Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Fabiano
The gate opens, and the car passes through. I have been at the window for the last forty minutes. The yard is dim, and the lamps along the drive throw small yellow circles into the darkness.
The car comes up the drive’s curve and stops in front of the steps. I leave the window and go to the entry hall, reaching for the door before anyone else does. I open it as he is climbing out of the driver’s seat.
I bow my head a bit. He sees me, and the smirk is already there, half-formed, as if he has been wearing it since.
“I was worried, Don. You were out all day. You didn’t take any men.”
He pats my shoulder as he passes. He smells of whiskey.
“Fabiano.” His voice is loose at the edges. “Sei la mia balia adesso? You are not my babysitter. I can have some fun, sì?”
I keep my face still.
“Don, we must be careful.”
He waves me off without turning. He sways a little as he goes up the first step. He catches the banister and laughs at himself. I stay at the foot of the steps and watch his back.
He does not get drunk, not since I have known him. He drinks at functions with men he wants to read, and the glass never quite empties. I have seen him pretend for hours and walk out of a room steadier than the men he was pretending with.
Why is today an exception? I follow him to the stairs.
“Don.”
He pauses with his hand on the rail. He turns slowly, and the smirk is still on his face, but his eyes have come into focus.
“Did you let the Russian girl attend to the Lady personally?”
“Do I need to ask permission for what happens in my own home, Fabiano?”
“No, Don. Of course not. But the Lady is sick. The Russian woman has her own ideas. I do not think it is —”
“I can manage my own affairs.”
His voice has dropped, but a slur is still in it.
I bow my head. “I apologize, Don. Forgive me. I only mean to say that I think it is a bad idea to have her so close to Miss Lucia. Anything could happen. The Russian is not someone we should trust so easily.”
I look up, and he is staring at me. I hate those eyes so much, I dream of ripping them out myself. The smile is still on his face, but his eyes are not part of it.
“What about you? Can you be trusted, Fabiano?”
I do not move.
“You did seduce my fiancée.”
He looks at me for a long moment, then laughs. He claps me on the shoulder hard enough that I take a small step to keep my footing, and the laugh trails behind him as he turns and starts going up the stairs again.
“Don’t be so serious, Fabiano. Always so jumpy. Rilassati.” Relax.
He hums something under his breath as he climbs. I stand at the bottom of the steps with my hand still on the rail.
I wait until the hum is gone, then I take out my phone. I go down the corridor toward the side door, the brace on my leg making me slower than I want to be tonight.
“I am coming to see you now,” I say. “I think he is getting suspicious.”
I end the call.
I look back once at the house. The windows on the upper floor are pitch-dark. I push open the side door and go.
* * *
After an hour’s drive, I am on my knees on a tile floor in a hotel room — a first-class hotel suite.
In front of me, a curtain is drawn across the middle of the room, a heavy fall of red fabric, and behind it the shape of a man stretches out on a bed.
A second shape is over him; it’s a woman’s figure rubbing his back in slow strokes.
His voice comes through the curtain.
“I thought you said you could handle him?”
I lower my head further.
“Forgive my incompetence, Signore. I managed everything well. But since the Russian came into the house, he has been behaving out of character.”
He coughs, and the hands behind the curtain pause.
“Continua,” he snaps at her.
The hands resume. He turns his head toward me again. I see the shadow of the movement on the curtain.
“So. What is your plan, capo?”
When it all started, Giovanni and I were nobodies.
He was thinner than I was. He took the worst jobs because he was faster on his feet and because he was already, even then, the kind of boy who said yes to anything that came with food at the end of it.
He had a sister to take care of. We were the same, errand boys for mafia families, doing toe dirt poor work.
Polishing guns, stacking drugs, and pushing them into trucks, replacing bullets, and cleaning up pools of blood.
He was a nobody, a rat in the streets begging for leftovers.
We were the same, and then we were not.
He was greedy. That is the simple word for it.
He says everything he does is for his sister.
But I knew him on the street. He has always wanted more; he was a mad man, greedy for power.
We slowly grew in ranks, handling complex melee tasks for more pay, and then he began meeting with families behind our old Don’s back.
He asked me to join him so that he could change our lives.
I told him it would get him killed. He didn’t listen, so I avoided him; the Don was dead within four months.
That was when I learned that Giovanni played his winning cards before he showed me his hands.
By the time the older man’s body was cold, Giovanni was wearing his ring, and I was standing in a hallway with my mouth dry.
I could only strive to win his favor. I played the loyal dog and stuck by his side, then I took a bullet for him during the first attack at the mansion, shortly after he became Don.
He had men to spare, and I did not need to be the one to step into the line, but I did.
He made me Capo after that. It was the first step of my plan; I would take his seat the same way he had gotten it.
If he could do it, I could do it.
I learned from him. Slowly, the way he had been with the old Don.
I slowly mingled with families he had not been able to bring to his table.
I made small promises and kept them without leaving a room to be discovered, anything to make the families who opposed him know I was on their side. Then I met the man in front of me.
Zaki.
His family handled ammunition that went from the United States down through Italy, and the ammunition that came the other way from Italy to the US- Zaki’s grandfather ran it.
The American firearms industry allegedly had men who answered his call.
The best was that Giovanni had given his favored families priority; Zaki was not on that list, and it cut into his revenue for three years.
He was the ally I needed. It took eighteen months to reach him.
He did not show me his face that first time.
He did not show me his face the second time.
By the fifth meeting, he let me see his face as he walked out the door.
He had been ready for years to remove Giovanni, but the families behind him would not accept a Zaki on the chair.
He needed a face to be Don while he worked in the dark and got what he wanted. I offered myself.
Then he asked. “Do you have a plan?”
The curtain opens.
He steps through it. Zaki is a big man. He stands taller than I do, even with my leg braced. There is a ring on the third finger of his right hand.
He stops in front of me, and his bare foot comes down on my hand. I do not move; he puts his weight onto it. The brace on my leg makes it impossible to move, but I do not shift anyway. I keep my head down, and I keep my breath still.
One day, I think, I will repay every second of this.
One day, he will pay for putting me in this room on my knees.
Not Zaki. Giovanni. Every humiliation, every glare, every sneer, every time I have had to bow my head. I will pay it all back.
Zaki lowers himself; he stoops in front of me. His leg is still on my hand. He takes my jaw in his other hand. His grip is fierce.
“Two years, I have spent my time, my money, and my resources to introduce you to families and secure that seat for you. You —”
He squeezes my jaw, and I feel the pain.
“You told me it was foolproof; we poison the sister slowly. We keep him occupied with her.”
He pushes me back.
I fall onto my hip, and the brace stings. I am up again on my knees in a second.
He paces. “I admit,” he says, “you saved me the trouble of getting rid of him myself. And I have used certain routes, thanks to you. I will not pretend I have not gained.”
He stops and turns.
“But I do not like half wins, capo. I do not like investments that take years to mature into nothing. The victory I was promised was you in that seat, and the power for me. You said we would kill his sister, and we would weaken him in the mind, and then we would put him in the ground.”
He looks at me.
“Were you deceiving me?”
I bow my head fast.
“No. No. I would never.”
I keep my forehead down toward the floor.
I have always known I cannot take Giovanni in a straight fight. No one can. He is fast, clever, and a madman. I cannot beat him with force. But I have known since the day I saw him looking at his sister. I have watched him for years, and I know exactly where the soft spot is.
If I kill her quickly, he goes mad, and he burns everything and half of the country down with him before he dies. Quick is the worst possible move.
But if she dies slowly. If he watches her go and cannot stop it, tries every doctor, and burns through every favor, and still cannot stop it, then he goes down as she does. The mind goes first. The body follows.
That has been the plan from the start.
The drugs going into her each night are not the drugs in the bottles the doctor brings.
They never have been. The drugs are a particular muscle relaxant cardiac patients use; given consistently, in doses just past the upper edge, it will hollow out the long muscles of the legs, then move inward.
It looks like a chronic condition with bad flares.
It looks like the thing the doctors keep diagnosing.
It is killing her by inches, which is what I needed.
Her mental state being bad helped me. A side effect is that the medications suppress the mind too; it was working well for me.
I made up the story about the Doctor. I knew he was the one person who could accurately diagnose that his sister’s legs should have healed long ago.
I was the one handling every letter and email Giovanni sent to that doctor.
None of them ever arrived. The doctor does not know Giovanni exists. I led him on a wild goose chase.
He has not caught me because she is the only thing he sees.
His sister is the only door into him, and it is also the only door out of his focus. When his eyes are on her, his eyes are nowhere else. That is the gift she has given me without knowing. Until the Russians came.
“We just need a change of plan,” I stammer.
Zaki’s head tilts.
“Are you telling me,” he says, “that you cannot overthrow him after all?”
“No. No, I can. I —” I swallow. “I just think he is getting suspicious.”
I cannot lose now. I am steps from the chair after all these years.
“Give me a full update,” Zaki says. “From the top.”
I tell him everything that led to the Russian coming in and Giovanni’s strange protection of her. Zaki sits as I speak. He pulls out a cigarette and lights it.
I cough; I should not have coughed. I keep my head down.
He exhales.
“Then we must wrap this up quickly.” He smokes. “You say he trusts the Russian girl.”
I nod.
He smiles.
“Imbecille.”
I keep my head down.
“Then use her to end him,” Zaki says.
He gestures for me to come closer.
I begin to stand.
“Striscia,” he says. Crawl.
I lower myself to my hands. The brace scrapes the tile. I crawl across the floor to where he is sitting — my hand throbs where he stepped on it.
I stop at his knee, and he bends down. He brings his mouth to my ear.
He speaks softly. My eyes widen as I listen.
I bow my head fast.
“I will not disappoint you, Signore.”
“I know you will not.” He sits back. “You may stand and leave.”
I stand. The leg shakes as I begin to turn.
“Fabiano.”
I stop.
“He is not stupid,” Zaki says. “If he is suspicious, he is being careful. Do not mess this up for me. I hate bad investments.”
“I will not, Signore. I swear it.”
He looks at me a moment longer. Then he lifts two fingers and whistles.
The woman behind the curtain comes out.
I look at her, and my heart stops.
It is Valentina.
She walks over to him in a long silk robe. Her hair is loose. Her mouth is bare. She bends down and kisses his cheek and slides her hand around the back of his neck.
She sees me.
Her eyes meet mine across the room, but there is nothing in her face for me.
My fists clench. I loved her first. Giovanni and I watched her from the shadows when we were errand boys as she attended meetings with her father, gasping at her beauty.
Why then was he the one to get engaged to her after he became Don?
She came to my room in the months Giovanni was ignoring her.
She cried on my shoulder and let me hold her.
She let me do more than hold her. I let myself believe it meant something.
Then Giovanni walked in on us. He never visited me; I knew he must have come specifically to let us know that he knew.
It was an excuse to end the engagement. I thought it meant the end of his hold on her. I thought she would come to me.
She did not; she avoided me for months and begged Giovanni to forgive her. And now, she is here; I heard that the Russian shot her father to protect Giovanni. She never came to me. Now, she is on Zaki’s neck.
Zaki follows my eyes.
“Do you want something, capo? Why are you staring?”
Before I can answer, Valentina speaks, “Darling, ignore him. I need you now.”
Zaki grins and puts out the cigarette.
I turn my eyes away. I begin to walk to the door. Behind me, I hear her laugh. She tells him to go easy on her tonight.
The rage in my chest is so hot it almost lifts me off my feet.
I will avenge every humiliation, but first, Giovanni must die.