Chapter Thirty-Five
Taddeo
By the time Taddeo reached the western loading yard, Lelio had gained nearly a minute on him, which would have been enough to disappear if Terminal Fourteen had contained anything resembling orderly infrastructure.
Instead the old freight complex narrowed west of the main apron into a maze of abandoned truck scales, maintenance sheds, rusting loading equipment, and service lanes built decades apart by people who had apparently believed straight roads were an unnecessary luxury.
Emergency lighting from the terminal barely reached this far, leaving the yard mostly dark except for an orange glow from Corwin's burning van behind him and the intermittent white sweep of a security light still operating on a warehouse farther north.
Taddeo ran without wasting breath on the hidden radio.
Marco knew his direction, Orsino knew where Isolde was, and the men who mattered had already received the only order Taddeo cared about until he physically confirmed otherwise: nobody moved Isolde out of the north-side cover unless Marco or Orsino knew exactly where she was going.
That would once have meant keeping her where he put her; tonight it meant making sure nobody else used the confusion to make the decision for her.
Pain pulled sharply beneath Taddeo's right ribs when he vaulted a fallen barrier, and the wet heat beneath his shirt confirmed that at least some of the blood Isolde had noticed belonged to him.
A round had caught him somewhere during the movement across the south apron, grazing the side rather than entering deeply enough to change what his body could still do, and he filed the injury with the same practical irritation he would have given torn clothing.
He could breathe, run, and keep both hands steady, which made the wound somebody else's problem once Lelio stopped being his.
A shadow moved beyond an abandoned scale house.
Taddeo changed direction.
The man ahead fired without warning.
The muzzle flash showed Lelio for less than a second between two concrete supports, his expensive coat hanging open and his face stripped of every trace of the warmth he had worn at Cesare's dinners.
Taddeo dropped behind the chassis of an old yard tractor as the shot tore through the rusted cab above him, then returned two controlled rounds toward the support where Lelio had disappeared.
Metal rang.
Someone swore.
Taddeo moved before Lelio could predict where he would rise again.
The pursuit carried them north through a lane barely wide enough for a truck, with the terminal wall on one side and a row of collapsed loading cages on the other.
Lelio fired twice more while retreating, not well enough to stop Taddeo but accurately enough to make clear that age and years spent commanding crews had not dulled everything useful about him.
Taddeo caught sight of him at the next intersection.
“It's over,” Taddeo said as he brought his weapon level, and he kept the words simple because there was nothing left between them that required negotiation. “Put it down.”
Lelio stopped beside a low concrete loading platform and laughed.
The sound carried strangely through the empty yard.
“You sound exactly like Cesare.” Lelio remained half behind the platform support, pistol still in his hand and pointed low enough to postpone another exchange of fire without ending the threat.
“That's the part that always disgusted me most. Marcello's fucking orphan learned the voice before he ever earned the chair.”
Taddeo did not answer.
Lelio's mouth twisted. “Nothing to say now? You've spent twenty years standing behind Bellandi power like it belongs to you, and suddenly you're modest.”
“I said put the gun down.” Taddeo shifted slightly to improve the angle without giving Lelio an obvious target. “There is nowhere left to go.”
“There is always somewhere to go if you understand this city better than the old men sitting at the top of it.” Lelio glanced once toward the service lane behind him, and the movement confirmed he was still looking for an exit rather than preparing to surrender.
“That's the problem with Cesare. He thinks loyalty is infrastructure. He thinks because men ate at his table thirty years ago, their sons should inherit the same loyalties and everybody else should be grateful for whatever seat remains.”
Taddeo watched the gun.
Lelio watched him.
“You think this was about money?” Lelio asked, his laugh turning harsher. “Twenty-five million is useful. It isn't a throne.”
“You framed Mauro for twenty-five million because you wanted a better office?” Taddeo's voice stayed flat, and the contempt in Lelio's expression deepened.
“I framed Mauro because Mauro is an animal who has been stealing from Cesare for years and still gets treated like family.” Lelio shifted his weight against the concrete support.
“I built crews. I brought contracts into this organization.
I put men on docks before you were old enough to know which end of a pistol mattered, and when the old underboss died, Cesare still looked at Marcello's son as though blood he respected mattered more than years I had already given him.”
Taddeo's jaw tightened despite himself.
Lelio saw it.
There was satisfaction in the man's face now that the wound had finally been touched.
“You think nobody noticed?” Lelio continued.
“Marcello gets shot, and suddenly Cesare has another son without having to admit it. He protects your accounts, keeps the capos from carving up what your father left, gives you work that should have gone to men who earned it, then spends the next decade pretending every promotion is about your extraordinary fucking competence.”
Taddeo thought of Marcello's funeral, Lucia before it, Cesare standing beside a twenty-one-year-old who understood rage far better than grief. He thought of the first crew Cesare trusted him with and the mistakes nobody else remembered because Taddeo learned quickly enough not to repeat them.
Lelio mistook the silence for shame.
“You were supposed to stay useful,” he said. “That I could have lived with. A good soldier. Maybe capo one day because Cesare couldn't stand disappointing Marcello's ghost. Then suddenly you're underboss and I'm expected to call you before I move men through territory I helped build.”
“You were a capo because Cesare trusted you.” Taddeo adjusted his grip on the pistol as pain pulled again beneath his ribs. “You proved him wrong.”
Lelio's eyes hardened. “He proved me right first.”
Taddeo had heard enough men turn resentment into philosophy to recognize the pattern.
Nothing was ever greed once a man explained it long enough.
Nothing was betrayal once he convinced himself the institution betrayed him first.
Lelio glanced toward the south where distant gunfire had thinned from sustained bursts into occasional controlled shots. “And tonight you proved everybody right about you.”
Taddeo waited.
Lelio smiled without humor. “You had me in sight and turned around for the girl.”
There it was.
Not the money.
Not Cesare.
Isolde.
“You could have ended this on the apron.” Lelio pushed away slightly from the concrete, still keeping enough of the support between them to complicate Taddeo's shot.
“Instead you let me run because a civilian woman was crouched behind a wall.
That's your great underboss now. Marcello's son throwing away the Family's problem because his captive learned how to make him sentimental.”
Taddeo's expression did not change.
Lelio expected defense.
Taddeo gave him none.
“You took her as leverage and then let the leverage make you weak.” Lelio shook his head slowly, almost genuinely disgusted. “Do you understand how pathetic that is?”
“Yes,” Taddeo said, and Lelio's eyebrows shifted at the wrong answer. “I understand what you think.”
“You don't even deny it.”
“No.”
“You chose her over me.”
“Yes.”
The word crossed the yard without apology.
Lelio stared at him.
Taddeo felt something settle inside himself that had been moving toward this point since the moment Cesare first told him Isolde was leverage and the problem would end once Corwin came back.
For weeks he had treated choosing her as though it required an argument strong enough to outweigh everything the Bellandis had given him.
It did not.
Cesare's importance remained real.
His debt remained real.
His role remained real.
Loving Isolde had not erased any of them.
It had simply become another truth he refused to mutilate in order to make the others easier.
Lelio laughed once, incredulous. “Then Cesare chose wrong.”
Taddeo's answer came with the same calm he used at Bellandi tables. “He can decide that.”
The reply hit harder than denial would have.
Lelio's face changed.
Taddeo understood why.
The man had spent years measuring his worth against a position Cesare gave someone else, and even now he expected Taddeo to cling desperately to that position as proof he had deserved it.
Taddeo did not know what Cesare would do after tonight.
He had concealed information, built an independent security structure, openly prioritized Isolde during a Bellandi operation, and ordered Marco to defy Cesare if the boss attempted to retain custody of her.
He might remain underboss.
He might not.
For the first time, Taddeo knew he could survive either outcome without making Isolde pay for it.
“You think he'll forgive you?” Lelio asked, reading enough of the implication to become angry. “You think because you catch me, everything else disappears?”
“No.”
“Then what exactly did you win?”
Taddeo looked at him. “You haven't understood anything tonight.”
Lelio's pistol rose.
Taddeo fired first.