Chapter 7
As I left Luna’s apartment, I felt depressed.
The picture she’d painted was bleak.
Not just about her own life –
But about all the changes Don Rosolini was trying to make.
I think I’d known, deep down, that his plan wouldn’t work. Especially after I’d gotten turned down by the first couple dozen women.
But none of them had explained why they said ‘no.’ Not until Luna.
Five thousand euros is not enough to start a new life.
I can’t take his offer. And I don’t think anybody who’s being honest with you would take his deal. Not unless they’re young and can start over.
I’m not. And I can’t.
The younger prostitutes – the ones who could start over if they wanted to – were basically divided into three groups:
Addicts…
Non-addicts who desperately wanted out…
And the ones who thought they were doing okay.
The addicts wanted the money for heroin or meth. We didn’t give them the money for obvious reasons.
The non-addicts who wanted out had almost always been forced into becoming sex workers. Now that there were no pimps to threaten them anymore, they could finally leave. They were the only ones who ever took the offer.
Out of the hundreds of women my fellow foot soldiers had talked to, maybe a dozen had said ‘yes.’
Out of the women I’d personally talked to, I could count the number on one hand and still have fingers left over.
Then there were the women for whom it was more of a choice. They included the escorts and the party girls.
Yeah, maybe it wasn’t the best life, but they were making a lot of money and things were going pretty well. Nothing that bad had happened – so why get out?
Why the hell get a shit job paying eight euros an hour when you could make four or five hundred a night – maybe even more?
They thought they would live forever.
I totally understood. I’d been like that when I first started working for the Rosolinis.
I’d thought it would be like the movies – a bunch of exciting tough-guy shit.
I’d never given a thought to how terrifying it is to get shot at – or how painful it is when a bullet rips into you.
I’d also never considered how much boring drudgery there was. Like driving my boss all over the place, or standing guard for hours in the middle of the night.
And I’d never once imagined I might have to dig a grave for a man I considered my friend.
And yet… even after everything I knew… I wouldn’t quit my job.
The future was bright. Things were improving. I was moving up.
In a way, I still kind of believed I’d live forever, even after everything that had happened to me.
So was I really all that different from the girls on the corner who couldn’t see what the future held for them ten years from now?
The girls who refused to look at women like Luna and say, Shit, I better get out, or I’m going to wind up like that?
Now, in my defense, I didn’t know any old, poor, broken-down gangsters.
I didn’t know any cautionary tales… unless you counted dead men.
Ten years from now, I was either going to be very rich and powerful – like the Rosolini brothers –
Or six feet under.
Nothing in between.
And maybe it was stupid…
But I was okay with that.
Better than okay.
All or nothing, baby.
I was definitely not going to walk away from everything I had just to get a shitty job making eight euros an hour.
I was more than willing to put all my money on black, spin the wheel, and take my chances.
That wasn’t what was bothering me, though.
What bothered me was Luna had explained perfectly why Don Rosolini’s plans were destined to fail…
And now I felt obligated to tell Adriano.
I really, really hoped he wouldn’t shoot the messenger.
Anyway, all that was going through my head as I left Luna’s.
I was coming out the building’s front door when I saw a shady-looking guy standing in the alleyway to my left.
He was wearing baggy jeans, expensive sneakers, and a football jersey (soccer, not American football).
His head was shaved like Jason Statham’s, although his scrawny body looked nothing like the Hollywood action star’s.
He had a hook nose, a weak jaw, acne-scarred skin, and lots of bad tattoos on his arms.
He was probably just a few years younger than me, but we were from totally different worlds.
He was glancing around nervously like a pigeon on crack – obviously a lookout.
As soon as he heard the door open, his head swiveled over to me and we locked eyes.
When I didn’t look away, he glanced at my thousand-dollar suit with contempt. “Keep moving, stronzo.”
Mistake number one.
Except for my bosses, nobody told me what the fuck to do – especially some low-level gangster wannabe pezzo di merda.
I headed straight for him. I wanted to know what he was a lookout for.
I heard somewhere that if a Great White shark starts circling you in the ocean, your best bet is to swim straight for it.
Great Whites are so used to frightening all the other fish that they freak out when something comes at them.
They’re used to being the hunter, not the hunted.
So if you act like you’re not afraid, they’ll dart away and start circling you again, trying to figure you out.
This guy probably thought he was Great White, but he wasn’t.
My bosses were Great Whites.
Me? I was a Tiger Shark.
This fucker was a guppy with delusions of grandeur.
But he acted like a Great White getting challenged by a scuba diver:
He backed away as I headed straight for him.
“Hey – hey – ” he said, panicked, and nearly tripped over his own feet.
As soon as I reached the alleyway, I looked over to my left.
There was another ugly-ass motherfucker by the wall. He was about my age, with close-cropped hair and a thick black beard. He wore jeans and a black hoodie –
And he was handing over a little plastic baggie of white powder to a streetwalker.
She was one of the lost causes I’d seen around the neighborhood. Track marks on her arms, dark circles under her eyes, yellow teeth with a couple missing. She was one of the women who had begged for the five grand. I knew she’d be dead within a week if I gave it to her.
She looked at me with an Oh shit! expression, grabbed the bag of drugs, and ran as fast as she could down the alleyway.
The bearded guy looked over at me belligerently. “What the fuck’s your problem?”
I kept one eye on Soccer Jersey but headed for the bearded guy. “YOU are. Who the fuck do you work for?”
The bearded guy looked past me and jerked his head like Take care of him.
I saw Soccer Jersey approach in my peripheral vision –
And all of Lars’s training kicked in.
I crooked my arm and jerked it back –
And slammed my elbow right into Soccer Jersey’s nose.
“FUCK!” he screamed as he staggered backwards, his hands over his face as blood gushed down his chin.
“I’ll ask you again,” I snarled as I walked towards the bearded guy. “Who the fuck do you work for?”
Bearded Guy looked a little shocked by what I’d done to his lookout –
But then he got pissed and reached inside his jacket.
The instant he did, I drew from my shoulder harness.
It was like a Hollywood Western: two gunfighters on a dusty street at high noon. The kind of tough-guy movie shit I’d dreamed of when I started working for the Rosolinis.
Except that a split second later, I was pointing a pistol at his head –
And he was standing there with a switchblade.
The very definition of bringing a knife to a gunfight.
His eyes went wide with fear as he stared down the barrel of my Glock.
Pistols were not common in Italy. Gun laws were strict, and there were harsh penalties for unregistered weapons.
The guns that did make their way to the street were usually pieces of shit that were more likely to jam than work correctly.
If you saw someone carrying a quality gun, you knew you weren’t dealing with a low-life nobody, but a dangerous gangster.
The bearded guy was just now realizing that.
He looked like he was about to piss his pants.
“Hey – hey man, I – don’t shoot me, bro!” he babbled as he raised his hands in the air in surrender.
As soon as bloody-faced Soccer Jersey saw the gun, he yelped “Oh shit!” and sprinted in the opposite direction.
“Who do you work for?” I snarled at the bearded guy.
“DBA,” he whimpered.
“…who?”
“Th-the di Brozzi Assassini.”
Di Brozzi was the name of a street in le Piagge, one of the poorest neighborhoods in Florence. I’d offered Don Rosolini’s deal to dozens of prostitutes over there.
Assassini meant ‘assassins,’ ‘murderers,’ or ‘killers.’
So basically the Brozzi Street Assassins.
Which clued me in that I was not dealing with the cream of the crop.
The Cosa Nostra.
The Camorra.
The ‘Ndrangheta.
Those were groups to be feared.
But what kind of people called themselves ‘the Brozzi Street Assassins’?
A bunch of fucking idiots, that’s who.
Guppies with delusions of grandeur.
“Go tell your buddies to never push drugs anywhere outside of di Brozzi again,” I snarled, “because the next time I see you – or them – I will put a bullet in your fucking head. Do you understand me?”
He nodded his head rapidly. “Yeah – yes, whatever you say.”
“Good. Now drop that knife – carefully – and get the fuck out of here.”
“Okay, okay,” he whimpered as he held out his knife to the side and dropped it to the ground. It clattered on the asphalt.
“Who do you work for, man?” he asked in a trembling voice.
“The Rosolini family,” I snarled.
There was a look of shock on his face.
“…the guys who whacked the Agrellas?” he whispered.
I always reassured prostitutes that the Rosolinis hadn’t killed the Agrellas –
But sometimes my bosses’ reputation worked in my favor.
This was one of those times.
“Yeah,” I snarled. “Now get out of here.”
The guy turned and bolted down the alleyway.
I sighed as I watched him go.
Just great.
Another cockroach we gotta stomp on.
If a low-level gang was selling drugs this far from their territory, they were getting pretty bold.
I sighed…
Kicked the switchblade into the nearest gutter…
And trudged back to my car.
Shit… ANOTHER piece of bad news I have to tell Adriano.