Chapter 72
Lucrezia Caproni
My brother was a fuck-up.
A chaotic, psychopathic fuck-up with no impulse control.
But he was a powerful fuck-up.
Coldblooded.
Ruthless.
Utterly wild and untamed.
It was my curse that I was attracted to those parts of him more than any other man I’d ever met.
The one good thing about Cesare was that he could be… if not controlled, exactly, then guided.
He was a tornado: destruction incarnate, wreaking havoc on anything that got in his way.
And if I could just nudge the tornado in the right direction…
Push it a few degrees this way or that…
Then I could deploy all that power for my own ends.
That was what had happened tonight with Amato.
I might have planned the entire operation and guided it to fruition over four long years – but I needed someone who could execute it fearlessly.
And Cesare had delivered in spades.
It’s just that now, after he killed Amato…
Everything else fucking fell apart.
Once we’d dealt with all the Cosa Nostra foot soldiers on the property, everything devolved into a wild bacchanalia.
Cesare raided the dead mafioso’s wine cellar and liquor cabinet and passed out 5000-euro bottles of scotch to his men like they were soft drinks.
Somebody found an entertainment system and started playing godawful Italian gangster rap.
Women started showing up. Some of them were our foot soldiers’ girlfriends; a lot more were just party girls and whores who hung around Cesare’s crew.
There were people fucking in every available room in the house.
Even though I begged and pleaded and bitched and nagged, Cesare ignored me and started doing shots with Tiratore, Ciro, Cicciobello, and Toro.
Not Romeo, though. He was in the doghouse.
First, he hadn’t found Amato’s daughter. It didn’t matter that the little Cosa Nostra bitch had probably snuck out earlier to party, and there was no possible way Romeo could find her.
Second, he’d dared to speak up when Cesare ordered Cicciobello to kill Luciano’s family.
I didn’t particularly like the fact that we’d had to kill children, but we couldn’t leave any loose threads. They had to die.
Poor Romeo. Sometimes he was a little too soft for the job.
Anyways, Cesare was irrationally furious, like always. He told Romeo if he so much as took a sip of booze, he’d get a bullet in the head.
So Romeo basically got assigned clean-up duty.
Thank God.
Occasional weakness aside, Romeo was the only one of Cesare’s lieutenants I trusted to do a good job. Everyone else was just a mini-me version of Cesare with all his worst qualities and none of his charisma.
At least Romeo had a level head and could lead.
While everyone else was partying, Romeo ordered a dozen men (who all bitched nonstop about having to stay sober) to guard the perimeter in case we’d missed any Cosa Nostra foot soldiers.
He made other men carry all the corpses in the house outside before they began to stink.
“There’s a well out back in the garden courtyard,” he’d told Cesare. “I think it’s just ornamental, because it doesn’t seem to feed into the house’s water supply. Do you want me to drop the bodies in the well? I don’t think they’ll ever be found if we do – ”
“Stop fucking bothering me about bullshit and just do it!” Cesare had screamed at him.
So he left in silence and supervised it all getting done while Cesare got drunk.
Like I said, thank God for Romeo.
I was irritated with my brother for throwing a huge party and getting plastered – but I knew it was coming, at least. He always did this sort of thing after a big victory.
After we’d forced the Mingozzis to give us half their territory four years ago, Cesare had partied for three days straight.
Same when he’d assassinated Tommaso Caracciolo, the head of the Sarno clan.
Same when we’d outfought and outsmarted the Lago clan, Di Biasi clan, the Potenzas, the Galassos.
When the dog shits on the rug a hundred times in a row, you don’t think it’s magically going to behave the hundred-and-first.
You either get rid of the fucking dog, which wasn’t possible in this case…
Or you put fucking newspaper down.
I’d planned for Cesare’s bad behavior.
And once he was tired out…
I knew he’d be even more pliable than usual.
I ordered my bodyguard to take me home, where I did some research on my computer.
Then, at daybreak, he drove me back to the Amatos’ castle.
Romeo’s men were still on guard duty when we drove up. Romeo himself was manning the gate.
When we drove up, I rolled down the window.
“Any news on the Amato girl?” I asked.
“No,” he said dourly.
“Don’t worry,” I reassured him with a smile. “I’ll make sure my brother forgets all about it.”
“Thank you,” Romeo said, his tone somewhere between gratitude and irritation.
As I rolled up the tinted window, I took a long look at Romeo.
He was very good-looking.
I’d playfully made some passes at him before.
I would have gone a lot further than that…
If I didn’t think my brother would put out my other eye.
Other people didn’t understand why I still slept with Cesare after he blinded me in my left eye.
Actually, nobody understood why I fucked my brother, period, but that was another matter entirely. Animal attraction knows no logic.
As far as him hurting me, all I could do was quote the 1940s actress Zsa Zsa Gabor:
A man only hits a woman if he loves her deeply.
A deeply unpopular sentiment these days, but one I understood to the very core of my being.
Imagine how much he must love you if he’s willing to do what Cesare did to me.
Zsa Zsa also said, I’d rather be hit by a gorgeous man than an ugly one.
Me?
I’d rather be hit by a powerful one…
And one I knew I could bend to my will.
Inside the mansion, I had to pick my way through unconscious partiers and half-naked whores on the ground.
Disgusting.
Like pigs had an orgy in their own shit.
Spilled alcohol and broken glass was everywhere.
There were pools of vomit on the floor and smears of bodily fluids on virtually every couch and sofa.
And the places where Cesare had shot the Cosa Nostra foot soldiers?
The bodies had been carted outside, but the most anyone had done about the bloodstains was to throw some towels over them.
It was difficult to avoid stepping in the disgusting bits – the vomit, the blood, the spilled booze – because all the windows were covered with heavy curtains to block out the sun. And the light from the lamps and chandeliers wasn’t enough to counteract my dark sunglasses.
But I wasn’t about to take them off.
I never took them off. Not unless I was completely alone.
So I picked my way through the charnel house and curled my lip in disgust.
Twelve hours ago, this had been a palace.
Now it was a fucking catastrophe.
But I wasn’t in this for the Amatos’ mansion. We could burn it down tomorrow, for all I cared.
I had a far greater prize in mind.
Cesare only cared about killing Dario Rosolini…
Which was what helped me nudge the tornado a few degrees to the left.
I found Cesare passed out in the library, slumped over in a leather high-backed chair, his head at an angle and slobber drooling out of his mouth.
Normally, I would have been happy to find him this drunk. It would make him even more susceptible to manipulation.
However, his pants and underwear were pulled down to his knees…
And there were lipstick stains on his limp cock.
Christ.
I knew he was unfaithful. He always had been. Just more of the dog shitting on the rug.
But it still infuriated me.
I would have grabbed his balls and crushed them –
Except it would’ve put me within striking distance when he woke up.
So I grabbed a leatherbound tome off the nearest shelf, yelled, “WAKE UP – ”
And dropped the heavy book on his balls.
“FUCK!” he roared as he jolted awake.
“Have a nice party?” I asked coldly as he doubled over in pain.
“You fucking CUNT!”
“Pull up your pants, asshole. We have business to discuss.”
As he cradled his dick, he glared up at me ragefully. “You ever do that again, I’ll fucking kill you,” he slurred.
“I ever find you with lipstick on your cock again, I’ll kill you first,” I retorted.
He looked down at his penis – saw the oily crimson stains at the base of his shriveled dick –
And grinned like a naughty little boy who enjoyed being caught.
As he stood and pulled up his pants, he said, “You know you want some.”
“Not after the whore you were with gave you herpes.” Before he could launch some juvenile comeback, I said, “We need to discuss when to hit Dario Rosolini.”
That got his attention.
“As soon as fucking possible,” he said belligerently.
“I agree.”
He looked at me in shock. “…you do?”
Though I’d taken four years to plan last night, there were excellent reasons we should kill Dario Rosolini as soon as possible.
We’d taken extreme measures to make sure no one survived to alert the rest of the Cosa Nostra. The Amatos’ daughter was the only wrinkle in that plan.
But once the Cosa Nostra found out, they would be on guard.
They would alert Dario…
And our task would become a hundred times more difficult.
“If we don’t act quickly,” I said, “we’ll lose the element of surprise.”
“…right,” Cesare said, trying to pretend that was what he was thinking all along, instead of lusting after blood like a rabid dog. “So… how are we gonna do it?”
“The good news is, I didn’t just plan last night over the past four years. I also planned out the next three days.”
“…you did?” he asked.
“Well, I planned out as much as I could. Although now a much better opportunity has presented itself.”
I pulled out my phone and hit ‘Play’ on the recording app.
Amato’s voice spoke at the moment I’d cued up.
“…you don’t know what you’re getting into. The Rosolinis took on the Wagner Group – Russian mercenaries – on San Michele Island outside Venice. Aurelio hired them, and the Rosolinis killed almost all of them. And then they killed Aurelio.”
I hit pause on the recording. “As Amato made clear, the Rosolinis are deadlier than we’d thought.”
Cesare laughed contemptuously. “I don’t give a fucking shit. We’re Camorra, not a bunch of stupid Russian fuckwads.”
“But what if we could hire the Wagner Group to help us?”
Cesare stared at me. “…we can do that?”
“Aurelio, their cousin, did. It’s just a question of how much you’re willing to spend. I’ve done some digging; it seems the minimum would be five million euros.”
“I don’t give a fuck about the money – but the Russians lost. Why would we hire idiots who lost?”
“The Russians lost because the Rosolinis knew exactly where they were. But what if the Russians had the element of surprise?” I pulled a pack of cigarettes out of my purse.
“What if the Wagner Group went in to soften them up… took all the casualties from the initial fighting… and then we came in and mopped up after them?”
As I lit a cigarette and took a drag, a smile slowly crept across Cesare’s face.
Then it quickly disappeared.
“I have to kill Dario myself,” he insisted.
“Of course. But you know his foot soldiers and family will protect him. After all the others are dead, he’ll be hiding in some safe room in the middle of the house. Once we pull him out, you can spend as much time with him as you want.”
Cesare’s smile slowly reappeared as he imagined whatever it was he fantasized about when he thought of Dario Rosolini.
Then the smile faded again. “But how do we hire the Russians?”
“I called Vollaro two hours ago and pulled him out of bed,” I said. Giuseppe Vollaro was the main lawyer for our clan and had all sorts of nefarious connections. “He called someone who called someone… who got us a contact who’s expecting us to call.”
“But it’s – how fucking early is it, anyway?” he asked crossly.
“Seven-thirty.”
“It’s seven fucking thirty in the morning?!” he raged.
“Yes, but it’s 9:30 in Moscow. Which is where Wagner is headquartered.”
Cesare stared at me. Then he smiled again. “We’re really going to do this?”
I shrugged. “It’s up to you.”
I knew my brother extremely well.
Intimately, you might say.
I knew his appetite for violence.
I knew his bloodlust.
But I also knew something else about him:
He was a bully.
Unless forced to, he never faced down an equal.
He loved to prey on the weak.
And most of all, he despised a fair fight.
In any and all cases, if he could gain an unfair advantage, he would take it.
I left the decision up to him…
But it really wasn’t a decision at all. More of his default mode.
Cesare’s smile reappeared. “Call him.”
I pressed dial on the number Vollaro had given me, which I’d preprogrammed into my phone.
It rang several times…
And a gruff voice answered, “Da.”
“Is this Mikhail Agapov?” I asked in English.
“Da. Is this Lucrezia Caproni?” he replied in heavily accented English.
“It is. Thank you for taking my call.”
“I hear you have proposition.”
“Yes. I understand there was an incident this summer, in Venice, where members of the Italian mafia killed a number of your men.”
There was a long pause.
When Agapov answered, he sounded pissed. “Da.”
“How would you like the opportunity for revenge… and to be well-paid for it?”
Another long pause.
When Agopov spoke again, he sounded far more agreeable.
“…I am listening.”