Chapter 16 Giovanni
GIOVANNI
“You’re looking well, Bianca.” I smile. “Your host must be treating you with more kindness than I expected.” Considering the last time I saw him he was wiping your blood from his knuckles.
Her expression is serene. To an outsider, she would appear to be enjoying her time away from home without her husband and children.
Her clothes are immaculate, her fingernails shiny, her body language that of a woman who has nothing more to worry about than fitting in her next massage appointment between visits to the hair salon and movie premieres in the city.
She doesn’t resemble a woman being held hostage on enemy territory with a gun battle taking place outside the window.
“He is.” The smile tries to materialize but falls short of reaching her eyes. “Let’s just say that we’ve reached an … arrangement.”
“You won’t mind if we help ourselves to coffee.” Emiliano Calderone isn’t asking for permission. He goes to the coffee machine, locates enough cups to go around, and pours steaming black liquid into each. “It’s been a long day.”
Bianca doesn’t try to stop him. Her eyes settle on me. “I’m surprised by your choice of backup, Giovanni.”
The dons collect their beverages from Emiliano and resume their positions on either side of me, facing my sister. No one reacts to being called ‘backup’. The jibe isn’t worthy of their attention.
“My men are otherwise engaged.” I pull out a seat from under the solid marble-topped table in the center of the room and sit down. “For a while there, I feared for your life. Mario took great pleasure in showing me your injuries at the hands of his new allies.”
Her expression hardens, the lines around her mouth tightening. “He wouldn’t have had the balls to go through with it if you hadn’t made the first move, Gio. You know what a fucking coward he is.”
“He doesn’t use my sister as a punching bag and get away with it.”
I know I have the backing of the dons when I say this; every one of them would’ve reacted the same way if their sister was being abused by her husband. Regardless of the peace agreement arranged by their parents.
“He got what was coming to him.”
“Ha!” she scoffs. “And went running to the Russians the instant your back was turned.”
“I’m still trying to piece together this unexpected allegiance. When did this happen? Was it Mario’s intention all along to take over my empire?” I choose my words carefully.
“Your empire?” She sloshes coffee over the side of her mug and onto her wrist as she pushes herself off the counter and sets the drink down. “I’m a Sabatelli too, remember.”
“You’re a D’Angelo. Your son will inherit his father’s family business someday.” I resist the temptation to check the time on my wristwatch, hinting that it might be sooner rather than later.
“I am nothing like him,” she hisses. “At least I own my mistakes. At least I would make my family proud.”
I remain neutral. Bianca isn’t lying when she says that she would do anything to continue the family legacy.
She has proven it well enough by standing by the animal who shares her marital bed.
But I hadn’t realized how far she would go until I met the Fish and discovered that she’d risked Meggie’s life to free Tommy Romano.
“What mistakes are you willing to own?”
“What?” She blinks, buying herself some time. “Allowing you to cut me out of the business.” She holds my gaze, defiant.
“We both know that it wasn’t your mistake to make.”
“Oh, so you admit that you were wrong to turn your back on me and Enzo.” She checks out the dons, witnesses to my revelation that I cut my siblings out of my father’s legacy.
“That isn’t what I said. It was never your empire to begin with, Bianca. Your future was always going to rest with the husband our parents chose for you.”
Bianca turns her back on us momentarily, and stares at the bloody scene playing out in front of the mansion. “This is the twenty-first century, Gio. Maybe it’s time for ancient traditions to be kicked to the curb.”
“So that you can be with Stella?”
Her spine stiffens and she grips the edge of the counter, her knuckles white.
When she turns back around, the calm persona has dropped, replaced by a woman whose brutal treatment at the hands of her husband is starting to show beneath the polished veneer.
A faint bruise still lingers on the side of her temple, and when I look closely, I can see that her top lip is swollen.
“How do you know about Stella?” Her voice is little more than a whisper. Then understanding sneaks behind her eyes. “Enzo told you.”
She shakes her head as if repulsed by the thought of her two brothers speaking about her behind her back.
“You know what he’s trying to do. Now that you’ve let him in, he’s trying to turn you against me.
Enzo will do what he always does, he’ll smile and introduce you to his friends and prove to you what a great asset he will be to the family empire, and all the while, he’ll be loosening the screws and waiting for the whole thing to collapse around you before he walks away. ”
She starts pacing, working herself into a frenzy. And I hear her out; it’s the least I can do.
“He never wanted to be a part of it the way I did. The way I do. He’s too fickle, Gio. He’s never persevered with anything for more than a few months in his entire life.”
“That isn’t the Enzo I’ve seen over the past couple of weeks.”
“The past couple of weeks!” Her voice rises a notch. “You’ll make him your underboss based on his performance over the past couple of weeks?”
I never mentioned appointing Enzo as my underboss, but I keep it to myself. “What would you do with the empire, Bianca? If it were yours?”
She stops pacing, but her hands keep wringing, her rings scratching against her palms. “I’d give my children a better future. I wouldn’t force my son to inherit his father’s business if it wasn’t what he wanted, and I sure as fuck wouldn’t sell my daughter to a man she despised.”
She’s disrespecting the older men in the room.
It is the mafia way, and each of them, at some point, have been required to do things that they didn’t necessarily want to do.
But every decision they make is for the legacy they hand over to their children, and their grandchildren, and every generation that follows.
But I need to keep her talking. “A better future than yours, you mean?”
Her eyes narrow. “You know that’s what I mean, Gio.”
“Our parents always wanted what was best for us.”
Perhaps it’s easy for me to say when I inherited the empire. But I still recall our parents agonizing over the decision to marry Bianca off to Mario. They had already suffered her wrath at not being allowed, as the eldest Sabatelli offspring, to take my place at the helm.
“Best for you, you mean!” There’s venom in her eyes.
I stand up. I can’t say what I need to say sitting down. “What I don’t understand is why you believed that killing them was the only option.”
I watch her shoulders tense up and the color drain from her face. She recovers quickly, but not quickly enough. “What are you talking about?”
“You could’ve packed a bag, walked out of the family home, and gone anywhere in the world. You could’ve turned your back on the family, Bianca.”
“Oh, that would’ve played right into your hands, wouldn’t it?” I don’t think it even occurs to her what she just said.
“You could’ve told them the truth. You could’ve told them that, no matter which husband they chose for you, you would be unhappy. Did you think they were so archaic, so unkind, that they wouldn’t have wanted what was best for you?”
Her eyes grow huge with tears. “You have no idea what you’re talking about, Gio.”
“But instead,” I continue, “you chose murder.”
She shakes her head, turns to Don Calderone. “Don’t listen to him. He’s lying.”
The big man doesn’t look away even though I know how difficult it must be for him to hear this. It wasn’t only our parents who died in that car crash, his daughter Elisabetta died too. His only child. Her life snuffed out way too soon by my sister’s selfish actions.
“I’ve had my suspicions for a while.” I jolt her attention back to me like a rabbit facing headlights. “But you covered your tracks well. Until you made the mistake of calling in the Fish to kill Meggie.”
She swallows painfully and swipes at her eyes with her index fingers.
“You were worried that if I fell in love, settled down and had a family, there would be no hope of you ever stepping into my shoes.” Pause.
“Enlisting Lucia’s help threw me off the scent again.
It was the kind of thing Enzo would do, but unbeknownst to you, she’d already introduced himself to Meggie and her sister. ”
Bianca remains silent.
“But Mario’s video call was a step too far.
” I watch her chest rising and falling as she struggles to find a plausible way out of the case I’m presenting.
“He has neither the balls nor the credibility to forge an alliance with the Russians, even a relatively new family. So, I assumed that they’d approached him. But I was wrong, wasn’t I, Bianca?”
My sister shakes her head and steps backward, her spine hitting the edge of the counter. “This was all down to Mario. The man fucking hates me, Gio. He’ll kill me one day.”
She’s right. I’ve suspected as much myself, but it doesn’t excuse her actions. “Why didn’t you come to me before the marriage contract was signed? You knew I’d have helped you.”
“It’s easy to say now, Gio, but you wouldn’t have.”
“What did you plan to do when Mario discovered that you set him up? Lie your way out of it? Have him killed too?”
Her top lip curls away from her teeth in a snarl. “The fucking coward has gone into hiding just like I thought he would.” She sucks in a deep breath, resigned to her fate now that I’ve called her out on her actions. “How did you work it out?”
“The Fish tried to steer me towards Enzo. Of course, he had no way of knowing that his foot soldier had confirmed his orders came from the queen. Once I was able to place Yevgeny Kuzmin on the island at the time of the accident, the rest was easy.”
Bianca is silent for a while. Then, “I’m not going back to him, Giovanni.”
“I won’t make you go back to him.”
Her head jerks as if my words have stung her back to life.
“Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to help me track him down, and in return, I’ll give you a future with Stella.”
“What about Mario?”
“I’ll handle Mario.”
“The family reunion is touching.” The heavily accented voice slices through the atmosphere in the kitchen as the man from my brother-in-law’s video call enters the room on silent feet. “Unfortunately for Mario, you will not be handling anything.”
He crosses the room and stands beside my sister. He keeps his eyes on me as he leans into her and licks the side of her face, dragging his tongue slowly up her cheek before facing me again and licking his lips.
Bianca doesn’t react. Not even a hint of revulsion appears in her expression.
The dons remain motionless.
Yevgeny Kuzmin has been accompanied by several foot soldiers, all armed, all now positioned around the kitchen with their revolvers aimed at the heads of the older men. I’m guessing the pakhan wants to take me down himself, payback for breaking into his home.
“The man disrespected my sister. I’m sure that even you will understand the revenge must be mine.”
His jaw works from side to side as though he is trying to unblock his ears. “You stand in my home and speak to me of revenge?” His smile is barely more than a twitchy top lip. A snarl. An angry tic.
I slide my gun from the waistband of my pants and hold it loosely. “You killed my parents and fiancée. If we’re really going to stand here and have a contest of grievances, I think that even your own men would agree that I win.”
His eyes flicker. It’s his second biggest mistake, and one that will cost him his life.
Because the dons didn’t make this journey alone.
This is war. They wouldn’t allow me to go head-to-head with the bratva alone. So, while their foot soldiers were battling it out with the Russians at the front of the house, their underbosses were already inside the property and waiting for the right moment to strike.
I fire a bullet at the pakhan’s chest as the dons’ right-hand men emerge from the shadows like whispers and take down the bratva.
The pakhan’s eyes latch onto mine. There is no fear behind them; this is the life we were born into. There is no regret either.
What I see is understanding.
We were both played. Not by Mario, but by the woman peering down at his body as he folds like a house of cards at her feet.
My sister Bianca.