27. — hold it. #2
Nico thought he could hear footsteps somewhere in the hallway outside the office, so he kept his attention on the door instead of the dark eyes of Salvatore watching him from the chair. “Yeah, boss?”
From the corner of his eye, he saw Sal lift his hand and point to his own temple. “That’s a scary place up there, isn’t it?”
“Lately.”
“I’ll tell you something that it took years for someone to say to me. Don’t sit with it, kid. Don’t walk it alone, either. Don’t spend too much time up there with those things that keep drowning you. Ask someone else to help you swim for a while.”
Nico scoffed softly. “Who? Can’t even call my fucking—”
“Me. Right now, there’s me. Then, there’ll be Larkin. He understands that place, too. And yes, soon you’ll have Frankie.”
The promise of her quieted Nico. His heart, on the other hand...it raged.
“Are you going to attend your cousin’s funeral next week?” Salvatore asked as a pair of footsteps approached the study.
“No. Probably better that I don’t. Why incite something?”
“He was still your cousin. You spent summers with him.”
“He made his choice,” Nico deadpanned.
He meant it.
Salvatore let him have the final word, but only because they had guests.
The father and son pair from Maine took in the man at the table and the one at his side first before tracing the rest of the room with studious attention.
They wouldn’t find anything. No weapons to make an unspoken threat.
No men in black suits, holding guns and wearing balaclavas in the corners like the capos liked to do whenever they had to make a point to their crews.
No, Salvatore stood on something different.
There was strength in silence. A calm confidence. An energy that the man learned and earned. Sure, they would all have a choice today, but the answer shouldn’t be difficult because it sat right in front of their faces. It always had.
Planning for a different outcome? That was just good business.
“I think we’re early,” said the older of the two.
Salvatore simply gestured at the table, unbothered. “Pick a seat; you’re right on time.”
Over the course of the next hour, the remaining made men of the family arrived at the Gallo estate.
Each, like the first, were greeted at the front door, escorted to the hallway leading to the study, and then left to make their own decision from there.
By the time the table had filled all the empty seats, the silence in the room ticked along with the grandfather clock in the corner. A lot like a bomb.
The second to last man to show up was the only one related to Salvatore. His cousin. The last man to walk through those doors and take the remaining seat available at the end of the table, staring straight at Salvatore and Nico as he sat down, was Carmine.
His partner, Davido, stood at his back.
“And now we can begin,” Salvatore murmured.
He wouldn’t waste time explaining why they had all gathered there, nor the reasons he called for them.
They already knew. In their business, word traveled fast. For some of these men, Nico delivered the news himself.
“My apologies for the fewer seats in the room—although, we’re only down by two. ”
Anthony Carcoli. Giorgio. The unspoken names hung in the air.
Nico’s finger tapping at his back sped up, still needing the outlet as his gaze scanned the faces that occasionally found him watching. He didn’t look away when a man’s eyes met his, instead lingering to make sure they felt the way he watched back.
He would find something if it was there.
“Unfortunately, those changes were a seriously needed upgrade to this family’s structure, and I suspect, more than a few of you know why.
” Salvatore settled into the chair with a more relaxed posture, eyeing the larger circular marble plate in the middle of the table with enough holes around the rim to fit each marble in front of every man.
“For the most part, I would like to think we could all continue our business as we always did, but if for some reason one of you disagrees, now would be the time to voice it so that we can have a proper discussion on the matter and then we can move on to better things. As I’m sure you would all prefer. ”
The two from Vegas spoke amongst themselves quietly but settled whatever discussion they had with a nod back and forth.
“Do the rest of us need to worry about being the next person you decide needs to go?” asked the one man, taller than the other.
Nico hadn’t spent much time in Vegas, or even with the Maine side of the family’s faction.
Most of his knowledge and experience came from at home, with Big Mike, dealing with Anthony over the years, and most importantly, Chicago.
Even the capo settled in California—Christiano—had been a cousin of his father’s first wife, but the man kept a healthy distance from Giorgio whenever he could.
Like anyone else with a brain and self-preservation.
“I’ll answer that question,” Salvatore replied, “but there’s a deal you have to accept for me to do it. And everyone I intend to have sit at this table will make the same deal, so then it’s fair across the board. Are we clear?”
Confirmations passed. Nods came, too.
“I’ll answer, and you can take my word for what it’s always meant when I gave it.
I got rid of a problem, one we all knew we had, but no one wanted to handle for reasons we all were intimately acquainted with.
So, to answer, unless you are a problem that comes to my attention, then no, you needn’t worry about if I’m targeting you. ”
“What’s the deal?” Carmine asked from the other end of the table.
A smile edged at Salvatore’s mouth, dangerous and cold. “Funny you would ask.”
“Why’s that, Sal?”
“Because it will not apply to you.”
Carmine’s gaze narrowed. A hand, from his partner, found his shoulder.
“For everyone else who would like to take the deal I’m about to offer, barring one other man in this room who may wish to take an alternate route which I have already given him and I do keep my word, here it is.
I did the thing none of you would—maybe you couldn’t—and so, I will call the shots from here on out.
You pick up your marble, you put it in its home at the middle of the table, and you leave.
That is your vote. Your say so. Anytime we come back to this table, for whatever reason, those marbles will be waiting. Every time, you will get your vote.”
“And if we don’t vote?” Big Mike asked to Salvatore’s left.
He glanced at the man. “Well, that sounds a lot like a problem, doesn’t it?”
Nico tracked the way Big Mike folded his arms over his chest and eyeballed the rest of the people at the table to take in their reaction to the unspoken threat when he had already spelled out what he would do to a problem.
“Christiano,” Salvatore said then.
The capo a seat down from Big Mike lifted his head. “Yes, boss?”
“Have you considered the offer I made you?”
“I have.”
Nico had no clue what offer the two spoke of, but he figured it didn’t matter. He could fill in the blanks, if needed.
“And?” Salvatore pressed.
“I’m tired, Sal,” Christiano murmured.
“I bet. Killing one’s wife, and keeping oneself out of prison, is tiring work.”
Nico kept his face passive but realized in that moment he had missed something important within the ranks of the family. Then again, he did have a lot going on, and he hadn’t been home to pick up on those details being away from Giorgio.
“Killing my wife was a necessary evil,” Christiano replied.
“Do you expect me to ask why?” Salvatore shook his head. “Giorgio thought it necessary, too, but of course, he’d been trying to hide a bigger sin.”
Christiano’s face hardened. “His first wife was my cousin, too.”
“And your wife was someone’s daughter, friend...sister.”
“Oh, no. That was my first wife. She’s dead, too, remember?”
“Who picked the second one?” Salvatore asked. “I can’t remember.”
“Giorgio.”
“Right. Was it unavoidable, at least?”
“Couldn’t have stopped myself if I tried,” Christiano muttered thickly.
“Well,” Salvatore said, then, sighing, “I suppose it doesn’t matter what the rest of the people at this table think I should do with you, or what I want to do with you, if you choose to take the deal I offered you months ago. I never take something back once I put it out there, after all.”
“I’d like to be free,” Christiano told no one in particular.
“A made man is never free...just gone. In one way or another.”
“Is that what you want me to be—gone?”
“You and others,” Salvatore replied, eyeing Carmine again.
“Give me the word, Christiano, and I will make your freedom happen. Take the money, I don’t need it.
Let the narcos have the territory, it doesn’t matter.
None of these men were doing business with you, so it doesn’t affect them in the end. ”
Salvatore pointed at the man’s marble. “Put it where it goes if that’s your agreement and then take your leave. As everyone else should do as well once they’ve decided the offer on the table for them is one they’d like to see through with me.”
Quite an offer for the rest of them, Nico thought.
Agree, or die. But that’s how it worked. This was their life. The better man made the move; the rest would follow.
With a solemn nod, Christiano stood from his seat and grabbed the marble from the plate ahead of him. He leaned across the table and dropped the marble loudly into the middle centerpiece.
“Let me know when you’re ready,” Salvatore told him. “I’ll make the plan happen.”
“I will.”
“Exit my property promptly.”
The man didn’t need to be told again. Christiano’s footsteps could be heard until they diminished completely outside the study.
Nobody spoke at the table. Only then did Salvatore gesture with a waving hand at the others, as if to urge the rest who he’d already told to vote, to now make their choice.
Johnny, the boss’s cousin, stood first.
“Well done, your father would’ve liked that,” Johnny told Salvatore as his marble dropped.
“I didn’t do this for him.”