Dario
TWENTY-TWO
The summons arrives as a text from one of his assistants—three words, a time and a location, nothing else. No reason given. This is not unusual.
What is unusual is the time. Important business happens in the afternoon, when Marco has had time to settle into the day and arrange his thoughts. Morning meetings are for logistics. Not social visits. And given that he has time to send this first thing in the morning, it’s not a patient either.
I have, on special occasions, seen him start his day with executions.
It’s rare. Executions are good for a few things, the most important of which is keeping the living in line. He prefers to make them public as a show of strength, so he invites his capos to witness, knowing the gruesome details will be told to those who need to hear them.
He never calls his capos in for the morning. That’s when they’re either their most productive or still unconscious from the night’s work. It would cut into his wallet to call them in so early, and that’s against his rules.
I’ve been called in to witness the executions too. He knows I won’t divulge his private information to my patients, and since I don’t have anyone under me, he doesn’t do it so I tell my people how it went.
He invites me to them in order to ensure the dead-man-to-be suffers.
He takes them to the edge of death and uses me to bring them back enough to feel the next round of pain. Sometimes, he has me revive them, if their heart stops. If I liked the guy, I tell him the defibrillator did its job, but they were too injured for it to work.
I don’t have a lot of room for mercy. Never have. But when a guy’s biggest crime against Marco is choosing his family over following Marco’s orders, I’m not going to let him go through more torture after death claimed him.
If it’s my neck on the chopping block, who will do the same for me?
No matter. I have a meeting to attend.
I take an hour before I go. In the past few weeks, there was the taped window, Ed’s pocketed cash, a pattern of Marco’s increasingly clipped communications, the two additional men he’s positioned outside my building in the past month.
I don’t know whether they’re supposed to be invisible or not.
To their credit, they are stealthy. But I’ve been at this a lot longer than they have, and men in suits don’t linger outside residential buildings for no reason.
They also don’t wear lace-up combat-style boots or usually have the same buzz cuts. That’s ex-military.
Since he’s sent a pair of former soldiers to watch over me, I make sure to wear my suicide shirt for the meeting.
I’ve sewn a tiny ampule of poison into the collar.
All I have to do is lean to it and bite down.
The poison is a proprietary blend of my own creation and should be relatively painless.
I figured it out when I experimented on some of Marco’s doomed men, and by the time I got the formula to where it is now, they have shown no outward signs of pain when they bit it.
There are things I can tolerate. I’ve been interrogated before. I know how to handle certain tortures. But Marco knows all of this about me. I have no doubt he’ll pull out all the stops for a man he thinks has insulted him.
Or for the man he knows could upend his entire organization.
It was mine by right. The old-timers all know it. If I were to make moves against Marco, I believe most of them would back me. But there’s no time to set any of that up now.
The only thing I can do now is prepare. Suicide shirt. My usual assortment of weaponry. Medical bag, so I can pretend I didn’t know any of this was coming. A note for Lena next to a pile of cash and fake passports on our bed.
When you’re driving to what could be your own execution, no part of your brain is on board with it. The urge to drive straight to La Guardia and get the fuck out of Dodge is strong. Every muscle in my body is tense, so I try to shake it out. It takes me a while to figure out why.
Why the fuck am I scared?
It’s not as if this is my first rodeo. Marco has made his threats in the past, and I handled them just fine. So why is this getting under my skin?
Lena and Opal.
When I ask the question, their faces are what spring to mind. Not the pain, not the end of me. Them. I don’t want to leave them. I don’t want them to be hunted next. If Marco kills me, then he won’t leave them alone—they’re potential witnesses.
The thought of picking them up and leaving the country flitters through my mind, but it wouldn’t work.
Marco’s not stupid. He likely has guys at the airports.
I know he keeps a watch on the bridges out of the city.
The man might be into low-level bullshit, but he likes to know the comings and goings of his people.
More than that, he’d never stop coming after us, and after he dies, his men would take up that crusade.
I will not force them to live like fugitives.
I arrive four minutes early, which I always do, and I clock the room before I register Marco.
Six of his men are present rather than the usual two—Caruso near the window, Bastianich by the door, four others I recognize by face distributed around the perimeter.
Their posture is not casual. Nothing in their stances says action is imminent—no hands near weapons, no coiled tension—but the deliberateness of the placement is its own language.
None of them meet my eyes. Not one.
Caruso, who I’ve sutured twice and who carries a debt to me that he acknowledges with a nod whenever I come in, is staring at the window behind Marco with the focused attention of a man following a precise instruction.
Bastianich is on his phone. The others have found their walls and floors and the distances in between.
The entire room has organized itself around the task of not looking at me, which takes effort, which means someone ordered them to do it.
The small hairs on the back of my neck stand.
Marco himself is behind the desk. He looks up when I come in, and he’s smiling—warmly, genuinely, the smile of a man delighted to see a colleague he values. Worrisome.
“Dario. Sit down. How have you been?”
“Well.” I sit, setting my medical bag on the floor. “You?”
“Very good. I thought it was time we cleared the air—we’ve had some friction lately, you and I, and I’d rather address it directly.” He leans back in his chair with the ease of a man at home. “I value what we’ve built over the years. I think you know that.”
“As do I.”
His face resets as he smiles wider. “Chicago has been needing a personnel rotation. What do you think of moving Alexandros there?”
The fuck? I check the men for signs that those words are a trigger phrase.
No response from them.
“Alexandros has been a good producer for you here, Marco. But he’s mostly your surveillance guy. Is Chicago lacking in either?”
“I like to keep an eye on things, Dario. You know that better than most.”
I keep my face still. “I am aware.”
He purses his crusty lips, as if he’s considering the comment. “Chicago could use some guidance, and I believe he’s the man for the job. Besides, he’s a little too comfortable with how things are here. Sometimes, you have to push people to make them grow.”
“Couldn’t agree more.”
“Speaking of guidance, how is that personal matter we discussed? Your lady friend.”
Still no response from the men around me. What game is Marco playing this time?
“My lady friend is just a piece of ass, Marco. You know that.”
“But you’re taking care of her daughter, are you not?”
I laugh easily for a man expecting a knife. “I know you’re intimately familiar with blackmail, Marco. Why do you think I’m helping the kid?”
“Really?” He smiles, as if he’s impressed. “Is that all it is?”
“What else would it be?”
“You offered to pay her debt to Esposito. We both know what else it could be.”
Bastianich shifts his weight to his back foot. Caruso’s hand twitches.
Here we go. “You said that shit about me going soft before, and I gotta say, it stung.”
“Because I was right.”
“Because you doubted me.” I lean forward to catch his men’s movements.
Each of them reacts with their eyes, not their bodies. Me closing the distance doesn’t send them into attack mode.
Interesting.
I smirk at Marco. “Don’t know what I’ve done that made you think I’ve gone soft—blackmailing a bitch into my bed doesn’t really qualify.
Paying off her debt to Esposito? Lena’s a hot piece of ass, man.
And you know how Esposito gets paid—cash, pussy, or both.
I didn’t want that motherfucker’s dick on her.
She’s mine.” I lean back to let him sit with that.
“Why didn’t you say that before?” Marco laughs.
“Didn’t think I needed to spread my personal business around, and Caruso’s a gossipy bitch.”
His guard glares at me but says nothing.
But Marco laughs again. “He is. He’s also a hell of a quickdraw, so I keep him around.” A shrug of his sloped shoulders. “I hope you know I appreciate your contribution to my organization.”
My organization. As if my grandfather didn’t start it.
“Your gratitude is overwhelming.”
“Our recent tensions have been unpleasant, wouldn’t you agree?
” He doesn’t wait for an answer. “I’d like to think this matter is finished, since you explained yourself.
It’s important that you and everyone else here knows there’s no such thing as personal business.
If there’s a situation that can affect the organization, you fucking tell me. ”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Good man.” He chucks his chin toward the door. A dismissal.
I walk out.
I’m in the elevator before I process it. No cameras here—I verified that two years ago and have tracked it since. I stand in it and breathe and run through what just happened.
A dressing down, of sorts. That’s the message. Six men in a room, twelve minutes of basically nothing. But it wasn’t nothing.
The dressing down was not the message.
The message was Yes, I’m watching you. Yes, I know your secrets. I’m choosing not to act today, and I want you to know that you know the choice is mine. I will act at my leisure.
I have to get Lena and Opal out of Marco’s reach. Now.
Lena is in the kitchen when I get home. Opal is at the counter with her crayons, tongue out in concentration, narrating something about her drawing under her breath.
I stand in the doorway for a moment and take in the ordinary scene. The afternoon light on Lena’s hair, the smell of something on the stove, the low continuous hum of a household that has become one.
I hate to shatter the calm, but there’s no other choice. “We need to move. Temporarily. A secondary location I keep for situations like this. It’s clean, secure—”
Lena turns and looks at me. “No.”
“There’s trouble—”
“No.” She doesn’t break eye contact with me as she says, “Opal, sweetie, I need you to go to your room and close the door.”
“But I just got the eyes even—”
“Now.”
Opal’s eyes widen, but she gathers her things. On her way out of the kitchen, she says to me, “Make her pasta.”
“Why?”
“It made me feel better. It’ll make her feel better.” She walks out in a hurry.
When I hear the door close, I lay it out. “The penthouse—the people in it—have become visible to the wrong people. The secondary location is clean, minimal exposure. Weeks at most.” After that, we move. But I don’t mention that part yet.
Lena blows out a hard breath. “Opal has been stable for months. She has school she loves, a best friend, a routine. I promised her safe and stable and this is the first time she’s had it, and I’m not pulling it out from under her.
Not to mention that I just started at the firm, and I’m going back to college. I can’t go disappearing now—”
“I have money. That’s not a problem.”
“That’s not the point, Dario. And you control everything in this building. How is somewhere else safer?”
I look at her face. She won’t budge on this. Lena has given in to everything else I wanted. This is the first time she’s really putting her feet down about anything.
Fuck. “Fine. We stay. But I’m doing some renovations, and I’ll need you to be flexible about it.”
“Whatever you think you need to do.”
“Except relocation?”
“Yes.”
This woman is impossible.
I spend the next two hours reinforcing every security measure I can reach.
Sensors, locks, monitoring, laser cam. If my main system goes dark—as it will if someone cuts the building power—the secondary stays up on its own battery.
Every layer I can add without making the penthouse feel like a fortress to a child who still puts drawings on our refrigerator.
When I’m done, I sit in my office. I’m frustrated and worried and I understand exactly why she said no. That’s part of the problem.
She’s looking at this as a parent who just restarted her life. I don’t blame her for wanting to stay put.
And I don’t want to draw her a word picture of what Marco will do to us. I don’t want her to live in fear, or worse, for that fear to infect Opal.
The truth of the matter is, I don’t want Opal to have to restart again either. She’s happy. I keep thinking of the night I met them, and her tired little face. How she was barely keeping herself together. The fevers, the sore throat, the misery. She’s thriving now.
How could I think to take that from her?
Opal brings me a drawing before she goes to bed. The three of us on the balcony. Crayon sun in the corner. She sets it on the edge of my desk without a word and goes.
We look happy. I sit with it for a while. Then I get back to work.
When I’m done, I go to the kitchen and stand at the counter for a moment. The apartment is quiet. Lena is reading in the living room, her feet tucked up on the couch, the particular posture she has when she’s fully settled into something.
I’ve disturbed her enough for the night.
I go back to my office, and I work until two. When I go to bed, Lena is already there, and her hand finds my arm in the dark the way it does, and I lie there and think about what comes next.