Page 124 of Niccolo (Mafia Kings #7)

Sofia

I t took three days, but Fausto was able to get Aurelio’s body smuggled out of the morgue.

The Widow’s reach extended throughout the city’s law enforcement, so the morgue attendant who agreed to the arrangement wanted enough money to leave Venice forever and disappear.

Otherwise, he was afraid the cops would make sure he ‘disappeared’ in an entirely different fashion.

The agreed-upon price was half a million euros, to be paid upon delivery.

The attendant packed Aurelio’s corpse in a body bag, filled it with dry ice, and hid it in a load of laundry.

Since it was Venice, everything had to be transported by canals. The attendant paid the boat driver two grand – no questions asked – to take a detour to the mainland, where the attendant retrieved the body bag and put it in a rented van.

Fausto didn’t want to reveal our presence in Modena to anyone, so we met the attendant in Verona, an hour and a half away. There was a funeral home there that Fausto owned for money laundering purposes.

That, and quietly disposing of the occasional dead body.

Dante and several foot soldiers had accompanied us. With their help, the attendant loaded the body bag onto a gurney and brought it into a private room.

Corpses aren’t typically embalmed in Italy, so the room was used for cleaning and preparing bodies for burial.

The tiled walls were cold and bare. There were grates in the floor and a rubber hose leading to the sink, presumably for washing away blood or bodily fluids. The air stank of putrefaction and death.

There was a marble slab table in the center of the room. Dante and another foot soldier moved the body bag onto that.

Fausto stared at the black plastic shroud, his shoulders slumped, a look of anguish on his face.

Then he gestured with one hand. Go ahead.

The attendant stood there uncertainly.

“Open it,” Dante ordered the attendant.

“Are you sure?” he asked nervously. “He fell from a pretty tall height – he’s – ”

“Open it,” Dante snapped.

The attendant unzipped the bag a quarter way down and pulled it apart.

In the summer heat, the dry ice had long since evaporated. There was only Aurelio’s face, the skin pale and colorless.

All the blood had been washed away, but the left side of his head was crushed. The skin was ripped open, exposing raw muscle and bone.

He looked horrifying.

Fausto stifled a sob, and his eyes welled with tears.

“Um… not to be indelicate,” the attendant said nervously, “ but… the money?”

“Dante,” Fausto said tonelessly. “Take care of him.”

Dante slipped something from inside his jacket –

Stepped behind the attendant –

And flipped it over the man’s head around his throat.

It was a garrote – a strangulation device made of thick piano wire attached to two wooden handles.

I backed away in terror as Dante stood behind the attendant and yanked hard, pulling the attendant’s body back against his own.

The attendant’s eyes bugged out in panic. He clawed frantically at the wire with his fingers, trying to keep his trachea from being crushed.

Not a sound escaped his throat as he struggled.

My back hit the cold tile wall, stopping me from moving further.

Fausto never even looked over. He just gazed sadly at his son’s body on the marble slab.

The other foot soldiers watched, but their blank expressions told me they’d seen this sort of thing before.

Dante reared back and lifted the attendant off his feet. The piano wire sank deeper into his throat.

The man’s legs kicked wildly in the air –

And then, after about 30 seconds, he went slack.

There was a terrible smell in the room as the newly dead man soiled himself.

“Get him out of here,” Fausto said. “In fact, all of you go.”

One of the other foot soldiers opened the door, and Dante dragged away the corpse.

I quickly moved to follow them –

“Not you, consigliere,” Fausto said quietly.

I froze in place as the foot soldiers filed out.

The last thing I saw was Dante’s eyes looking at me sympathetically –

And then the door closed.

I turned to look at Fausto, my heart thudding in my chest.

I was sure he was going to kill me –

But he just stood there, sadly gazing at Aurelio.

I realized that if he wanted me dead, he would have ordered one of the foot soldiers to do it…

And I gradually calmed down.

We stood there in silence for another full minute.

Finally, Fausto spoke.

“Look what they did to my boy,” he whispered, his voice full of agony. “Look what they did to my beautiful boy.”

All sorts of arguments popped into my head about this being the natural result of Aurelio’s ego-driven stupidity –

But I wasn’t an idiot.

And I wasn’t an unfeeling asshole, either.

I had never seen someone in such pain before – other than when Fausto had heard his son die.

But he had been full of rage then.

Now, all the anger was gone…

Replaced by grief as deep as the ocean.

But gradually, the anger came back.

This time, though, it was cold.

“I’m going to make them pay for this,” he whispered. “I’m going to destroy them for this if it’s the last thing I do.”

Finally, he looked up at me, his bloodshot eyes wet with tears.

“And you’re going to help me,” he said, his voice shaking.

“Yes,” I agreed, because I sure as hell wasn’t going to say anything else.

He looked back down at his son’s body.

He was silent for another few seconds…

And then he spoke haltingly.

“I’m… sorry. For what I said to you. That… word I called you. I wasn’t myself.”

I stood there in shock.

“…apology accepted,” I eventually said, even though his apology wasn’t accepted.

But what else could I say at that moment?

Especially considering that I didn’t want to die like the morgue attendant?

“You were right,” Fausto said, still gazing at his son. “Aurelio was a fool. And I was a bigger fool for indulging him. And this…”

He gestured at his son’s body on the slab.

“… this is where it got us.”

He stared for a moment in silence, then said, “This is on me. This is all my fault.”

I was stunned.

Fausto had never shown any sort of self-introspection at all.

No sense that he would ever blame or doubt himself.

I was impressed –

But then the old Fausto reemerged.

His eyebrows knitted into a scowl, and rage flickered in his eyes. “But my nephews… my nephews have to pay.”

I thought of Niccolo.

Would HE have to pay, too?

…of course he would.

“They MUST pay for this – with their lives,” Fausto snarled as he stared at his son’s body. “We must kill them all – and for your help, I will double your fee to 20 million euros .”

Twenty million?!

Ten million would have funded my lawsuit against my tormentors and restored me to my old life as a chess master –

But twenty meant I could forget the old boys’ club entirely.

If I was careful with the money and invested it wisely, I could live in luxury for the rest of my life.

I would never be at any man’s mercy again.

I could just…

…disappear.

Fausto looked over at me. His gaze burned with a dark madness.

“Are you with me?” he asked.

I didn’t look away – but in my mind’s eye, I remembered the morgue attendant’s legs kicking wildly in the air, his eyes bugging out, his face turning purple as his throat was crushed.

If I wasn’t careful, that would be my fate, too.

I held my breath –

Then made my decision.

“Yes,” I whispered.