28. Salvatore
28
SALVATORE
New York’s not as cold as I remember.
I peel off my gloves and shove them in my coat pocket as I walk up to the entrance of Villa Fresco alone. Just like at Aldo’s house, I leave my gun in the car.
Don’t bring a weapon when you’re asking for a favor.
Technically, my other item isn’t a weapon, but it weighs in my coat pocket with the same purpose.
A spineless purpose.
Dad was right. I shouldn’t be here on my knees, crawling to him for a favor. I should be dragging him back to my basement to fulfill my promise to my mom. He has to suffer for all the fucked up shit he’s done to us over the years.
But I promised Marisol too. I promised her I’d protect and provide for her.
Even when she’s pissed at me.
She saw the texts to my pilot this morning and said only one thing to me before I left for New York:
“ You’re not ever going to keep me in the dark, are you? ”
I haven’t apologized. I hadn’t been planning on hiding my safehouse plans from her or lying to her, but I’m not above either if it means keeping her safe, and I won’t apologize for the lengths I’ll go to keep her safe. She has to know there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for her.
I step to the side of the building, which reeks of a charming blend of cigarette smoke and piss, for one last look at her.
The camera feed to the interior of my watchtower shows Dom reading a book at my desk in a complete waste of his time, but he’s the only one on my staff I trust to watch her. I have a suspicion that I have a rat problem in my ranks—it’d explain how Junior was able to track Marisol and how Davide was caught so quickly in that strip club, but I’m not interested in sowing discord among my men right now, so it’s another problem that gets put aside for later.
Marisol’s desk looks like it got hit with a floral grenade. Blush pink roses spill over every inch of free space, pressing against Marisol like a crowd of overeager suitors. Giordana was a little too gleeful to deliver the roses to the watchtower, but for once, I’m glad for her meddling.
Marisol leans toward one of her monitors, squinting, and then she gives the middle finger to the camera over her shoulder. She’s mad, but she’s still at home. She’s not running away. I pocket my phone. Maybe she’ll like the delivery of locks and candy that should arrive in the next couple of hours.
I enter Villa Fresco.
The entire front lobby area is gilded in a garish burnished yellow that attempts to suggest wealth but comes across like a visual scream. What isn’t coated in dingy gold is paved with old marble or draped in curtains the color of spoiled milk. Fat cherubs and naked women with big tits chase each other through clouds spanning the length of the ceiling. Far off, the faint notes of piano music slowly die off as they strain to reach me.
Sharp clicks head in my direction.
A woman with dark hair scraped back into a long ponytail and wearing a tight white dress approaches me with an empty smile.
“Mr. Matassa?”
I don’t give any sign of acknowledgment. My name is Luporini.
The woman isn’t bothered. “Follow me, please.”
She leads me up two flights of stairs and past several rooms of expensive-looking people eating, gambling, and flirting around red satin tables.
Meet your enemy in a public place so they’re less likely to shoot.
Ottavio will probably be disappointed I didn’t bring a gun.
When we turn to the room my dad’s sitting in, my composure and scheming are stripped away. I’m eight again, walking toward my father and praying he hurts me and not the woman beside me.
We pass the round tables, each with a flickering lamp and faces I vaguely recognize from Ottavio’s ranks until we stop before him.
He sits alone, drinking a glass of wine and wearing a thoughtful expression that makes me want to spill out all my sins and hope that he’ll have mercy.
The woman stops to fill my glass with wine—Pinot Grigio, Mom’s favorite—and then slides onto my father’s lap, draping her elegant arms around his shoulders.
“Sit,” Ottavio says to me in a quiet command that brokers no discussion.
I sit.
“Drink.”
And just like that, the spell is broken. I meet Ottavio’s eyes, amber like mine, but lined with crow’s feet. “I don’t drink.”
Ottavio takes a long drought from his cup and passes it to the woman. She holds it aloft and stares forward like an expensive statue. She looks a little like my mom.
“I heard you were sober now. You always were a momma’s boy,” Ottavio says with a note of refined disgust. “And now you have a new woman to play lapdog for. Marisol, is it?”
Anger sweeps through me at the implied threat, but I’m acutely aware of all the eyes in the room on us. I can’t afford to let him affect me.
“That’s right.”
Ottavio drinks from his glass again. “I’d like to meet her. When will she start giving you heirs?”
Deep breaths.
“We aren’t having them.”
He raises an eyebrow. “That’s a mistake. You’re the oldest boy in the family. You need an heir, and she’s what? Thirty-two? You don’t have much time left.”
I know he’s prodding at her to get a rise out of me, but understanding that doesn’t mean it’s not working. My fingers itch to check on her in the watchtower. I need to get back to her.
“Do you know why I’m here today?” I ask.
A waitress brings by two steaming plates of stuffed calamari.
My stomach roils, and Ottavio allows himself a small smile.
Matteo always used to gag when this was served. He’d slip a roll or two to Mom’s terrier under the dinner table.
When Dad found out, he woke us up out of bed in the middle of the night and made Matteo shoot the dog.
“Don’t ever skirt your responsibilities.”
That was the last time I saw Matteo cry. He was seven.
“Eat,” Ottavio says.
Fuck you , I think bitterly. My hand clenches over my thigh and grazes the box in my coat pocket. I run my thumb over it before calmly picking up a fork and knife.
“I have a contact in China that I’d like to put you in touch with,” I say after a few bites. There’s no water at the table, only the wine.
If the woman on Ottavio’s lap is uncomfortable, she doesn’t show it. She browses her phone without reacting to the conversation. I wonder how much he’s paying her to sit there.
“I don’t give a fuck about the Chinese,” he says.
My knife twitches.
That’s not what Worm told me. He said Ottavio’s been trying to get a deal to import fake luxury clothes brands for months now, but hasn’t been able to get them to agree to his terms. I paid a lot of fucking money for Ottavio to decide he doesn’t care about this anymore.
“Is that all you came to the table with?” Ottavio asks. He dissects me with a look. “You think I’ll convince the other four families to let you and that don of yours break omertà for a discount on purses? Why did you even come here if that’s the best you can do? I thought I raised you better, Salvatore. Raised you to be strong and cunning. But you’ve grown soft in Chicago, crying over your mom and hiding under your uncle’s skirt. Come back to New York. Work with me again. I’ll remind you to be a conqueror, not a fucking beggar.”
Ottavio watches me with a quiet expression of triumph on his face. He roughly kisses the woman on his lap, whispers something in her ear I don’t strain to hear, and sends her off. More than a few tables around us have dropped into silence.
Lowering my head, I pull out my phone and send out a text before I resume eating.
After a few moments, Ottavio barks out a laugh. “I’ll take that as a yes then.”
“What about Marisol?” I ask, sawing into my calamari.
“She’s really got you by the balls, doesn’t she? You can bring her. She can be your mistress, but you’ll have to marry into one of the other families to make this work. You’ll need heirs, of course.”
I wipe my mouth and hands with a napkin and then take my time to fold it twice before setting it neatly on the table next to my full glass of wine. A waitress walks past, and I flag her down.
“Water, please.”
She assents wordlessly and returns a moment later with a full glass.
“Thank you.”
I savor a drink. I set my glass back down.
A few low murmurs around the room announce the moment.
“That’s not going to work,” I say. I reach for my jammer and flick it on before placing it on top of the table. A sense of ease blankets over me.
Ottavio’s eyes flick to the black box onto the table and then around the room where the grumbling grows louder.
“I have a different proposal for you. How would you like to be partners?”
Ottavio drags his attention back to me. Someone’s shouting in Italian behind me.
“What’re you offering?”
I pull my gift out of my coat and rest it on the table next to my jammer.
“A cell phone?” he scoffs.
His woman clicks toward him and leans down to whisper in his ear. His eyes widen, and he shoves his hand in his pocket to pull out his phone.
The screen faces away from me, but I know what it says:
Government entities have illegally seized our domain.
Your data has been compromised.
Your phone is clearing itself of all local data. Remove SIM card and physically dispose of phone.
“What’s this?” Ottavio says, swiveling his phone toward me.
“Dutch police officers are raiding the servers for CryptTalk.”
Behind me, chairs scrape as men scramble out of the room to toss their phones.
Ottavio glances at my new cell phone on the table. “You thought you could be the next phone network? And you compromised the entire Family for it. Heads are gonna roll for this, Turi.”
“They would, if the feds could get access to our data. A week ago, I had all the data for our entire organization set to be completely overwritten every twenty-four hours. The police have been preparing for this raid for a long time with no one the wiser, but instead of getting access to months of our organization’s data, the most they’d get is a day. Except, I also had that set to clear within minutes of a forceful entry.”
I don’t mention the rest. That every last detail of this was Marisol’s proposal from her very first assignment.
Ottavio turns his old cell phone over in his hand before tossing it on the table.
“How many of these new phones you got?”
“Hundreds. Thousands in another week. A lot of people are gonna need new phones, and we’ll be the only major provider in the market.”
“What do you want?”
“Rekhson has to go. I want a guarantee the Commission won’t come after me.”
“That’s a big ask, Turi.”
“I know.”
Ottavio takes a swig of his drink. When he sets it down, he nods. “I want a seventy-thirty split in profits. And I want New York to get their phones first.”
“A batch will be delivered in the next ten hours.”
“I’ll reach out to you in the next couple of weeks to discuss marriages. Dom or Barbara’s son.”
Dom will be pissed.
“Deal.”
A smile flickers over Ottavio’s face. He takes his new cell phone off the table. After a beat, he takes the jammer too. “Enjoy your flight, son. I’ll see you and the wife for Christmas.”
“Enjoy your meal.”
As I stride away, I pass a group of waiters huddled together as they glance covertly around the room that’s been entirely cleared of its patrons.
In my car, the first thing I do is check on Marisol. She looks up at the camera with a raised eyebrow and a small smile. A heavy-looking pile of locks sits at the end of her desk. She pulls her hand out of the bag of gummy worms I’d sent her.
I call the encrypted phone I left in the file cabinet under her desk.
Marisol startles when she hears the ringing sound and tugs open drawers until she finds the phone.
Her voice pours into my ear, “How’d it go?”
I take my time to answer, savoring the way those three words make me feel focused and borderline drunk at the same time. “It went well. All thanks to my genius wife.”
“Oh, yeah?” she says, “I’d love to meet her sometime. I can’t imagine who’d be fool enough to steal the heart of Salvatore Luporini.”
“She’s no fool. She’s very clever.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“And gorgeous.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“And so forgiving.”
“That’s not what I heard. I heard she’s vindictive and stubborn.”
“Don’t forget impulsive.”
“Almost did.”
I scrub my hand across my jaw to hide my smile. She makes me feel like a kid on Christmas morning.
“I’ll see you very soon. Make your way to the bed by the time I get back. I’ll be hungry.”
Marisol twirls her hair around one finger as she laughs. “Calamari didn’t fill you up?”
How did she?—?
I shake my head. God, I can’t wait to get back to this woman. “There’s only one thing that satisfies my hunger, and it’s between your legs. I love you, wife.”
“And I love… all these new locks you sent me.”
“Keep tempting me and you won’t like the outcome,” I growl.
Marisol laughs again, all bubbles and sunshine. “Oh, I think I will. See you soon.”
Click.
I’ve never driven through traffic faster in my life.