8. Chapter 8
eight
New York City
A delicious aroma of tomato, wine, and onion mingled in the air of a light and spacious kitchen. A big pot of meat ragu simmered on the six-burner professional stovetop, while a handsome woman in her mid-sixties, dressed in all black, stood by the large marble island. Long rolling pin in her hands, a sheet of pasta dough was splayed in front of her.
“You want to roll it this way.” She let the sheet wrap around the pin, and she continued to roll with a skill she’d learned at the knee of her mother. “It has to be thin enough, but not so thin it’ll break. It’s light like a ribbon—like pappardelle .”
Satisfied with the thickness, the woman folded the sheet over several times after dusting it with semolina flour. “Then you cut the ribbons…” She grabbed a huge kitchen knife and started cutting strips of pasta. “…like so.”
“Why are you making pasta at a time like this, Mamma ?” a younger woman in her late twenties, also in black and standing nearby, asked. “We have catering for the gathering tonight.”
“Why?” the older woman questioned. Her voice stayed level, but it dripped with disappointment and sadness. “ Cara , if we don’t keep our traditions alive, who will? My mother taught me to make pasta, and her mother taught her. I started teaching you when you were just a little bambino , but then life got in the way.”
The older woman’s face darkened. “Or more aptly put, deaths did.”
The younger woman cringed at her mother’s morbid words.
“And now, with your brother dead, if I don’t keep busy, I’ll go crazy,” the mother added, a tear rolling down her cheek.
“ Mamma …” The daughter reached for her mother’s arm.
“Check the sauce, Cara .” The mother wiped the tear away.
A short, bulky man in a dark suit appeared at the kitchen door. “ Donna Serafina, Tomas is here.”
Without looking away from cutting her pasta, she replied, “Does he have what I want?”
“It’s only him and Donny,” the man replied.
Serafina’s lips thinned, looking displeased. “Send him in.” But before the large man left, she added, “Button up your jacket. You look like a slob.”
“Yes, Donna .” The man struggled with his snug jacket. The huge gun he carried under his left arm made it impossible for him to button it, but nobody argued with Donna Serafina.
Tomas entered the kitchen not long after, looking nervous.
“Where’s my package?” Serafina asked as she continued cutting pappardelle and fluffing the ribbons up.
“Someone got to him first, Donna. We tried to intercept them, but they—”
“You lost him?” Serafina’s voice sharpened.
“We followed him out of the city. We thought we’d get him when he stopped, but he made us.”
“You’re saying some pezzo di merda outsmarted you?”
“He was with a professional. They tricked us,” Tomas defended himself.
“I want him, Tomas.”
“I know, Donna . We continued our search, but he seemed to have disappeared into thin air.”
Pointing her knife at Tomas, Serafina said, “We managed to find snitches in WITSEC. You’re telling me you can’t find one asshole rock star who is easily recognizable?”
“We haven’t tried our usual—”
“What the fuck are you waiting for?” Serafina pierced him with a look. “Get your dogs on the ground and sniff him out.”
“Yes, Donna .” Tomas said.
“Bring him to me. Alive! Capisce ?”
“Yes, Donna .”
When the man left, the daughter put down the wooden spoon she used to stir the sauce and faced her mother.
“ Mamma , why are you looking for this man? Isn’t it bad enough you’re openly confronting the Murphys? Rocco started this. Nobody else!”
Serafina’s earlier motherly tone had vanished completely, replaced by the ruthless woman the underworld knew well.
“They murdered my boy! Your brother! Isn’t your name Stiletto, Sofia?” Serafina demanded.
“We don’t know who did it, Mamma . How could you—”
“They all have to pay! Your brother had a reason for killing that Murphy boy. Damn stupid boy wouldn’t tell me what it is.”
Serafina pointed her knife at Sofia. “This Curtis Bisset meddled in our business and put Rocco in jail, where he was a sitting duck for those Murphy scumbags.”
Sofia trembled at the wrath spewing out of her mother. “But the Murphys have been out of the business for—”
“Bullshit! They may say they’re legit, but nobody can scrub their hands clean after dipping them in the blackest tar for decades. Not even Connor Murphy, no matter how hard he tries,” she said.
“Then why am I doing all this work to make our business above board if we can’t ever get away from our predecessors’ sins, Mamma ?” Tony Jr., the eldest son, walked in. With his black suit, tortoiseshell glasses, and clean-cut, stylish haircut, he looked more like an accountant—a handsome one, but an accountant nonetheless.
“Don’t be na?ve, Junior. All our businesses are legal.” Serafina jeered at the word legal . “If not, the police would’ve shut us down years ago. Our practices, though, are more creative .”
Sofia exchanged looks with her brother. As a corporate lawyer, she was well versed in the legality of the family businesses. Their mother was technically correct, but these creative practices could or would be the thing that the police busted the family for. Both Sofia and Tony feared for that eventual day.
“I want you to stop your creative practices against the Murphys, Mamma ,” Tony said. “The intimidations, the threats. And what’s this bounty I heard on that witness on Rocco’s case?”
Tony Jr. went to face his mother. “Rocco is dead. There won’t be any trial. It’s just bringing more scrutiny on us. This is how the police will eventually get us. Then all the work I do to protect this family will go to waste!”
The mother stared at the son. Rage filled her eyes.
“Damn scrutiny! I don’t care. There isn’t enough blood in this world to bring my Rocco back, but I will spill theirs. As long as warm blood is running inside my veins…” Serafina slammed her knife’s sharp tip deep into the wooden cutting board in front of her. “I will get my revenge.”