LUCA MORETTI
Carlo arrived at eight on the dot.
I shook his hand at the entrance. His hand was the same as always—thin, cold, the widower's band on his left ring finger.
"Padrone."
"Carlo."
"Bagnoli."
"Yes. Bagnoli."
I sat down in my father's chair and gestured him to the armchair.
"Padrone, about the shipment. The Rossis are already moving." He opened the folder. He took out three photos of the hotel in Pozzuoli, of the three men going in. "Just as you predicted."
"Capisco."
"Thursday night, I'd suggest an ambush at the Bagnoli roundabout. Four of our men."
Forty years.
The man who held me in his lap at my uncle's funeral. The man who read the letters to Lorena. The man who called me capo at nineteen in my mother's cemetery.
"Carlo."
"Sì, padrone."
"Before Bagnoli, I want you to talk to Matteo in the cellar. Today."
He hesitated a little.
"Sì, padrone."
"Come."
I stood and went out with him following me.
We went down the two staircases and crossed the entrance hall. We went down the cellar stairs; Raffaele was at the foot of them, leaning against the wall, waiting. When Carlo saw him, he locked mid-step.
But he didn't run. He went to the end of the corridor.
I stopped him in one of the side cells, a small place, stone walls, no window, nothing.
I took the pistol from my jacket, the suppressor already screwed on.
Carlo didn't run, didn't shout, just leaned his back against the stone wall, slowly. Then he took off the round glasses and put them in the inside pocket of his jacket.
"Carlo."
"Sì, Luca."
For the first time in twenty years he called me Luca, not padrone.
"Why?"
He sighed, looking up at the ceiling.
"You were never going to let me be capo, Luca. I'm old. Sixty years old. In 2018 Salvatore offered me twenty-five percent of the Rossi house for your fall. Bianca was the one who brought the offer." He lowered his eyes. "I accepted."
"You were my brother's godfather."
"I know." His voice broke. "Forgive me, Luca."
"Pray."
He closed his eyes and folded his hands in front of him.
"Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum, benedicta tu in mulieribus…"
I waited for the end.
"…nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen."
And without thinking too much, I fired.
The pistol made a short, dull sound, held in by the suppressor.
Carlo fell to one side, slowly, against the stone wall. The blood ran down the wall in a single line.
Raffaele came into the cell but didn't look at me; he looked at the body.
"Fratellone."
"Take care of it."
"Sì."
I went out. I washed my hands in the ground-floor bathroom, and changed my shirt in the second-floor guest room, not ours, because I didn't want her to see the blood on the clothes.