired, I helped kill the Turk’s men when they invaded the mansion.
That was the first time I ever killed a man.
It wasn’t the last.
I was part of the shootout at the hotel the night Adriano met Bianca.
I fought Russian mercenaries on the cemetery island in Venice. Even though I got shot in the arm, I was lucky. I was one of the few foot soldiers to make it out alive.
No matter how big or how small, I followed every order.
From picking up Lars and Rachel the first night she met Don Rosolini…
To digging a grave for Lazaro, a fellow foot soldier who betrayed the family.
I was in Rome when they killed Fausto, and I watched as they made a new enemy out of the mafia don who ran the city.
In short, I’d made my bones. In the Cosa Nostra, that was the name for doing something huge that proved your loyalty: making your bones.
I’d made my bones several times over. And as a reward, I was now the right-hand man to Adriano Rosolini, the capo of all of Florence.
Things were definitely looking up.