Chapter 9
The longer Daddy glowers at me across the big desk, the worse I feel this is going to be. To a point where it’s almost impossible for me to sit still. My chest pounds, I’m hot under my clothes, my throat is so thick I can hardly swallow, and my eyes are close to brimming. A physical urge in every part of my body makes me want to jump out of the chair and run.
The dark scowl under Daddy’s heavy brow lets me know what’s coming. I’m braced for the low grit in his voice. Not the exact thing he’s going to say, but brooding in his big chair, raised up like a throne, he’s snorting and swelling, and that means he’s winding up to do something terrible.
His dark eyes narrow and harden. A low growl rumbles under his thick, hard whisper. “Are you fucking stupid or what?”
I’ve seen the signs before. Of course, it’s all going to be my fault.
“Have I brought you up as an idiot?”
He never says, ‘look what you made me do,’ but it’s always in the air. The dark smolder through the clouds in his eyes tells me something very bad is coming. I always try to be ready.
Like always, though, he blindsides me and takes me off guard.
His words come like a rockfall.
“Whacking Gianni, okay. It wasn’t what I wanted, but okay. These things happen. Maybe you got carried away. Maybe he did something and you had no choice. I don’t fucking know.” His lips tighten and his fists bunch. “It’s not how I wanted it to go, but at the same time, well, it could have been worse from our point of view. Fact is, he was out of control. It was something that was bound to happen. Sooner or later. So, you made it sooner. Okay.”
The redness in his neck and the way his fists clench and flex makes me jump inside. I can hardly sit still.
“You,” he makes it sound like a curse. Something to spit in the blackest moment and throw in the spray in the face of your worst enemy. “You put that punk Armando at the head of the Crespi family.”
His eyes jab at me like hot pokers.
“Maybe I should send you to Sicily for a year or so. Somewhere you can’t do any more damage. You could go to college,” he says it like college is the stupidest thing I could do. “Or learn farming. Anything.”
His head shakes. “Armando fucking Crespi. He’s just a kid. Barely out of school. He’s a hothead. And you made him the don. He’s going to be fizzing mad for revenge.” Daddy’s knuckles grind into the desktop. “With the same captains, the same consiglieri as Gianni; at least, he will at the start.” He pushes down, like he’s going to stand. If he gets up, I don’t know what’s going to happen. “Those vultures will be only too happy to oblige him.” He pushes himself to his feet. And looms over me from the far side of the desk. I can’t breathe.
He prowls heavily around the desk, and my nerves are on fire as he walks behind me. I don’t dare turn around, but not being able to see him terrifies me. I twist awkwardly, straining my neck, but he puts a warning hand on my shoulder. He’s breathing heavily and he doesn’t speak for what feels like forever.
“That fucking little brat is going to be an emotional firecracker. All of a sudden, out of thin air he’s got enormous power and zero fucking experience. There’s nothing easier for the captains to steer than that. He will believe everything they tell him, and they will give him all the bloodletting he cries out for.”
“Daddy.” His grip hardens on my shoulder. He wants me to stay quiet. But I know how he despises weakness. I tell him, “I know l went too far.”
He strokes my hair, “Don’t worry, tesora.” His big hand feels like it could swallow me whole as he occasionally yanks and tugs. “At your age I might have done the same.”
Sometimes his hand stops to grip around the back of my neck. His long, thick fingers still almost meet at the front. It reminds me of the times before, when Momma was alive. When he does those things, it always makes me feel like I’m his little girl again.
I’m too quick, saying, “Daddy, let me put it right.”
“No, Lucia,” His voice is flat and cold. “Right now I need to keep you out of the way.” Nobody else is allowed to call me Lucia.
“At least let me try.”
Saying, ‘I’m sorry, Daddy,’ hasn’t ever done me any good. I can’t ever tell him I’m sorry without it coming out sounding weak, and that always fires up his rage.
Whatever it is he’s going to do to me, he was probably going to do it anyway. Only now he’s going to use this as his excuse. His way to put the blame on me. He always has to blame someone else. I’ve seen him blame other people after he’s killed them.
For Daddy, problems are never small, unless they’re other people’s problems. Then they don’t usually matter at all. If he has a problem, the world comes to a stop.
However much I love him, I really don’t want to be like him. Not in that way.
His voice is low. Almost a snarl. “I told you I wanted you to scare him.”
Daddy, I want to tell him, You know what I did was much better than that.
For months now, Daddy raged about the chaos and disruption that Gianni created. Gianni Crespi was showing him disrespect. He threw Daddy’s kindness and goodwill back in his face. He made him look a fool. He was going to get us all into jail. Or worse, into open warfare.
Daddy was in a black mood constantly and it set his temper on a knife edge. It was like living next to an angry volcano. He wanted Crespi brought into line. He wanted him disciplined. He wanted vengeance.
So I did better than that. Gianni was leading the Crespi family toward a confrontation. He planned to move up and take over our family’s position. I knew it. I had it from good sources. When I told Daddy, he laughed in my face and told me Gianni Crespi would never have the balls.
In the mob hierarchy, our family, Famiglia Benedetti, sits at the third level from the top, and that means we’re being tested from every direction, all of the time. We always have a fight from at least one direction over our businesses, our clubs or our territory. Usually more than one.
Gianni had plenty of warnings, and he still started skirmishes that could easily have got out of control and burst into open war.
What I did was I put the whole Crespi clan in their place. They won’t give any trouble to a Benedetti business or to any of our people. Not now and not for a long time to come. Is what Daddy said about Gianni and the Crespi family’s captains and advisers?
No. Surely not. Not unless every one of them from Armando all the way down is seriously suicidal.
Daddy will go to the council of the Families. Then they’ll tell Gianni, or his consiglieri will tell him. If he moved on us now we would wipe him out. And we would have the backing of the Families to do it.
I know that the council of the Families wants to see good order kept at all costs. Honor comes first, then good business. Keeping order is what makes both of those possible. Good order means we take care of our own and we solve our own troubles. The cops have no need to come near us, and not a single one of us will ever go to them, except to pay them off.
What I did will keep peace and good order between the Benedetti family and the Crespis now, for some time to come. It will show everyone on the lower ranks that, below the Puccis, the Romanas and the Fortuna family, we’re in control. Business stays safe, we don’t need to trouble the cops. Everything can go on as normal.
And I did it for us. For our family. For Daddy.
I know Daddy wouldn’t have done it that way, but he should have. And he should have done it sooner. He knows that as well as I do. He’s mad at me now because I did what he didn’t have the stomach to do. I wish he could just stay calm enough to see what I did, and that I did it for him. But the number three place is hard on the nerves.
Still, there’s no use in me arguing with Daddy about it. That would only make him madder.
It’s still a shock when he decides, though. It’s a sentence of permanent exile. He’s going to banish me from my home, the place that I love. The only home I ever had.
“No. Now, I need you to marry one of the Fortuna boys. It will have to be the youngest, obviously. We haven’t much that I can give for a dowry, and the oldest boy is bound to marry up, into the Romano family or the Puccis.”
He’s going to cast me out. Send me away from my family. And from him. It’s hard not to shed a tear. But I won’t. Not while he can see me, at least. I’ll keep my voice strong and level, and my head up. I’ll show him that I’ve learned what he taught me, even while he pronounces the sentence on me.
So he sends me away, to marry Carlo Fortuna. The no-hope youngest son of the family one step up the ladder from ours.
I’m going from a hazy future with no obvious prospects to a certain and inescapable black hole.