Chapter 141
She was two months premature.
To their immense credit, the doctors and nurses braved the horrors all around them to take care of both mother and child.
Moments after her birth, Elena was transferred to the hospital’s state-of-the-art NICU on the fourth floor. The doctors rated her chances of survival as excellent.
Luckily, she sustained no damage inside the womb during the attack by Cesare Caproni…
But that was because Alessandra had so selflessly protected her unborn child and taken the brunt of the attack on herself.
Alessandra was severely injured. Five broken ribs. Dislocated shoulder. Broken collarbone. Broken radius and ulna of the left arm. Fractured femur. Severe contusions all over her body and face.
But she would live.
After being rushed into surgery and found to have no immediate life-threatening injuries, she was treated for her wounds, sedated, and closely monitored for signs of eclampsia.
So far, she was alright.
The worst was over…
…or at least, we prayed it was.
After the shooting at the Ponte Vecchio, Adriano and Massimo evaded the police and rushed directly to the hospital.
Niccolo, Valentino, and Roberto drove from Tuscany even as fire crews worked to salvage what they could of the mansion.
Six hours after Elena’s birth, all of the brothers were in the room with me and Lars…
And all our eyes were on Dario.
The Don stood in front of the window of the NICU, watching his infant daughter – so tiny, so helpless-looking – hooked up to tubes and monitors.
The room was quiet for over ten minutes.
Finally, Niccolo broke the silence.
“Dario… I know this is the worst possible time… but we have to talk about what we’re going to do.”
“Do about what,” Dario asked, his voice dead.
“For one, the police and politicians.”
“What about them.”
“The media are selling everything that happened here and at the Ponte Vecchio as a mafia war.”
“When Mezzasalma killed the Agrellas, the press called it a mafia war, too,” Dario pointed out.
“This is a thousand times worse. With a couple of exceptions, Mezzasalma only killed gangsters. The Camorra killed 15 cops and 47 civilians, and there are another 38 in the hospital. Not all of them are expected to make it through the night.
“I’ve got our lawyers doing their best to hold the hounds at bay, but the politicians are getting angrier by the hour, and the police are even worse. They want blood.”
“Pay them off,” Dario said tonelessly.
“That’s not going to – ”
“Pay them whatever they want. All of them. I don’t care how much it takes. Just buy us as much time as we can get.”
“Time for what?”
“For my wife and daughter to survive,” Dario said angrily.
Niccolo went quiet.
No one else dared to speak.
Finally Dario asked, “What about the house?”
“It’s gone,” Niccolo said.
Dario turned and frowned. “Completely?”
“No, not completely, but half of it has been reduced to rubble. It’ll take years to rebuild.”
“The good news,” Roberto said, “was that we’re completely insured.
After the jet was damaged in Venice and I had problems getting them to pay for it, I took out a policy on everything we owned.
Much higher premiums, but I’ve already contacted the insurance company, and they’ll reimburse us for the full amount of – ”
“Roberto,” Dario said coldly, “I don’t give a fuck about any of that.”
Roberto fell silent.
“What do you give a fuck about, then?” Adriano asked angrily.
Dario turned and stared at Adriano, a dangerous look in his eye. “What do you think I care about? More precisely, who do you think I care about?”
“Alessandra and Elena.”
“You’re goddamn right,” Dario growled.
“Then I don’t get why we’re all standing around with our dicks in our hands,” Adriano snarled. “If it was me, I’d be ordering every foot soldier we have down to Naples to make sure Cesare Caproni is dead before sunup.”
“It’s not going to happen overnight,” Lars cautioned.
“Then we should do whatever it takes to make sure that goddamn piece of shit is in the ground as soon as fucking possible!” Adriano shouted.
Dario didn’t answer.
He just turned back to the window and stared down at his daughter.
“WELL?!” Adriano demanded.
There was a long silence…
And then the Don spoke.
“Do you know what absolute shame and self-loathing I feel at this moment?” he said quietly. “The absolute hatred I feel for myself – that I left my wife alone and unprotected when I knew a monster was at the door?”
“Dario – ” Niccolo began –
Without looking away from his daughter, Dario raised one hand to silence him.
But Niccolo wouldn’t be deterred. “I counseled you to do it. The fault is mine and mine alone. I failed you – ”
Dario snapped his fingers angrily, and Niccolo went silent.
“I made the decision,” Dario said quietly. “The burden is mine alone.”
“So fucking DO something about it,” Adriano barked.
“It’s not that easy,” Dario said, his voice once again muted and toneless.
“When I proposed to Alessandra, I swore I would put our family on a different path. That our children could be anything they wanted to be… but that they would never follow in my footsteps. I promised her our family would go legitimate – that we would forsake everything Papa built and start anew.”
“That was then,” Adriano insisted. “This is now.”
Dario shook his head. “There is no ‘then’ and ‘now.’ I swore on our family name.”
Adriano looked exasperated beyond belief. “SO?!”
Dario turned around.
The look on his face made even Adriano step back nervously.
“So I made an oath,” Dario said, “and there is only one person on earth who can release me from it.”
With that, he walked out into the hallway.
We followed him to Alessandra’s room.
Six armed foot soldiers stood guard outside in the hallway. Their clothes still stank of smoke from the burned-out mansion.
When they saw Dario coming, all six stepped aside, their heads bowed in respect.
Dario entered first, and the rest of us – Niccolo, Adriano, Roberto, Massimo, Lars, Valentino, and I – followed.
Inside the room, Alessandra lay partially reclined in her hospital bed. There was an IV tube in her arm for morphine. The left side of her face was horribly bruised and scabbed, and her eye was swollen shut. One arm and leg were in casts.
I noticed that she wasn’t holding her rosary. It lay discarded on a bedside nightstand, far out of reach.
The women of the family were all gathered around her.
Caterina sat next to her in a chair, puffy-eyed from crying, as she held Alessandra’s undamaged hand.
The others – Bianca, Lucia, Mei-ling, Rachel, and Sofia – stood around the bed, trying to comfort her with their presence.
But Alessandra stared into the distance as though no one else was there.
When I saw her, my heart ached for her…
And I thought of Emilia.
The horror of something like this happening to her…
I couldn’t imagine the pain that Alessandra had gone through.
And I couldn’t imagine the rage and guilt that Dario felt now.
When the men entered the room, only Lucia was brave enough to speak up.
“FINALLY,” she seethed. “Are you going to go kill the asshole who did this?”
Adriano gave a half-smile of grim satisfaction – but he was the only one of the men who did.
“Babe,” Massimo warned.
“What?!” Lucia snapped. “If anybody did this to me, my grandmother would have their fucking heads on a platter! Why the hell are we standing around and…”
She trailed off as she noticed Dario staring at her…
And she lowered her eyes to the floor in silence.
Dario spoke to Caterina. “I would like to speak with my wife.”
Caterina hurriedly stood up and moved several feet away.
The rest of the women withdrew slightly…
But we all stood there in the room, listening to what came next.
Dario knelt by the bed and took Alessandra’s hand.
She didn’t look at him.
Dario was silent for a long moment… and then he spoke.
“Amore mio… I have failed you. Both as a husband and a man.”
There was a quiet gasp from a couple of the women…
But Alessandra didn’t react.
She just kept staring into the distance.
“I thought I was doing the right thing,” he continued, “but I was gravely mistaken. I left you alone in your hour of greatest need. I beg for your forgiveness… and I will keep on begging you as long as I draw breath.
“Right now, every fiber of my being screams for revenge. I want to find Cesare Caproni and make him pay… painfully… for what he did to you and our daughter.
“But I swore an oath to you, my darling.
“I swore that our children would be safe from my past…
“That my family’s business would become legitimate…
“And that you, and Elena, and all her brothers and sisters would be free of the stain of what I, and my father, and his father before him have done.
“And though I want revenge, I will forego it…
“If that is what you ask of me.
“If you want me to turn the other cheek, I will… though I would gladly trade my own life to have Cesare Caproni die by my hand.
“I hunger to kill him for what he’s done to you. I want it more than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life – except for you and Elena.
“And that is why I beg you to release me from the promise I made you before we married.
“Release me from the oath I swore to you, so that I can punish the man who hurt you and our daughter.
“But if you release me, Alessandra, you must know this:
“If I go down that path, it is a dark one.
“I may not survive it… though I have no fear of death, so long as I get my revenge.
“But if I live, I want you to know that I will not make the same oath to you twice.
“I will continue down the path I was on before we met –
“The path I was born to walk.
“I swear again on my parents’ lives that I will never ask Elena or any of our other children to follow in my footsteps…
“But if you release me, I will become the man my father raised me to be…
“And I will not turn away from that path ever again.
“The choice is yours, Alessandra.
“What would you have me do?”
Alessandra did not answer immediately.
She stared off into the distance for a long, long time…
And when she spoke, her voice was so quiet that I could barely hear it.
“If it had just been me he had hurt… I might have been able to forgive him. But he hurt Elena.” Her voice became ragged with pain. “He tried to kill our DAUGHTER.”
“What would you have me do?” Dario repeated, more insistently this time.
Alessandra finally turned to her husband…
And the look of rage she gave him chilled me to the bone.
“I want you… to kill them all.”
As frightening as the look in Alessandra’s eyes was, it was nothing compared to what I saw in Dario’s.
The smile he gave her…
Someone else might have said it was filled with all the darkness and malice of Hell.
But I knew better.
I knew it was a smile of righteous anger…
And the dark satisfaction of vengeance to come.
He pressed his lips passionately to her hand, then growled, “Amore mio… your word is my command.”
The Story Continues in MAFIA KINGS: MARCELLO!
And Giorgio and Emilia will meet again!
There is no Epilogue for this book, but there most likely will be for Marcello.