Chapter 20 Giovanni
GIOVANNI
Bianca’s goodbyes are unemotional.
Her children are accustomed to her leading her own life while they are taken care of by nannies, so when they wave to her from the porch, I sense that they are already planning their first adventure on the island with their newfound freedom.
Sandro and his wife will take care of them, but they’re oblivious to the fact that everyone else in Sicily will be looking out for them too, and I didn’t want to burst their bubble.
Stella watches us climb into the back of the car, wide-eyed and lips parted as if she might blow her farewell across the driveway for Bianca to catch in the palm of her hand.
My sister has made her choice.
She didn’t want to come back to New York with me, but I have no reason to trust her, and besides, I need her to help me find Mario.
We don’t fly into New York. Instead, we land at a smaller airport outside of the city, drive to a safe place and switch cars, heading into the city in a regular taxi driven by one of Don Calderone’s men.
Mario will already know that shit went down at the bratva mansion, and even though he has gathered his own army around him, I don’t expect him to come out and face me like a man.
Which is why we’re going to smoke him out.
The taxi winds its way through the Bronx and stops outside what was once an old food distribution warehouse built close to the riverside. There are no other cars in the overgrown parking lot, but we are not alone.
I climb out of the car while Bianca climbs out the other side, scanning the grimy windows for a glimpse of life.
She has some balls. When Mario signed her over to the bratva, he believed that he was adding his signature to her death warrant, had she not been one step ahead of him.
Any other mafia leader would be fighting to regain their respect.
But Mario is hiding behind the walls of a two-hundred-year-old building and waiting for his men to give him the all-clear to show his face.
I stand in the middle of the parking lot and raise my hands skyward.
Nothing.
“Gio, leave it.” Bianca hasn’t moved away from the car. “He’s fucking crazy enough to kill you.”
Mario might be crazy, but more importantly, he is a coward, and he took delivery of a special gift earlier today. The head of his friend and ally Yevgeny Kuzmin courtesy of the older dons who stormed the bratva mansion with me.
I turn around with my hands still raised in the air and present my back to Mario’s hideout. Bianca doesn’t make eye contact. She is my lookout, my eyes, and I will know from her reaction before the first bullet is fired.
She gives a barely perceptible shake of her head. Given her recent decision, she needs me on her side.
For now.
Her eyes flicker to the entrance, and the distant sound of a rusty lock being moved reaches me. I don’t turn around. Bianca knows what to do.
She watches the heavy metal door grind across the warped flooring inside the abandoned building, waiting, listening, counting.
She furrows her brow, but still, I resist the temptation to turn around and make the first move.
The first shot must come from Mario. He broke the terms of the contract, he disrespected my family, he allied himself with the bratva against his own.
“A head.” I lipread the words forming on my sister’s lips. “There’s something else…”
She doesn’t finish before the bomb Mario planted inside his dead ally’s mouth detonates. It’s all I need.
I gesture for Bianca to get back into the car, then I turn around and start walking towards the smoke and the flames creating a bonfire outside the warehouse entrance.
A bullet whistles past my head, but I don’t flinch.
I keep right on walking as the army formed by the old dons swarms into the parking lot and through the open doorway.
Gunfire fills the lot, gravel dancing around my feet as bullets warn me to stop advancing.
Mario might have welcomed the war, but like all cowards in a position of power, he doesn’t want to be held accountable for his actions.
If he kills me, he knows that his fate will be sealed, and he would rather disappear having failed to prove his point than be buried six feet under knowing that he’d made his mark.
Inside the building, the ground level is eerily empty.
The foot soldiers have made their way to the upper levels seamlessly and soundlessly, and I find myself surrounded by broken rusting machinery, rotting boxes and mulch blown in through the cracks in the walls, the remnants of food left behind by vagrants and rodents.
This is where Mario chose to hide.
I slide my revolver from the waistband of my pants and follow the men up the dank echoey stairwell. I have no such qualms about owning my actions. I declared war on Mario when he sold out on my sister; I have no choice but to finish what I started.
The sound of gunfire starts up, and my heart beats a steady tune in sync with the bullets tearing through the walls of the old building.
The first upper level is a mezzanine with a space in the center of the floor through which the warehouse equipment below can be seen.
In the time it has taken me to mount the stairs, bloody bodies litter the mezzanine, vacant eyes staring straight through me.
No one moves as I wander around, noting the number of Russian allies risking their lives for their Sicilian friend.
They are few. Word has already gotten around.
Peering through the open space, I spot more bodies, limbs splayed awkwardly, blood seeping through bullet wounds in their chests. One man has been speared through the abdomen by a piece of equipment with a spoke protruding from a spiderweb of metal.
This could have been avoided. If Mario had been a decent husband to my sister and a caring father to his children, this wouldn’t have been necessary, this senseless waste of life. But my brother-in-law lost the meaning of words like decency and respect amongst his perversions and greed for power.
I leave the first level and follow the gunfire upstairs.
If I were Mario, where would I be?
The old Turkish proverb flashes into my head: When the clown enters the palace, he does not become king, the palace becomes a circus.
I know where he is.
The dons’ foot soldiers are taking care of the next two levels. There is no sign of Emiliano and his friends; they are clearly heading straight to the top of the pile, hunting for the clown before he has a chance to escape.
I keep climbing. Mario, if he is still here, has backed himself into a corner on the top floor.
As expected, I find him surrounded by foot soldiers, all armed, the four dons outnumbered by three-to-one. But even Mario has had the common sense to hold fire against the men standing before him.
His beady eyes and savage twisted smile follow me as I enter the room and stand in the middle of Emiliano and his friends.
He steps forward, using his men as a crutch to support his air of self-importance. “What happened to your army, Giovanni? They seem to have aged decades since we last spoke.”
Once again, the dons have the dignity and grace not to react. Something that Mario would never comprehend.
“Stand your men down, Mario. This is between me and you.”
His lips twitch. “Oh, you would like that, wouldn’t you? Do you take me for an idiot?”
Yes.
“No trickery, Mario. Just you and me. This war is personal; there’s no reason to shed any more blood than necessary.”
“Well, here’s the thing.” His eyes grow even smaller if that’s at all possible. “I don’t intend to see my blood shed today. You owe me for what your sister has done.”
My jaw clenches. Even now, with the battle raging below, he is hiding behind my sister rather than taking responsibility for his own actions. There is no room for both of us in this world.
“You’re right, Mario: I do owe you. But not for what Bianca has done, for the way you disrespected the agreement between our families. For taking the contract signed by our fathers and pissing on it because you believe yourself to be above such traditions.”
A low chuckle escapes his lips. He’s nervous.
The presence of the four older men is the sign that they have chosen their side, and it is not in Mario D’Angelo’s favor.
There is no going back for him now. He must kill us all and suffer the consequences, a life spent avoiding our families whose duty it will be to get their revenge.
“The contract was already null and void.” He flexes the fingers of his right hand, the knuckles still swollen and knobby.
I’m done talking. I give the signal for the older men to leave us, which they do, backing out of the room with their weapons lowered. “Your turn, Mario.”
His grin broadens. “Maybe I don’t want to abide by your rules.”
My bullet enters his skull before he has even finished speaking. His body contorts with the realization that it is game over, the grin still in place as he lands heavily on his side, the men flanking him spasming with the barrage of shotgun fire from the older men reentering the room.
A bullet grazes my left arm, but I advance on Mario’s men, who are dropping like zapped flies, their own weapons aiming wide or clattering onto the floor as the dons press on relentlessly.
Conceding defeat is no longer an option for these men. They too chose their side, and they know that to defect now would only bring dishonor upon their families, so they fight with more courage than Mario D’Angelo ever showed during his wretchedly bitter lifetime.
It is done.
Fresh agreements with the other families will need to be made, but the D’Angelos will be excluded from any discussions. They may choose to continue the war, but if Emiliano and his friends have any say in it, I believe they will cast their dice on the side of peace.
Emiliano Calderone places a heavy hand on my shoulder as I make my way out of the building. I have given him answers surrounding the death of his daughter, and he has repaid me with this. We are equals.
I cross the parking lot wearily. New York has lost its appeal while Meggie isn’t here.
We’ve only been apart for a couple of days, but it is too long.
I miss her smile, the mischievous gleam in her eyes when she is about to tease me, the way her naked body molds to mine.
I miss her touch, her kisses, the eager way she spreads her legs for me like nothing makes her feel more special.
But most of all I miss her love.
No one has ever cared for me the way Meggie does, and I’d be an idiot to ever let her go.
I know something is wrong as I approach the taxi. The driver is slumped forward over the steering wheel, only the top of his head visible through the windshield. I walk around the car, my gun still in my hand, and open the passenger doors.
Bianca is gone. Blood oozes from a bullet wound in the back of the driver’s skull; his vacant eyes stare over my left shoulder at something that only he can see.
Earlier, before we left the family home in Sicily, she chose Stella over her kids.
I wasn’t surprised. Choosing her kids would’ve been a constant reminder that they were spawned by an abusive husband.
She would’ve watched them grow up, knowing that they would achieve everything that had proved elusive in her own life.
Until she met Stella. She would’ve had to stand beside them smiling when they formed their own alliances, while inside she was screaming at the injustice of it all.
But even Bianca couldn’t face telling her kids that she was leaving them. For good.
I walk away from the city, back towards the safehouse where we switched cars, and the airport where the private jet is waiting to take me back to Meggie and Amber.