Chapter 27 Charlie
Charlie
When I walk into the office with Isabella behind me, Luciano and Stefano are already there waiting for us.
Stefano stands from his seat and looks over at Isabella. “She can’t be here. She’s not a part of the Cosa Nostra.”
I glare over at him. “I asked her to be here.” I grab Isabella’s hand to show a united front. I look over to Luciano to see who he’s siding with.
“She can stay. I asked her to help Charlie,” he reminds his brother.
“More like sleep with Charlie,” Stefano mumbles under his breath. Luciano is out of his chair within seconds and has his brother in a chokehold, shocking both myself and Izzy.
“Brother, watch your tongue,” Luciano snarls, squeezing his grip slightly to remind him who’s in charge. “I will not have you disrespecting Charlie anymore.”
“Sorry, Don,” Stefano says.
“Apologize to Charlie, not me.” Luciano lets go of him, shoving him in my direction.
Stefano sulkily looks up at me. “Sorry, Charlie,” he says, but I can tell he’s only saying it to keep Luciano happy. He clearly isn’t, otherwise he wouldn’t keep questioning everything I do or Luciano’s decisions.
“Apology accepted,” I say to him, dragging a chair beside Luca behind the desk. No distractions today. Stefano and Isabella take a seat in front of us.
Luciano starts. “We had three men killed at the docks. Stefano has started making arrangements to cover their funeral costs but we need to go over the finer details of the compensation packages to their families.”
“I didn’t know the mafia did anything like that. The movies show you guys as like ‘each for your own’ attitude,” I say to them.
Isabella chuckles. “You can’t believe everything in the movies. They either don’t show enough or over exaggerate.”
“Your grandfather, Marco, was old school and did the nothing approach. However, when Caterina took charge, she didn’t think it was right. These men served our family, so she thought it was only right to create a new system,” Luciano explains to me.
“And what is the system?” I ask.
“Their compensation amount is a formula that Gabriele created, based on a few things: how long they served in our family, how many children they have, what their ranking is, and how they were killed.”
He taps on a spreadsheet on the screen, and it’s literally a formula like he mentioned. I wonder what else Gabriele can do… I watch as Luciano starts to enter one of the soldiers’ details into the spreadsheet, and within seconds a figure is shown on the bottom.
“So what now? We hand them a check for that amount of money?” I ask.
“No, we open a bank account and tell them how they can access it. Some of our soldiers’ families would waste it in heartbeat, so if they have kids, it’s set up as a trust so we know their children will be looked after for a while.”
“That seems like a lot of work…”
“Yes, but it was how Caterina wanted it,” Luciano reminds me. “We will leave here in two hours to start doing the rounds and visiting the families. Make sure you’re ready.”