Chapter 15
Dario
Long after the meeting, I peered out the window and thought about the things that Giorgio and Raffaelo had told me.
I also pondered the things Niccolo had said afterwards.
There were many uncomfortable topics in those conversations…
But the worst was yet to come.
I knew I had to discuss the situation with Alessandra. It might as well be now.
I wondered if Papa ever had any talks with Mama that he dreaded.
I doubted it. Though Mama had been a strong woman, there was always a clear line: she was never to ask questions about the family business.
She probably had her opinions, but she always kept them to herself – at least in front of me and my brothers.
But this was different. And it was a prison of my own making.
When I proposed to Alessandra, I made her a promise – a blood oath of the Cosa Nostra. A vow only she could release me from.
Her words were etched in my memory:
I don’t want their father handing a pistol to my son when he’s 15 years old.
I don’t want that for any of them. When Fausto was here, Roberto said the family would be legitimate in two years.
Can you promise me that our children won’t have to be in danger like you and your brothers were? That they’ll be safe?
My reply:
I swear upon my family’s name that they will not follow in my footsteps. They will inherit an entirely new life… one where they can be doctors, or lawyers, or actors, or artists, or anything else they want to be… but not mafiosos.
In retrospect, I wish I hadn’t given my word… but I had wanted her so much, I would have promised anything to keep her.
Papa once told me, A vow that’s easy to keep is no vow at all. When you make a blood oath and it’s HARD to keep, but you follow through – that’s the true measure of a man. So make very few promises. But when you do, you keep your word, no matter what.
I would keep my word to my wife.
But I doubted it would be quite as easy as Niccolo had made it sound.
She’ll understand if you tell her people are dying, and that we would prefer to keep them alive.
Had he never met Alessandra?
Did he not know that my innocent wife would immediately see through all my consigliere’s self-serving bullshit?
Niccolo wanted us to stay in the family business. He didn’t want to go legitimate.
Once upon a time, I hadn’t either.
I remembered what I’d told Niccolo the day I entered San Vittore, in the final moments before I walked into the prison.
Don’t be so glum, future consigliere. This is a minor setback. One day, we’re going to rule the world.
Part of that was to buck up Niccolo’s spirits –
But mostly, I meant it.
Back then, I craved power. I wanted to expand our family’s influence, to increase our reach.
But that was before I was Don. Before the full responsibility of the family weighed on my shoulders.
I had a wife now, and a child on the way.
Things had changed. I had changed.
Niccolo hadn’t.
As far as consiglieres went, there were two types.
Peacetime consiglieres were good for matters of administration and governing. They were excellent advisors when there was very little on the line other than money.
But when it was a matter of life and death, a wartime consigliere is what you wanted.
A wartime consigliere kept his head when hell was raining down.
A wartime consigliere was the one who would urge you to make the hard decisions.
If you were out in the wilderness all alone, and you stepped in a bear trap and it was impossible to free yourself, the two consiglieres would give radically different pieces of advice.
A peacetime consigliere would say, Wait!
Someone might come along to save you.
You won’t bleed out immediately.
You have time.
A wartime consigliere would say, You have no idea if anyone is coming – and the odds are, they won’t.
Cut off your foot so you can escape.
Apply a tourniquet to stop the bleeding, but give up a part to save the whole.
Better to be maimed and alive than to have two shoes in your casket.
Niccolo was a wartime consigliere.
He relished the battle. Itched for it. Welcomed it.
Getting back into drugs and prostitution was his way of ensuring we stayed in the family business.
His reasoning was valid –
But I could see into his heart.
I knew his true desire – a desire he possibly hadn’t even admitted to himself:
He wanted to stay in the Game.
And he wanted to win.
I didn’t hold it against him. And it didn’t bother me that he wanted it.
What bothered me were the other things he’d said.
You were raised to be a leader… and a killer.
Only when you need to be, of course. But Papa trained you to be a killer, and to be a leader of killers.
You’ve taken many lives, and ordered them to be taken – all for good reasons, I might add.
Alessandra is different. She is not from our world – which is wonderful. I treasure her innocence and her innate goodness. It makes her a better person than you and I could ever hope to be, and a joy to be around. A diamond in a pile of coal – a shining oasis in the desert.
But I fear that out of your love for her, and your desire for her love and acceptance, you are denying your essential nature – that you are a killer. It was what you were trained to do. It is what you are – and you are very, very good at it.
You never shied away from it before you met Alessandra… and I think the longer you try to deny that part of yourself, the harder it will be for you to lead the family going forward.
It was my gift to see into other people’s hearts.
Not that it was a perfect gift. Fausto was such a skilled liar that he had pulled a veil over my eyes – but I had always known something was off, and it had led me to distrust him. That was why I had offered to take his place in San Vittore, so that he couldn’t betray Papa.
Little did I know how deep my uncle’s treachery ran.
Instead of selling out my father to the cops, Fausto eventually killed him.
But I knew something was wrong because I could see, however imperfectly, into my uncle’s heart.
However, along with being a gift, my talent was also a curse.
It allowed me to know what Niccolo really wanted, deep down…
And that he fervently believed everything he had told me.
You were raised to be a leader… and a killer.
The longer you try to deny that part of yourself, the harder it will be for you to lead the family going forward.
What bothered me the most…
Was that I feared he was right.
And my wife would never, ever understand.
Especially not with the complications she had been having recently.
I knew she was terrified about our baby –
And the fear would make her even less likely to listen to what I had to say.