24. Davide

The driver knew nothing and he paid an ugly price for it. I took most of his fingers and three of his teeth before I was confident that he had nothing to do with the gun heist.

Which leaves only Santoro as the primary culprit.

"This is an escalation," Simon says as we sit in my truck outside of a benign-looking office park in a quiet part of the Chicago suburbs. There's not much out here except fast food chains, decaying malls, crumbling auto factories, and the people that refuse to walk away from the homes they've known all their lives.

"You're right, it's an escalation." I lean forward, studying suite number 305. The name above the door reads "Perfect Properties" but that's just a shell. The people inside that place don't deal with real estate.

"Did father sign off on this?" Simon's face is hard, and made harder still by the streetlight glow coming from a nearby lamp. Several more soldiers are parked nearby.

"He told me to make sure Santoro never tried something like this again. I interpreted that as him giving me his blessing."

Simon sighs and leans back. He's been groomed to take over the Famiglia one day since he was young, and he views rules and regulations much differently than I do. For him, what father says is iron-clad law, while for me it's more like a pretty good suggestion, so long as I'm working with the organization's best interests in mind.

"Have you thought this through?" He looks at me and his eyes roll to my burned hand. I pull it away and tuck it against my side, out of his sight, and force myself not to get angry. He's asking because he's worried about me, not because he thinks I'm weak and can't handle this, but it still sets off a whole chain of insecurities and anger that I'm still not equipped to deal with, even after all this time.

"I'm fine," I say and it comes out harsher than I wanted. "Worry about the mission."

Simon sighs. He's probably used to me acting like this, and I wish that weren't the fucking case. I wish I could stop feeling like the metal bars of my cage were still there, like they haven't gone away since I was twelve years old, but I haven't been trapped in that nightmare in a very long time. I don't have to keep going back to that place.

"If we're doing this, we're doing it right," he says and checks his phone. "I want the whole place gone. You hear me? But nobody gets killed."

"That's asking a lot."

"Arson is one thing, but bodies bring on real heat. Nobody dies. You hear me?"

"Understood." I kick open my door and get out. "Send the signal."

I head to the bed of my truck while Simon flashes the high beams. I pull back a tarp and grab a gas can, hefting it up and carrying it toward the suite. Other men get out of their trucks nearby and do the same, and Emilio takes the lead, hurrying up to the door ahead of me.

"Ready?" he asks and takes a small cannister from his back pocket. It's the size of his fist with a tab at the top. I look over my shoulder and Simon's lurking at the back of the grounds, looking back toward the main road, watching for bystanders.

"Go," I tell Emilio and pull a medical mask over my face. The rest of the men do the same.

Emilio rips the tab on the smoke grenade and throws it inside before putting on his own mask.

Nobody follows. Smoke hisses and pours from the cannister. There's some shouting from the suite and the workers begin piling out talking anxiously about a fire. They're mostly young, mostly white, though there are a few older folks mixed into the group; as soon as they see us, they start to panic. Emilio's men herd the employees away at gunpoint, barking orders at them, and the whole restless crowd is forced down onto their knees in the parking lot. Once the smoke starts to dissipate, I force my way into the building.

This must've been a normal business at one point. I can still see the outlines of the cubicles, where the receptionist probably sat, the little corner office for the boss. Now it's all one big, open room with rows of computers and headsets, most of the monitors still on, the microphones thrown on top of the keyboard. The smoke's rough, but the mask helps filter some of it out as I begin splashing gasoline all over the place.

It's a call center, but not the normal kind of call center that tries to get old people to sign up for shitty car warranties. It's a scam center, a homegrown scam call center, one of Santoro's signature schemes. He took the idea from the Mexican cartels, who took it from Indian crime lords, and now it's Americans ripping off Americans and bleeding them for every dime imaginable. I hate this place—the whole idea of bankrupting gullible seniors sours my stomach, and I'm the kind of man who wouldn't mind shoving a heroin needle into an addict's arm if it makes my family ten more bucks. But this place is a sham, because not only does it steal money, but it also robs people of their dignity. Innocent fucking people too—not the kind of dickheads and junkies we deal with on a regular basis, but moms and dads, grandmoms and grandpops, normal folks trying to earn a regular living.

I splash the gas with relish and my men do the same. Once it reeks like a used car lot, I wave a hand in the air, and everyone backs out, except for me and Emilio. He steps forward with a match ready to strike it, but I hold out a hand to stop him.

"Let me." He hesitates and looks at my burn scars. Everyone in the Famiglia knows how that happened, even if nobody talks about it anymore, and I don't like the implication in his hesitation. "Give me the match."

He hands it over and backs up to the door. I stare at the tip, thinking about the skin-melting heat as it roared against the bars of my cage, then light the match on the sole of my boot. It flares to life, and the office rug catches ablaze the second I toss it onto the floor.

The heat's intense as the air catches and a whoosh of displaced air and smoke rushes past us. Emilio backs away, coughing into his mask, but I stay where I am and watch as the fire begins to consume everything in its path. I hold out my hand, reaching for the metal of my cage, trying to grab it and yank at it, because if I don't get out then I'm going to burn to a crisp, but everything's so hot and I can barely breathe, and I hear screaming and yelling from nearby but I don't know what any of that means, and I don't know where Uncle Luciano went or what's going to happen to me, but I'm fucking scared, I'm goddamn terrified, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to die.

"DAVIDE!" Someone drags me backward, yanking me from the sudden onrush of a horrible memory. "You have to get out!" It's Simon pulling me toward the door, and soon I'm aware of how much smoke there is and how the heat's lapping at my clothes like a hungry dog.

We stagger out of the office park, coughing hard. I hack something dark onto the pavement and gasp for breath, my head spinning as I get myself under control. The call center employees are staring in horror as the flames lick out the door and smoke pours from the roof.

"Bruno," I bark and summon my soldier. "Which one was the manager?"

"This guy." He drags over an older, balding man in a business casual outfit. The man trembles and tries to say that this is all some misunderstanding, but I don't hesitate.

I press my gun to his head and pull the trigger.

His body collapses and the employees start screaming. Some of them are crying, and I wish they'd shut the fuck up. If I were a worse person, I'd kill all of them too, but this is enough for now.

We heave the dead manager's corpse back in through the front door before running back to the trucks. The employees remain where we left them in a loose circle, kneeling with their hands on their heads and their faces pressed into the blacktop. I drive away as the scream of sirens blares in the distance.

Santoro will understand this message; if we can find his most secret scam call center, we can find any of his businesses, and none of them are safe from my wrath.