1. — when problems are piling.
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Staten Island, New York
Salvatore Gallo, Russo Estate
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“He’s feeling some kind of way today, Mr. Gallo. Mind yourself.”
The consigliere of the Russo crime family gave the enforcer standing guard just beyond the opened office doors a once over. “I’ll mind the boss’s moods, Matty, not you.”
Salvatore had that guessing game down to a science. Half his job came down to knowing whether Giorgio Russo had shit sideways in the morning or not.
“I’m just sayin’ is all.”
“Well, don’t,” he warned the younger man.
Matty should really heed what he was lucky enough to be told but Sal had at least thirty years on the man and a hell of a lot of lived experience with Giorgio.
Sal had to keep in mind that Matty was new on his post for the boss, barely a few months in.
He still had things to learn, but he wouldn’t have much longer to figure it out.
“He hears you telling the wrong person to watch themselves around him, and he might take that some kind of way. Got it?”
Matty showed some sense by nodding.
“Keep it in mind,” Sal uttered, then moved past the man to enter the office. He didn’t need for someone to announce his presence. Everyone knew who he was, and exactly what he was there to do.
Sal’s connections to everything political and judicial, not to mention, the bottomless pit of wealth he came from made him a hot commodity to someone like Giorgio with very specific needs.
And the money his first—dead—wife had been born into?
Even older than his own. The boss couldn’t say his name was on a mall in Shanghai, China, but he could use the fact that his consigliere’s was connected to one.
Even though the enforcer didn’t announce Salvatore’s arrival to the office, Matty kept a three-stride distance behind him as he strolled beyond the threshold.
The irritated, raw vibe of the room vibrated all around him the instant he was within its four walls.
It almost made him turn around and leave, but that would only make Giorgio’s mood far worse for Sal to deal with later.
Speaking of which...
The deep lines set around the boss’s scowl as he scanned the Los Angeles Times spoke volumes. “A countdown, Sal. They have a fucking countdown to every step in the proceedings of this trial now.”
If he were a praying man, now would be the time. Alas, he wasn’t. Church just helped the image because God left him long ago.
“Told you,” Matty murmured at his back.
“Good day,” he greeted Giorgio instead of immediately engaging the issue at hand.
The boss didn’t even glance up from the newspaper spread out between his hands to grunt back, “What the fuck is so good about it?”
A snicker echoed from elsewhere in the space. While the other person standing near the windows might have been important enough for others to greet as well, Sal would worry about the boss’s eldest son later. He took patience, that one.
“Let me work myself into it,” Sal grumbled while glancing at his watch. “It’s only eight in the morning. A bit early to get the blood pressure up.”
“Stop dicking around and tell me what we’re doing about that!”
To make his point, Gorgio tossed the newspaper to the desk in full view of everyone.
The front-page article felt like it had a bit of bite with its black, bold letters spelling out the Russo family name, alongside crime, and the capo who would soon be on trial for the murder of his second wife.
A countdown to the next step in proceedings sat prominently in the lower right quadrant of the article with equally intense font to just top it off.
If the entire situation wasn’t so fucking terrible in every single possible way, then it might be funny.
Sal knew better than to laugh. His lips didn’t even twitch with a smirk.
“Are you still standing there?” Giorgio barked at Matty.
The enforcer clicked his tongue and nodded in the direction of the man behind the oversized desk, gave the consigliere another pointed stare, and then promptly proceeded to exit the office and close the door.
One could guess the way the day would move forward for their boss simply by reading the room.
Salvatore prided himself on the ability.
He believed that alone saved his ass more times than he could count in situations where others had suffered severe consequences for mistakes he’d been smart enough to avoid despite also making the choice to join the family business.
Well, a choice implied reasoning. Choice didn’t factor into survival. It all became moves made by desperate people doing what had to be done and called a choice to soften the blow.
Unfortunately for some, that took years to truly unpack and understand but not him. Not Sal. He’d known it instantly.
“Can’t believe I gave that idiot the button,” said the boss, grumpily.
“You like something about him. He wouldn’t be standing at your office door otherwise,” Sal challenged.
Giorgio sneered back. “You know all about that, don’t you?”
Yes, he did. Very well, and so he let the silence stretch out between them instead of letting the bear poke him again. Better to keep the beast in its cage or distract it with something else.
Hoping the few moments of silence allowed the boss to resituate his mood, Sal decided to test the waters to see just how far the man behind the desk could be pushed.
Given how well his return had come to pass so far, he didn’t have much hope for it getting better.
“I did take a red-eye back from Los Angeles just to tell you first thing—”
“How the bastard has an entire countdown in the papers now?!”
Sal inhaled through his nose, keeping calm all the while. “No, although I’m sure it’ll be a hit for the press.”
“A hit, he says,” Gorgio replied, scoffing.
“They need to make money somehow.”
“And so do we. Which I can’t do when I have the entire country looking at anyone with my last name like they’re connected.”
Most were in certain areas. Sal wouldn’t point it out. No need to pick at a raw scab.
“Money has been moved into a few hands. I talked to just enough people; said enough things to matter. Give it time to see the difference it’ll make.
I’m waiting on a call for confirmation of one of the things you asked for as we speak.
It’ll happen, boss. Trust me. That’s all sensationalism and amusement for bored people with nothing better to do,” Sal said, gesturing at the newspaper.
“I wouldn’t get worked up about it. There’s nothing more we can do for Christiano at this point.
I’ve done what I could. What can you do? ”
Giorgio seemed to take that question in and consider it for a moment. “Well—”
“We could kill him,” came a quiet remark. The boss sighed heavily. “Isn’t that the rule? What we demand when made men swear omerta?”
Right. Wives were untouchable. Except that little rule only mattered when it served Giorgio Russo’s agenda. Otherwise, the man had yet to prove himself beneath killing the wife of a made man to get what he wanted.
Finally, Salvatore had to give the festering problem—one of many in his responsibilities handling the boss’s business—his attention: Marco. “We can’t kill Christiano, you idiot.”
Barely concealed rage flashed across Marco’s otherwise stoic face. “What did you just call me?”
“Easy,” replied Giorgio. “Sal meant no harm.”
Sure, he did. He meant all the fucking harm. Marco worked his last nerve on a good day. And it wasn’t a good day.
“Right?” Giorgio asked with more severity behind the word when Salvatore didn’t engage the peace offering.
“Right,” he eventually agreed. “Fact remains the same, however. We can’t kill him. What, because he’s gotten himself in a bit of trouble, we should just send the hounds and let the vultures pick up the scraps?”
“I mean, it would get him and that murdering his wife business out of the papers,” Marco countered.
“Fair enough, and it would also get us right back in it. Your father is practically apoplectic at having Christiano tied to the family and our dealings. Do you think he wants it splashed on every headline between New York and California about how the mob put a hit out on their capo because of a trial that has nothing to do with us and our part of the country?”
The slight arch of Giorgio’s eyebrow and the quick glance he passed Salvatore’s way spoke to his appreciation for the man having enough patience to put Marco in his place using words in a calm manner.
That could be hard to do at times. Outrageous behavior that didn’t help tense situations were more common than not with the twenty-three-year-old.
How the hell he ever planned to be boss one day, and Marco stupidly did, Salvatore couldn’t understand.
“We’re also not in a position to absorb and manage Christiano’s dealings,” he continued, deciding while he had the moment of unusual silence to educate Marco, he might as well try.
“There are narcos that sit at that man’s table monthly to handle business, and don’t for one second think they would speak to us if we were the ones who showed up.
No, they would just see that turn of events as a move to make. A.S.A.P.”
Marco didn’t hide his unhappiness or the lingering anger in his stare when he replied, “Point taken.”
What nobody wanted to say about Christiano Lombardi clung in the air like mildew in a damp room.
The capo had his own setup in California without his ties to the Russo mafia.
He wasn’t the only capo in the family to stretch his legs and head elsewhere to make his way.
The boss encouraged it. It was good for the family’s captains to have plenty of territory of their own, so they weren’t constantly shitting in someone else’s.
Either way, Christiano no longer needed them in the like he once had, and that could be a problem should push come to shove on an issue.