Chapter 38ANGELO

Chapter 38

ANGELO

Don Barone hasn't moved from where Candi saw him last. He's still sitting in the office, drinking a glass of wine and listening to fucking opera.

"That's pretty cliché," I judge, stepping into the room.

He jumps to his feet. "How did you get in here? You know you aren't getting out alive," he threatens. "I have twenty men guarding this place."

"Yeah. It felt like overkill, eight of us against only twenty of them." Miceli sidles up to stand beside me. "I only got to kill two."

"Stop complaining." Severu walks past both of us to face Don Barone. "You got to play drug-the-security-guards and get them to fall in their own beds."

"What can I say? I like a challenge."

"Who are you people? If it's money you want—"

I don't let the bastard finish his sentence, punching him so hard, his head snaps back and his body goes with it. Don Barone collapses to the ground, knocked out.

"Well, that was anticlimactic," Miceli bitches.

Severu prods Don Barone with his booted foot. "Wake up, stronzo . You don't want to miss the finale, considering you've got a starring role."

The Sicilian don groans.

"Have they found her?" Perla stops two feet into the room, her eyes going wide with fear.

She spins to run right back out, but Miceli is already blocking the doorway behind her.

"Who are you?" she demands with more arrogance than bravado.

I laugh, the sound hollow and without humor. "Don't you recognize your son?"

"Take that silly mask off, Angelo. Don't think this little display changes anything." She waves toward my mask and the other two men wearing skulls for faces. "Even if you find Candi before our men, she's at risk until you kill Severu De Luca."

I don't take off my mask, but Severu takes his off. "That is not going to happen."

Grabbing Don Barone by the scruff of his neck, he lifts him and shakes him until the other man groggily says, "Whaaa… "

"Stop that! You can't treat a don that way."

"Looks like I can," Severu says sardonically.

"I am the daughter of the Sicilian godfather. That is his son-in-law. You don't dare do anything to us."

Severu's eyes go glacially cool. "You thought you could come into my territory and conspire to have me assassinated, but believe I can't do anything to you in my own fucking territory? "

Perla's mouth opens and closes without a single word coming out.

Unamused by the tableau, I ask her, "Where is your phone?"

"In the bedroom." She crosses her arms over her chest and glares at me. "The least you can do is take that macabre thing off your head."

"The least I can do is not kill you. Get your fucking phone. Miceli will go with you."

"Don't try to run," Miceli warns. "You won't like the consequences."

"I know your mother and how she raised you," Perla scoffed.

"She taught me to respect women, but you're a rat and my father taught me to exterminate those."

Perla tilts her chin, like she's above the threat, but her nervous breathing shows she took him seriously.

They're back in a couple of minutes, Miceli looking disgruntled. "She walked right by a door to the outside and didn't even try to open it. I mean, Candi climbed out a second-story window to escape."

"My mother is not in the same league as mia amate ."

Miceli peels off his mask and tucks it into his pocket, then shakes the sweaty hair away from his forehead. "I'm rethinking wanting one of my own."

I shrug. "You get used to it."

With a shake of his head for our byplay, Severu orders my mom to make a video call to my grandfather.

Glaring with impotent defiance, Perla swipes across the screen. I move next to her so I can watch to make sure she's doing what Severu tells her to. But she taps her number one contact and hits video call.

It rings four times before Don Messino answers.

"Is it done? I thought the plan wasn't to talk to Angelo until tomorrow."

I grab the phone from my mom before she he has a chance to answer and let my grandfather see me as I am. Death. His future.

"It's not done, but it will be soon." I tap the icon to flip the camera so he can see the other side of the room where Severu has Don Barone kneeling in front of him.

"Your don has been found guilty of conspiracy to assassinate the godfather," Severu intones.

My grandfather's mouth works but he holds back his invectives. He knows he's caught and he's trying to work out how to get out of this without losing face.

It's not going to happen.

Severu looks to me with a question. I nod my head.

He leans down, whispers something in Don Barone's ear and then snaps his neck, dropping his body to the floor like the piece of trash it is.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Don Messino screams. "You can't kill my men. This is war."

Severu walks around the dead don and glares straight into the phone's camera. "You declared war the minute you tried to arrange my assassination."

"Fuck you, Severu!"

"Eloquent," Severu mocks, but his tone is as deadly as anthrax when he says, "Barone acted against me and I am the fucking godfather of the Cosa Nostra in America. The five Families answer to me . Boston answers to me . Chicago answers to me . Nevada answers to me . New England answers to me . Detroit answers to me . None of those dons answer to you and they never will."

"They don't know what you're really like."

"Don't they? Those dons would all expect what I'm going to say next. I wonder if you do?"

"What are you talking about?"

"I have men in place ready to take you and all of your top lieutenants out," my brother from another much better mother says. "You have one chance to avoid that."

You've got to love the quality of a good video call. I can see the color leach from my grandfather's face.

"I don't believe you," he tries to bluff, but his voice lacks any conviction.

"Declare a truce right now. You tell your other dons that Barone made the grave mistake of trying to kill the American godfather and out of abject remorse, he killed himself. Unfortunately, you have nobody to bury because he jumped from a cliff into the ocean."

"Róise would say that has pathos," Miceli approves.

"Why the—"

"Don't. I have no fucking patience for your bluster. You have no honor and I afford you no respect. You tried to have another godfather killed in a vain attempt to hold onto power that you lost when Don Caruso decided to back me instead of your choice for the next godfather."

"You're an upstart! The De Lucas never even had a don in their family before your grandfather."

"But he was made don and I am godfather, old man."

"Only because you killed your own men that opposed you."

This is new. "What the fuck are you talking about?" I demand.

"Everyone knows Severu killed his loyal consigliere when the man tried to put a brake on his grasp for power," Perla says contemptuously.

"That's not even close to what happened," I tell my mother with a frown, but I'm not about to tell her what really went down.

That was Genovese Family business.

"Where did you hear that fairytale?" Miceli asks silkily.

Perla presses her lips together firmly in mute denial.

"Let me guess. Lora Revello. I knew letting her live was going to come back to bite us in the ass." Miceli shakes his head.

"And we're not going to off her now. She is my wife's aunt and Catalina cares about the old bitch."

"Sounds like her retirement solution needs to be addressed," I say.

Whatever they decide to do with Lora is probably what we should do with Perla once my grandfather is dead.

"Lora is part of our mafia now. You have no jurisdiction over her." Don Messino is as deluded and arrogant as his daughter.

Severu's patience snaps at that arrogant claim. "Like you have no jurisdiction anywhere in North America?"

"I was attempting to right a wrong. You had Henrico killed to get rid of your competition and killed your own godfather to take his place."

Severu doesn't dignify the ridiculous accusation with a reply, but asks, "If you had succeeded in having me killed, what do you think would have happened?"

"A better godfather would take your place."

"Maybe, but his name would be De Luca too."

"You're not roping me into that headache," Miceli mutters sotto voce.

"And my brothers would have destroyed you and obliterated the Sicilian Cosa Nostra to extinction," Severu finishes.

"You only have one brother unless there are more skeletons in the De Luca closet than we know about." There's a snide twist to my grandfather's lips lost on Severu because he can't see the screen.

"Wrong. Miceli is my brother by blood. Rafael Mancini is my brother by marriage. And Angelo Caruso is my brother by choice. Both his and mine."

"What do you want?"

"I already told you. Promise a truce on your vow as a godfather and I will send your daughter home alive."

"You can have your truce but we are not allies."

"Not as long as you are godfather of the Cosa Nostra in Sicily."

Don Messino doesn't look worried enough to have taken that as the warning it is.

Severu makes a cutting motion with his hand and I end the call.

We both turn to Perla, who is staring at her dead husband, not with grief, but with shock and more than a little dismay.

"You return to Sicily tomorrow," Severu tells her. "You do not return to the United States ever."

Her return to Sicily is key to the plan that's been in the making since we first learned about Messino's disapproval of Severu becoming the next godfather.