Chapter Six Raffa #2
“Oh, not really,” she mused blandly, pretending to check her fingernails as if she gave a shit about their appearance. “Probably nothing you’d be interested in because you don’t care much for the girl either way.”
“Spit it out, Tina,” I ordered as sweat dripped into my eyes.
“ Va bene . Ludo found the man, Galasso.”
Immediately, my hands fell limply to my sides, and I turned on Martina with a snarl. “You tell me this now ?”
She shrugged. “I didn’t know you’d be so ... invested.”
“Cut the shit,” I demanded before tearing off my gloves with my teeth and shucking them to the floor. “Where is he?”
“They have him at Trattoria Umberto, in the cellar.”
“Why so public?”
“Ludo found him in town skulking around, and it was the closest place.”
“They will be in full dinner service upstairs,” I pointed out.
Another shrug. “It’s loud with the live music, and the cellar is beneath layers of concrete. No one will hear them. Or you, if you decide to deal with him yourself.”
I ignored her, already stalking out of the room to shower and change for the reckoning with Guinevere’s would-be assaulter. A human head was much better than a punching bag for relieving stress anyway.
The trattoria was in Santa Croce and filled with locals who tried to stay away from the chaos of central Florence during the summer months, when tourists descended on the streets like locusts.
We had owned the restaurant for twenty years, since the proprietor Ambrigio’s wife was diagnosed with cancer, and they had no money to pay for the bills and her treatment.
My father had stepped in with an offer of help, plenty of strings attached, and the trattoria had made us a tidy profit from its legal business as well as hundreds of thousands of euros in laundered money.
It was also where I met with the odd local capo to discuss business over Ambrigio’s delicious bistecca alla Fiorentina and a bottle of Chianti or, on occasion, where I doled out punishment to rats and other bottom dwellers who interfered with my business.
Obviously, this visit was about the latter.
When I descended the steps into my own hellish dominion, Galasso was sitting at a wobbly old wooden table against a rack of wine.
Carmine stood behind him with his arms crossed, his whipcord-lean frame made threatening by the sheer number of weapons discernible on his person: a gun in his shoulder holster, brass knuckles on one fisted hand, a row of knife handles visible above his waistband.
Next to him stood Renzo, his younger brother, who made up for his age by being the biggest man I’d ever known, towering over even me at six foot six, with a neck as thick as a leg of prosciutto.
Ludo, the third in my trio of trusted personal soldati , greeted me at the stairs, his heavy brow and slightly undershot jaw giving him a primitive appearance that was inherently threatening.
Sometimes, people made the mistake of underestimating me because of my good looks, which I always found utterly amusing.
If I was attractive, it was because generations of my mafioso ancestors had been affluent enough to attract beautiful women despite their own lack of beauty until the end result was someone like me.
Beautiful and dangerous, as so many mythological beings.
Galasso muttered something behind the tape over his mouth and tried to stand up as soon as he saw me, but Renzo clamped a hand over his shoulder and forced him back down.
I ignored him completely, heading to the wine rack to pick a nice bottle of Brunello di Montalcino to share with my guest. It was the kind of expensive bottle that needed to breathe, so I moved to grab a vintage Murano decanter from a cabinet and transferred the red liquid into the glass with my back to Galasso.
He watched me with wide eyes as I slid out the chair across from him and settled comfortably into it before placing the wine between us on the table.
I sniffed the cork, then accepted two short glasses from my friend and poured Galasso and myself some of the fine vintage.
Sliding the glass across the table with one finger, I nodded slightly at Renzo, who reached forward to tear the tape from Galasso’s mouth.
“ Figlio di puttanna ,” he cursed viciously.
“Watch your mouth,” I encouraged him calmly, observing the play of the low cellar light in the garnet-red wine. “You would not want to ruin our civilized conversation by insulting my mother, would you?”
He glared at me, chin lifted pugnaciously. “What do you want with me, Gentiluomo?”
“Ah, so I see I do not have to introduce myself. That makes things easier. Though I do not know you, Galasso. Perhaps we should start with your introduction?”
When he didn’t immediately speak, I flicked my gaze to Renzo, who used the butt of his gun to pistol-whip the man.
He let out a cry, blood flying from his broken nose, but quickly after he murmured, “Galasso Pagano.”
“From?” I encouraged with a thin smile, as if this was just a polite interview.
Sometimes it was fun to play with your food before you destroyed it.
“Napoli.” He spat a wad of blood onto the floor beside the table. “Originally.”
“Ah, and how long have you been in our lovely Toscana?”
“Four years.”
Premonition skittered down my spine. Four years ago my father was killed. Four years ago I became a man I’d never intended to be. “Where do you work?”
“With the vines. Up near Pistoia.”
“What car do you drive?”
He blinked but answered easily enough, caught in the tide of rapid questions. “A 2012 Lancia Ypsilon.”
“Color?” I asked, deceptively calm even though my blood was surging through my veins, thirsting to spill some of his. I had armed myself with more information about him over breakfast with Guinevere, so I was ready to catch him out.
“Blue.”
Chi vince piglia tutto.
We have a winner!
“Well, Galasso, I am sorry my men bothered you. We have had trouble with rats, you see, and you have the distinct look of one.” I shrugged and gestured to his broken nose with my glass.
“Maybe it is the nose? Either way, please accept my apologies. They acted without thinking as sometimes soldiers do.”
Galasso peered at me through his small brown eyes, brow furrowed as he chewed furiously over my words, testing their merit. I merely returned his gaze calmly.
Eventually, he sighed, and the tension in his shoulders dissolved a bit. “Thank you. I thought being brought in front of Il Gentiluomo had to be a mistake.”
“Yes, yes. Please, lift your glass and drink with me. It is a very fine vintage befitting an apology.”
Galasso was clearly not a clever man, because though he had heard of my reputation enough to know what they called me in the underworld, he raised his glass with a barely shaking hand and clinked it against my own.
“ Salute ,” we said in unison, and each brought the wine to our mouths.
I watched over the rim of the glass as Galasso took a deep draught of the Brunello di Montalcino red and then, finding it exemplary, he took another, longer taste.
When I lowered my glass without drinking, he did not notice.
“It is good, no?” I asked with a bland smile when he downed the wine like a heathen and set the empty glass heavily on the table.
“Excellent,” he admitted. “We make good wine in Pistoia, but it is mostly Vernaccia. It is nice to have a decent red.”
“You like wine, then.”
“Mmm, what Italian doesn’t?” He laughed, and the line of his shoulders loosened completely, his thighs spreading wider beneath the table. Getting comfortable.
“Of course. Wine, cars, and women.”
Understanding made his wizened brows lift. “This is why you asked about my car. Ah. I admit, it is not a fancy one. I bet you drive something slick. A Lamborghini.”
“Close.” I dipped my head and poured him another glass of wine. Watched his thick fingers close around the glass and imagined them closing around Guinevere’s thin ankle. “A Ferrari.”
“Aha!” he exclaimed, as if he had guessed correctly from the start. “I knew it. I love the Ferrari. What I wouldn’t give to drive one someday.”
I let the moment settle. Watched as he drank down more of that fine red wine.
“You know,” he said with a sly look. “It would be a good way to forget how your men treated me. That one with the face like a pig’s nearly put out my shoulder.”
In the corner behind me, Ludo grunted softly.
“Now, that is an idea,” I murmured, then looked up at Renzo over his shoulder. “You do not think my offer of wine is enough?”
He had to tread carefully to avoid further insulting me, but there was a sly cast to his gaze that intrigued me. “I have powerful friends, Signore. Not so powerful as you, but still, they are old school. They do not like one of their own to be mistreated.”
“What friends would those be?” I asked softly.
“Leonardo di Conte.”
I fought the smile that pulled at my mouth, but Carmine had to hide his behind a hand.
“Well, we would not want to upset Leonardo di Conte, would we?” I said somberly, even though the man he spoke of had been my lifelong friend, as close to a brother as I had ever had.
Obviously, Galasso knew enough to know about the mythical Il Gentiluomo, but not about my outfit.
“Will you get the keys, Zo?” I told Renzo. “The least we could do is let this poor man take a ride.”
Galasso’s eagerness leaked through the air, gaseous and nauseating. The charade was almost over, and I was finding it harder and harder to pretend.
“So you like red wine and vintage Ferraris. What kind of woman do you enjoy, Galasso?”
His name hissed through my teeth, a threat he was too inebriated to notice.
“Smooth,” he said, like the pervert he was. “Young and sweet. Ask any real man, he’ll tell you the same.”
I waited until his chuckles settled and then slowly got up out of my chair. “Come, let us go to the car.”
Galasso stumbled getting up but smacked Carmine’s hand when he tried to help, muttering a curse under his breath as he moved forward when I waved him down the hall ahead of me.
“I like them with eyes like a doe’s, wide and lovely brown,” I told him conversationally as we walked slowly down the winding, dark corridor carved into the ground. “Long dark hair soft as mink, and fast . So fast, you cannot catch them if you give chase.”
In front of me Galasso missed a step ascending to the next room and stilled, shoulders hunching slightly.
“Do you know such a girl, Signore Galasso?” I asked softly as I stepped too closely behind him, looming over his shorter frame. “A cerbiatta so enchanting you could not stop yourself from trying to hunt her down.”
“I don’t,” he argued until he felt the tip of the hunting knife in my hand pressed hard enough to draw a bead of blood, as red as our shared wine, against his neck. “H-how did you know?”
“Because that little fawn stumbled into the path of an even bigger predator as she fled from you.”
“You can have her!” he almost shouted, the words bouncing off the close walls. “I-I didn’t even touch her.”
“Oh, but I think you did. I think you touched her hip and then her ankle. I know you wanted to touch a lot more than that. Did you never learn, Galasso, that all women are too good for the likes of you? And unluckily for you, this woman in particular is so far above your thick head that now you must lose it for attempting to keep her for yourself.”
The door opened before Galasso so quickly, he didn’t have time to orient himself before I was shoving him over the ledge onto the black tarp Renzo had laid across the floor. The older man fell to his knees with a wailing moan for help.
Of course, there was no help to be had.
He’d trespassed into my underworld, where I was judge, jury, and executioner. Some capos relegated the blood work to their soldiers, but not me.
Especially not now.
Before Galasso could straighten from his unbalanced lean, I was on him. My fists were slightly sore from the beating I had given the leather bag in my basement, but that did not numb their efficacy at all.
One strike to the side of his head, already muddled by the drugs I’d slipped into the wine.
Another to his broken nose when I flipped him over and straddled his torso.
A trio to the cheeks—left, right, left—like the number of kisses Italians bestowed for good luck.
I thought of Guinevere alone in a foreign country, helpless and vulnerable on the side of the road, desperate for aid that came in the shape of this man beneath my knees.
I thought of the half-moon smile and the low-lidded gaze peeking out beneath long lashes as she smiled shyly at me and the surprising edge of her bladed tongue.
Slowly, methodically, with an audience of three, I beat Galasso Pagano to death.
And when I was done, I carved “ stupratore ” into his forehead with the edge of my knife and watched as Ludo lifted the body in his gloved hands to transfer it to my vintage Ferrari waiting in the back alley, driven there by Carmine.
He would take them into the countryside and stage a car crash somewhere deep in the valley.
With his blood alcohol content high thanks to the drugs and the wine, there would be no doubt the accident was of Galasso’s own making.
Except for those letters across his forehead deeming him a rapist.
The police would not have enough to make a case for homicide, but those who lurked in the unlawful shadows would know a message had been sent from the Gentleman of the Camorra, and they’d live in fear of receiving it themselves.
Do not fuck with me or mine.
When I’d decided that Guinevere was mine, I was not sure and didn’t linger on. The point was, it had happened, and I wasn’t the kind of man to worry about why.