Chapter 119
Adriano
We met six more of my foot soldiers coming down another side street.
As we raced down Via Por Santa Maria, I saw a Doc Martens store. It made me think of the boots I’d bought in the thrift shop with Bianca, back when we were looking for her father –
Before she was my wife.
Before I’d even admitted to myself that I loved her.
As I raced down the street, I prayed I’d get to see her again.
The pedestrians had run away, and the streets were empty.
…well…
They were empty except for the bodies.
I must’ve seen thirty corpses since I left the New Market.
It was a goddamn massacre…
And my stomach twisted even more as I realized where the Camorra were heading:
The Ponte Vecchio.
One of the most heavily trafficked tourist attractions in all of Florence.
We saw two cops crouched behind a statue, firing at several Camorra further down the street. On the ground was a dying policeman, bleeding out as a fourth cop tried to put pressure on the wound.
“DON’T SHOOT, DON’T SHOOT!” I yelled as we ran along the other side of the street.
The cops stared at us in shock.
“WHAT’RE YOU DOING?!” one of them screamed. “GET OUT OF HERE!”
Massimo and I ignored them and took cover behind a column. Our foot soldiers were twenty feet behind us.
“On three, you go right, I go left,” I told Massimo.
He nodded.
“One, two, three!”
We spun around, firing down the street in triple bursts –
And one of the Camorra went down.
The other thugs fired randomly behind them as they sprinted for the Ponte Vecchio.
“Stay here!” I shouted at the cops as we ran down the street.
“Fuck that!” the cop yelled. He and his buddy followed along with our foot soldiers, leaving behind the third cop to save their dying friend.
The Via Por Santa Maria intersected the Lungarno degli Archibusieri, a street that ran along the Arno River.
And beyond that was the Ponte Vecchio.
The Ponte Vecchio was special because it was one of only a handful of bridges in the world with stores on it. I vaguely remembered Niccolo saying something about the fuckin’ Medicis kicking out all the butcher shops and replacing them with jewelry stores.
I was glad it had all those storefronts, though –
Because they at least provided us with a little cover as we raced onto the bridge.
It was like something out of a war zone. Three hundred feet of sheer hell.
Bodies littered the cobblestones. Terrified pedestrians crouched inside jewelry shops.
The store windows were all shot out, and broken glass filled the street.
Cops were crouched in the doorways of shops, trying to get off a shot or two.
A hundred feet away, about halfway down the bridge, the Camorra were firing back at the cops –
And now they started firing at us.
“Tell your guys not to shoot us!” I yelled at the two cops who had followed us from the statue.
“Don’t shoot them!” one cop yelled across the street at his buddies. “They’re helping!”
The police just watched in amazement as me, Massimo, and my foot soldiers took up stations in the doorways –
And started firing at the Camorra.
BANG-BANG-BANG!
BANG-BANG-BANG!
The cops’ pistols weren’t very accurate from so far away –
But our rifles were.
Three Camorra went tumbling to the ground.
They got smarter after that and began taking cover more.
It became a grinding battle, with us trying to jump from shopfront to shopfront so we could get closer –
And the Camorra trying to get to the other side of the bridge.
They tagged Onofrio in the shoulder.
“STAY DOWN!” I yelled at him as he howled in pain and rolled over into the nearest storefront.
Massimo and I were as careful as we could be –
But it was still terrifying with bullets whizzing past.
Then they got Nazario.
Shot him in the head.
I watched helplessly as he collapsed amongst the other dead bodies…
But there was nothing I could do but keep going.
As we advanced, we came across half-dead Camorra lying in the street.
They wore tracksuits – jeans and t-shirts – leather jackets –
And all of them looked like hoodlums. Shitty tattoos all over their skin, sometimes even their faces.
A couple tried to pull their sidearms.
Massimo and I just shot them in the head and kept going.
The Camorra finally reached the opposite side of the bridge. They fired wildly behind them, but it was obvious they were making a run for it.
Massimo and I picked off another couple of thugs –
But they were too far away to do much more than that.
Me, Massimo, and our remaining foot soldiers sprinted as fast as we could down the bridge, past dead bodies of Camorra and citizens alike –
But I heard the squeal of tires as we made it to the other side of the Arno.
As we ran out onto the Via de’ Bardi, I watched in frustration as eight Cadillacs roared away down the wide street.
“What the FUCK?!” I screamed.
None of it made any sense.
All they’d seemed to be doing was randomly killing people on their way to their getaway cars.
As they’d crossed the bridge, they’d been surrounded by millions of dollars of gold –
And yet I hadn’t seen them loot a single fucking necklace.
All this death –
All this destruction –
What was the fucking point?