Chapter 8 Savannah #2
Leone goes to him first, leans down, speaks quietly. I can't hear the words, but I can see Aurelio's face change. His jaw clenches. His eyes narrow. A hand that looks too fragile to hold a cup, lifts off the blanket and grabs Leone's wrist with a strength that surprises me.
"How long?" Aurelio asks.
"At least two years," Leone says.
"Under my operation. Under my watch." It's not a question, it's a verdict, and the man is delivering it on himself.
"You didn't know. None of us knew. That's the point of how they built it."
"I should have known." Aurelio releases Leone's wrist. His eyes move across the room, finding each face. Claudio. Carmelo. Emilio. Alexandra. And then me, standing at the back near the door because I don't belong in this room and everyone knows it except apparently Leone, who told me to come.
"You're the bartender," Aurelio looks at me.
"Yes, sir."
"You heard the conversation at the club."
"Yes."
"And you stay here and help my people, knowing it could get you killed."
"I came here because your people pulled me out of an apartment in Delaware. I talked because it was the right thing to do."
Aurelio looks at me for a long time. His breathing machine hisses and clicks. The monitors beep, and it’s all so fucking loud. So Goddamn overwhelming.
"The right thing," he says. "I built an empire on loyalty and order and control, and a bartender from Baltimore is the one who tells me the right thing." He almost smiles. The ghost of one, sitting on his mouth as if the full thing would require more energy then it’s worth. "Emilio."
"Sir."
"This woman stays. Whatever she needs, whatever she wants. She stays."
"Already done, sir."
"Good." Aurelio turns back to Leone and the frailty drops.
The body is dying but the mind behind those eyes is the same mind that built the Bonaccorso empire from nothing, and right now that mind is running on fury and the particular horror of a man who just learned that his legacy was used to hurt children.
"I want Kreiss. I want the facility. I want every man connected to this pipeline. And I want it done before I die, Leone, because I will not leave this world with that stain on my name."
"You won't."
"Call Dahlia."
The room goes still.
"Tell my daughter to come home. Tell her..." His voice breaks. Not from weakness. From something else. The kind of break that happens when a man who has spent sixty years being strong encounters a feeling that strength can't contain. "Tell her I'd like to see her. While there's still time."
Leone nods. He doesn't trust his own voice. I can see it in the way his throat moves, the swallow he can't hide. He takes Aurelio's hand and holds it for a few seconds, then let’s go and walks toward the door.
We file out. Claudio first, then Carmelo, then Alexandra, then me. Emilio is the last to leave. He stops at the door and looks back at the old man in the bed, and whatever passes between them is private and heavy and I look away because some things aren't meant for an audience.
In the corridor, nobody speaks. Leone pulls out his phone and walks to the end of the hall and dials, and I can see him from where I'm standing, one hand pressed against the wall, his head bowed, talking to someone on the other end of the line in a voice too low to hear.
Alexandra stands behind him, rubbing his back in small circles before resting her head on his shoulder.
Dahlia.
He's calling her to tell her it's time to say goodbye.
I stand in the corridor with my hand in my pocket and the bottle cap pressed against my palm and the smell of that room still in my nose, and I think about Gigi.
About the hospice. About the last week of her life when the woman who had hands that could crack walnuts and a mouth that could strip paint couldn't lift her own head off the pillow.
About sitting beside her bed counting the seconds between breaths because what the fuck else could I do?
Emilio appears beside me, without a word. He just stands there, close enough that his arm touches mine, and the contact is small and warm and it's giving him the comfort he doesn’t know how to ask for.
"The trafficking," I say. "That's what Kreiss is protecting. Not the moles, not the intelligence network. The pipeline. The people."
"Yeah."
"And we're going to stop it."
"We're going to stop it and we're going to kill every man involved and we're going to burn that facility to the ground."
"Good."
I lean into him on instinct, enough that he understands I’m there, but not enough to invade his space if he doesn’t want me to.
A deep sigh escapes from his chest and the way he looks at me almost breaks my heart.
His hand finds mine and our fingers lace together and we stand in the corridor outside a dying man's room. We hold on to each other while the world gets uglier and the war gets bigger and everyone breathes around us with the slow, tired pulse of people that just learned what they’re really fighting for.
Gigi used to say that the world isn't cruel because bad men exist. It's cruel because good men look away.
Nobody in this compound is looking away anymore.