Page 6 of Niccolo (Mafia Kings #7)

T he second-worst day was when I realized that everything we had – everything my father and uncle had built – was actually just a house of cards, easily knocked down by a strong gust of wind…

And that my brother Dario was going to have to pay the price for it.

A Florentine police detective named Scordato – who was not on our payroll – stumbled across our operations during a completely unrelated investigation.

He’d been looking into embezzlement at a construction firm hired by the city. While he was poking around their finances, he discovered a suspicious series of payments in their ledgers. Whatever genius did the company’s bookkeeping had listed the money under Politicians.

Scordato started turning over stones and found all sorts of nasty things underneath. One thing led to another, and soon he nabbed Luigi Rivera, a bagman who worked for us delivering payoffs to politicians and judges.

Scordato arrested him with 200,000 euros stuffed into a brown paper bag.

When questioned as to why he had that much money, Rivera had said, I don’t trust the banks.

That wasn’t nearly enough to get him off the hook.

The politicians had covered their tracks well enough and had plausible deniability. They’re just political donations! they cried.

But judges weren’t supposed to receive outside payments from anybody.

Scordato went after the judges with a vengeance. He worked with a young prosecutor in Florence who was gunning for the top job of Procuratore della Repubblica – basically, the District Attorney of Florence – and who, unfortunately, was also not on our payroll.

Soon the entire city was abuzz with scandal.

Judges being paid off!

By shadowy organized crime organizations, no less!

The day it all came tumbling down, Uncle Fausto called Dario and me into the study. By that point, we were both deep into our apprenticeships as future don and consigliere.

The mood was dark. Papa looked angry and defeated as he sat behind his desk.

“Well,” he said, “Rivera cracked.”

Shit.

Our bagman had agreed to testify against us.

“Did he name names?” I asked.

“Not yet,” Papa said. “Our guy on the inside says they’re waiting on approval from the higher-ups for the deal to go through. Once that happens, he’ll start giving them names.”

I felt like I might vomit. “Didn’t we get word to him that we’ll take care of him if he stays silent?”

“Scordato basically tortured a confession out of him,” Uncle Fausto said. “That was the stick. Combined with the carrot of immunity from prosecution, well…”

SHIT.

“Are we going to make sure he can’t testify?” I asked.

Everyone understood exactly what I was asking:

Are we going to kill him?

“They’re guarding him like he shits diamonds,” Papa said. “We can’t reach him.”

“And even if we could, bribery of public officials is one thing,” Fausto said. “Taking out a state’s witness is quite another. They want us locked up for this – but if we kill him, they’ll have our heads on pikes.”

“What are we looking at, then?” I asked.

“It’s an embarrassment for the city – over a dozen judges on the take – so they’ll probably try to cut a deal to keep it out of the press,” Fausto said. “But it could still be ten, maybe twenty years in prison.”

“And probably San Vittore,” Papa grunted.

FUCK.

San Vittore was the most infamous prison in all of Italy.

It was a hellhole – dirty, crowded, and violent.

It was also where most organized crime figures were sent, which made it ten times more dangerous.

Members of the Cosa Nostra were locked up with rivals from the Camorra, ‘Ndrangheta, and a dozen other smaller organizations.

Assassinations were constant, mostly carried out by shivving or the slitting of throats.

I looked at Uncle Fausto with pity and dread.

This man I loved was about to be cast into hell.

After my father, Fausto was the highest in the chain of command. As consigliere, it was his duty to tell the cops, It was all my doing. My brother Leonardo knew nothing about it.

Uncle Fausto would fall on his sword so his don did not go to prison.

I sat there waiting for him to say, I’ll turn myself in immediately.

And I waited.

And waited.

“…well?!” I finally said.

Fausto looked grim. “I won’t survive San Vittore. We all know it.”

I stared at him in astonishment.

“…SO?!” I cried out.

“What do you mean, ‘so’?” Fausto snapped.

“You’re the consigliere!” I raged. “This is your duty – to take a bullet for the family!”

“We’ll look at other alternatives,” Papa said.

“WHAT other alternatives?! There ARE no other alternatives! They’ll crucify all of us if you don’t take the fall!”

“He’s right,” Fausto said, sounding like a condemned man who had accepted his fate.

“Fausto – no!” Papa pleaded.

“Nico’s right, Leonardo. It’s my duty,” Fausto said somberly. “They’ll continue to come after us until they get someone high up enough to satisfy their bloodlust. I’m the only one who can – ”

“I’ll do it,” Dario interrupted.

Up until that point, he hadn’t said a word. He’d just sat there in silence, taking everything in.

We all looked at him in surprise.

“Do what?” I asked.

“Take the fall,” he replied calmly. “I’ll plead guilty to the bribery in exchange for a deal.”

“You can’t!” I exclaimed.

“Why not?”

I wanted to shout, Because you didn’t do anything!

But I knew that wasn’t a good enough answer, so I tried using logic instead. “You’re not high up enough!”

“Of course I am. In fact, it’s perfect. The oldest son of the suspected mob boss admits to being the villain of the story.

The press will eat it up. It’s just plausible enough that the prosecutors will leave the rest of the family alone.

And we all know that I’m the only one who has a chance of surviving San Vittore. ”

I wanted to say, That’s not guaranteed!

But I didn’t want to argue for the likelihood of my brother’s death.

Papa got up from his desk and walked over to Dario with tears in his eyes.

Dario stood up, and Papa put his hands tenderly on either side of my brother’s face.

“Dario… if it could be any other way…” Papa said, his voice trembling.

Dario gave him a smile. “Don’t worry. I’ll be out before you know it.”

Fausto stood, too. “Dario… thank you…”

Dario’s smile cooled noticeably. “You’re welcome, Uncle. Just get word to Rivera that he’s supposed to name me. And make sure you get our best defense lawyers to cut the deal.”

“Of course,” Fausto said with a nod.

Finally, my brother turned to me, and his smile grew wistful. “If you can Machiavelli my way out of this one, I could use it.”

“You can’t do this,” I said desperately.

“I’m the only one who can do it, and you know it.”

He hugged me, and I held onto him fiercely.

“Don’t,” I whispered in his ear.

“I have to,” he said simply.

He pulled away and clapped my shoulder as though to reassure me. Then he turned to my father. “We should go tell the others.”

By ‘others,’ I knew he meant our brothers.

“Yes… we should,” Papa said, his eyes rimmed with red.

“Let’s go.” Dario put an arm around our father and walked with him towards the door.

Fausto started to follow them when I reached out and grabbed his arm.

“I’d like a word,” I snarled.

Fausto looked at me in surprise. “What is it?”

I waited until Dario and Papa had left the study, then cut loose.

“YOU were supposed to take the fall!” I raged. “YOU’RE the consigliere!”

“Dario graciously agreed to take my place.”

“He shouldn’t HAVE to!”

“You’re right; he shouldn’t have to,” Fausto said sadly. “But we both know what would happen to me. I’m fat and slow. My strength is in my brain, not my fists. Within days of setting foot in San Vittore, I’d be gutted like a fish.

“But Dario’s young. He’s strong – a fighter. He’ll come out the other side without a scratch.”

Everything inside me rebelled. “Whatever happened to ‘in case of disaster, the consigliere sacrifices himself’?! What happened to it being ‘the most crucial part of the job – maybe the single most important part’?!”

Fausto patted me consolingly on the arm. “…only if he has to. And Dario has graciously made it so I don’t have to.”

I stared at him in shock and revulsion.

When I didn’t remove my hand from his arm, Uncle Fausto pried my fingers off him. “Come. We should be there for the others.”

Then he walked out of the parlor.

I stood there, looking after him with hatred and disbelief.

That fucking coward –

That goddamn hypocritical bastard!

So much for falling on your fucking sword.

I can’t say that I ever forgave Fausto, but I gradually stopped despising him. More or less.

However, a tiny ember of hatred stayed buried in my heart, waiting to be fanned into flames again.

I saw what he did that day as an unforgivable weakness and the height of hypocrisy.

But I never once considered that it might be a harbinger of outright betrayal… until it was too late.