Chapter 7 Elio
Iwoke up feeling like a new man.
There had been, for many years, a curtain of depression that had fallen over my senses ever since the day my mother had died, leaving me disillusioned and lost. I still missed her, but I could also feel her smiling down on me from above.
Something in me had healed, and all it had taken was one night with this amazing woman sleeping next to me.
I let her sleep in my room for as long as she wanted to. I had a whole day ahead of me, and I’d check up on her later. For now, she could sleep and rest.
I got dressed in one of my suits, checked to see if I was looking good—no surprise there, I was—and then I headed down. I told Tom to be on the alert for Maria. Whenever she’d wake up, she should be attended to right then. Anything she needed.
Then I went to Father’s office and found Uncle Lucas getting through the door.
“Uncle Lucas!” I said, waving at him, giving him an eager grin.
“Someone’s happy,” he said, looking at me, sizing me up, adjusting my tie. “Does this have anything to do with what happened at the auction yesterday?”
“Maybe,” I said. A gentleman didn’t kiss and tell. “How’s my father doing today?”
“Oh, up to his usual business. We have a new construction contract for a building in Billionaire’s Row. It’s taking up most of his time. You should go and check it out.”
“Thanks, uncle,” I said, giving him a pat on the shoulder and heading inside.
My father had blueprints and sheets spread all over his desk. He stood looking at the schematics, frowning, smoking his cigar.
“Ah, Elio,” he said, not looking up from the blueprints. I didn’t mind that. I was in far too good a mood to mind that.
“Father,” I said, acknowledging him. “Anything you need my help with?”
“You’re offering to help me?” He looked up. “Who are you and what have you done to my son?”
“We’re holding him hostage for the time being,” I said, breaking into a grin. “What’s this about a project?”
“Never you mind that,” he said, waving me off. “You have your own mess to clean. I heard you sent Robert on some kind of wild goose chase through the entire city.”
“I thought you were not going to meddle,” I said, crossing my arms. I looked at the spreadsheets of all the finances for the project. Something didn’t add up in there. There was a lot of money missing in one of the columns.
“I’m allowed to keep tabs,” he said, his face breaking into the smallest of smiles, as if he was pulling something clever over me.
“Suit yourself. But stay out of it. You said deal with it, I’m dealing with it.”
“Oh, believe me, I’ll stay out of it.”
“There’s like twenty-five million dollars not accounted for in the expenses section. Doesn’t that go over here? In the reinforced concrete and structural steel section?”
He looked at the column, then looked up at me, looking impressed. “Good catch.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“While you’re at it, look at the interior section,” he said, pointing at the column where it detailed the cost of drywall, steel studs, concrete floor slabs, hardwood, etc.
“It makes sense,” I said. “The numbers add up here. What’s going on with this project?”
“I’m going over the budget, and later the board’s going to approve it. I was just wondering where I’d misplaced the twenty-five million,” he said.
“Father,” I said, hesitating. “You know you can come to me with this stuff.”
“When are you ever home for me to do that?” he asked, genuine hurt in his voice.
“Well, I’m here now.”
“Thank you, Elio. And if you should choose to start showing up more regularly, I can run the spreadsheets by you,” he said.
I nodded at him. I didn’t like him getting all soft with me. I looked up to him as a father, and as the don of our family. It wouldn’t make sense for him to start giving me approval and affection now.
“Son,” he said, making me turn away.
“Yes?”
“Be careful with Jimmy. That’s all I’d say. He’s not just some small-time business thug anymore. He’s rallying supporters so that they can contest the mayor, and if that shouldn’t work out, they might do something more rash.”
“Kill the mayor?”
“Something like that. Jimmy’s… ever since I retired, Jimmy’s been trying to fill in the vacuum. So far no one’s taken him seriously, but if he were to do something like harm a don’s family, people would fall in line.”
“He won’t hurt me,” I said.
“That includes people under your protection,” he said gravely. “That’s what being a don is all about. It’s not about rackets and violence. It’s about the people who look up to you. People who seek your protection. You must never do wrong by them. A don’s only as good as his word.”
“I’m not a don, father,” I said bitterly.
“Not yet, you aren’t.”
“I’m not sure I want to be, either.”
“That’s a discussion for another day.”
I walked away before our conversation would turn sour.
“Elio,” he called after me once I reached the door.
“Yes?” I asked, sighing, turning around. What could it be now?
“That’s a good suit,” he said, nodding at me.
“Thanks, Father.”
Before I left the house, I checked on Maria once more. She was still sleeping. I couldn’t even imagine how tired she must be to be sleeping past twelve noon.
I went out into the driveway where Robert was already waiting for me in his Mercedes.
“You ready to go?”
“Took me all night,” Robert said. “But I got ‘em. What was it you used to say when we were kids?”
“I line ‘em up, you knock ‘em down?”
“Exactly. But like, vice versa. I mean, I lined ‘em up—”
“I get it, Robby,” I said, sighing. The man was the human equivalent of Vegemite. An acquired taste.
“What’s this I hear about some broad winning you in auction?” Robert asked, lighting up a cigarette as we drove out the driveway.
I took the cigarette from his mouth and threw it out the window, and then snapped, “Don’t call her a broad, for fuck’s sake!”
“All right. Jesus, I’m sorry,” Robert said. “It’s just the way I speak.”
“And you figure out why we don’t hang out as much anymore,” I snapped.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Princeton, but not everyone’s got a fancy education as you do,” he said.
“What the fuck are you talking about, Robby? You literally went to Brown.”
“I dropped out, you know that.”
“Yeah, but it wasn’t because of a lack of opportunity, get what I’m saying?”
“You can calm down just about now, boss. I’m busting your balls,” Robert laughed.
I hated this guy, but he wasn’t without his advantages. He drove us to a warehouse on the edge of Staten Island, one of the many warehouses that my father owned and stored his construction material in. This one was empty, however.
We walked inside to the sight of the four black trucks parked there.
There were more of our guys there, standing there with licensed firearms.
Behind the trucks, in the vast emptiness of the warehouse floor, there were four seats, and sitting there, tied, a black bag over each of their heads, were the four drivers who had chased us last night.
There was also a table with torture instruments and paraphernalia spread about them. Hammers, bolt cutters, pliers, a nail gun. A guy could really go nuts with all this. But I wasn’t that guy. At least that’s what I’d spent most of my life telling myself.
But blood was thicker than water, and I had my father’s blood coursing through my veins. Right now, that blood boiled as I looked at these men, these men who had set out to apprehend Maria.
I took the bag off their heads one by one.
Their mouths weren’t taped, and yet they did not speak out of fear of being surrounded by men with guns.
“Know who I am?” I asked the one on the left. He shook his head.
I sighed and grabbed a hammer.
I brought down the hammer on the man’s tied hand, breaking his fingers.
He screamed.
“You,” I said, moving to the next one. “Know who I am?”
He shook his head.
I brought down the hammer, but not on his fingers. I brought it down on his kneecap, shattering it. He screamed and whimpered, thrashing on the table.
“What about you? Does this jog your memory?” I asked, holding the hammer to his head.
“You’re… Elio Romano,” he stuttered, sweating, his eyes filled with tears.
“There you go. That wasn’t so hard, was it?” I said, sparing him. Then I moved to the last one. “What about you? You know who I am?”
He nodded.
“Don Romano’s son,” he said, lowering his head.
“None of y’all look Irish to me. I can’t say that there’s a drop of Italian blood in you either. Russian? Nah, you guys don’t have that thick of an accent, either. Can you please stop screaming? You keep interrupting me,” I shouted at the two men with the broken bones.
“Jesus Christ!” the first man, the one whose hand I’d broken, yelled. “We’re Jimmy’s men.”
“Don’t interrupt me,” I said, pointing my hammer at him. “See, you just interrupted my deductive reasoning, and for that—” I brought down the hammer on his other hand, shattering his bones, “—you get what you fucking deserve!”
“We were just tailing her, man!” the second guy said.
“Did I fucking ask!?” I yelled. “Did I fucking ask what you were doing to her? You knew I was in the car! You saw me with her! And you had the gall to come after me? Don’t you know what I can do!?”
“We didn’t know, man!” the fourth one said frantically. “I swear to God, I didn’t know. I didn’t see you in there! We thought she was with some guy!”
“Liar!” I growled. “One of your men came after us at the auction. You knew I was with her, and you came after her anyway. You ever think about doing anything like that again, and I won’t be so kind as to just break your bones!
I’ll kill you all. You best let Jimmy Donaldson know that.
He steps an inch out of line, and it’ll be his head! Nod if you understand!”
The four men nodded, whimpering, sobbing, snot dripping from their noses.
“Get them out of here, and those two, get them to a hospital. I’ll take care of their bill,” I said, throwing the hammer to Robert.
“What about their trucks?” Robert asked.
“Burn them. That’ll send him a message.”