14. Cole

The interior of the car was perfumed and O Fortuna from Carmina Burana was playing softly in the background. I turned my head and met the soulless, glassy, obsidian eyes of the Capo, the Don, the Godfather of Occhi Morti.

Tommaso Paganini was the perfect embodiment of evil incarnate. A demon. Evil poured out of him like oil when he spoke. His nickname was Nice Guy. He earned it a long time ago when he was still doing his own wet work. Always, before he cut his victim’s throats, he told them with believable sincerity not to fear or worry, he was not going to hurt them because he was a nice guy.

Even though he worked closely with my father, I consciously kept out of his way and had only met him on a handful of occasions. He made my skin crawl. I could still vividly remember that hot summer’s day by the pool. I was sixteen and lying on the grass with my eyes closed when I felt a shadow fall on me. I opened my eyes and he was standing over me with his hands in the pockets of his trousers. The sun was in my eyes and, at first, I couldn’t properly make out his expression, but when I shaded my eyes with my hands, I saw it. As clear as day …

He wanted to fuck me!

So badly his eyes burned with hunger as they roved over my almost naked body.

That inexhaustible supply of beautiful women that he dated and discarded was a lie. He was a raging homosexual!

Neither of us spoke as I vaulted to my feet and walked away. From a distance, I heard my father calling to him from the back door. Years passed with no interaction between us and now he was sitting next to me and in the depths of those cold, dead eyes the lust I had seen all those years ago glimmered. He still wanted me.

His thin lips curved into a sly smile.

“I can protect your father,” he said softly. “I can keep him safe and comfortable. I will arrange for him to get his own room, quality steak three times a week, access to alcohol and cigarettes, the services of hookers whenever he has the urge, and I have a small army of men to protect him and run menial chores for him.”

I kept my voice respectful. “Forgive me, Don Paganini, but he’s your second in command. He’s given his whole life to you. Shouldn’t you be doing that, anyway?”

He narrowed his ghoul’s eyes, and the air in the car throbbed with his irritation.

“Is it possible that your father has not informed you of even the smallest detail of how our familia works?”

I said nothing. I knew I was not expected to say anything.

“When a man is careless enough to end up in prison, he becomes a risk to the whole organization. If not now then at some point in the future he may be incentivized to talk. It is in the best interest of the organization to silence that man. Your father understands that.” He paused. “But because of the high regard I have for him and your considerable skills in financial matters, I am willing to consider the option of keeping him so sweet he doesn’t talk.”

I frowned. “What is it you want me to do?”

His voice was smooth, his smile oily. “Nothing too difficult for someone like you. Move some of my money for me. Invest it. Make it clean.”

From a very early age, I’d been something of a savant genius at math. At school, I was called the human calculator. I could remember long strings of numbers effortlessly and using a mental abacus inside my head I added, subtracted and multiplied those numbers with ease.

Less than a year ago I left University and went to work as an accountant. Very quickly I’d begun to make something of a name for myself. My special talent was finding little-known loopholes in the tax code and finding new ways of implementing them. And the best part, they were all completely legitimate methods of reducing taxes. I had a few corporate clients, but mostly I preferred to work for Mom-and-Pop stores or the ordinary man on the street. I got a kick out of beating the IRS at their own game. Whenever I found myself facing petty, hard-faced tyrants masquerading as IRS agents, I thoroughly enjoyed seeing their impotent frustration when they failed to squeeze the hard-earned money of my clients so the government could waste it in ever more spectacular ways.

Until now though, I’d always steadfastly avoided ever dealing with dirty money no matter how much remuneration was on the table for me. Moving money around for this monster would mean I was cleaning the dirtiest of money, money tainted with blood.

I was not responsible for my father’s life choices. When he took his pledge of honor and silence he understood the consequences, both good and bad, of joining ‘the family’. But I also understood refusing the Nice Guy’s offer would mean signing my father’s death certificate.

I hesitated.

“Wasn’t he a good father, Luca?” the Don asked ingratiatingly. “Didn’t he provide for you and your mother? The kind of education he gave you surely didn’t come cheap. Isn’t it time you manned up and showed some gratitude? Paid some of that debt down?”

I looked away from him to the scene outside the car.

My father was supposedly second in command, but for the incredible amount of danger and risk he undertook, the money he was allowed to make was paltry. My father kept my mother on a very tight budget, but he expected a lavish meal every time he sat for dinner. Often my mother would buy an expensive piece of steak for him and cheaper cuts of fatty meat for us. Even while inflation was tearing into her budget he never once raised the amount he gave her every month. By the time I was ten, I was already out doing odd jobs around the neighborhood to help my mother cope with the rising cost of everything.

As for my education, it was public schooling followed by a full scholarship program. Even my self-defense classes I paid for myself by teaching my master’s daughter math for the equal amount of time he spent with me each week.

And when my mother fell ill and my father insisted on sending her away, I used my own money to upgrade my mother to a much better mental health facility than the cheap flea-ridden one he wanted to send her to.

So there was no great debt that I owed him.

To top it all, I understood that getting involved in Tommaso’s business was like climbing into a snake pit. My father had shown me no love. He had never attended a school meeting, taken me on a single social outing, or shown the smallest bit of interest in me or what I was getting up to. It wouldn’t be a lie to say he tolerated me as if I was a necessary evil to keep his family-man image intact. And over the years I found myself feeling remarkably detached from him.

But even more important than that. Arianna was pregnant and I had my unborn child to think of. The last thing I wanted to do was plunge myself and my family into this monster’s world to save a man who cared not one bit about me.