Chapter 8 - The Price of Treason
The basement of *Il Mulino* was cold, smelling of ancient mortar, damp sawdust, and the iron tang of five decades of butchered meat.
Marco Moretti was on his knees.
His hands were tied behind him with plastic zip-ties. His five-hundred-dollar jacket was torn at the shoulder where Gianni had dragged him down the wooden stairs.
Vincent sat on an overturned wine crate, his coat draped over his shoulders like an emperor’s cloak. In the corner, under the single hanging lightbulb, stood Silvio Varga. Silvio looked sick. He knew that if Marco talked, Silvio’s own name was only two pages down in that Cayman ledger.
"I didn't mean it, Uncle," Marco sobbed. The arrogance had completely vanished, replaced by the naked, snot-streaked terror of a young man who had realized too late that the stories about Vincent Caruso were not exaggerations. "I swear on my mother’s soul! It was Silvio! Silvio said you were losing it! Silvio said the girl was the sign that you were soft!"
Silvio took a step back into the dark. "Vincent, he’s lying! He’s trying to save his own skin!"
Vincent held up a single finger.
Both men went silent.
The water dripped from an exposed pipe into a plastic bucket with a slow, agonizing rhythm: *plip... plip... plip.*
"You know why I kept you alive, Marco?" Vincent asked.
Marco’s chest hitched. "Because... because we're blood?"
"No," Vincent said. "Blood is cheap. You can buy blood in any abattoir for five dollars a gallon."
Vincent stood up.
He walked over to Marco. He didn't have a weapon in his hand. He didn't need one.
"I kept you alive because Emma Dawson told me that people get mean when they eat alone too much."
Marco blinked through his tears, uncomprehending. "What?"
"She thinks people can be fixed," Vincent said, his voice filled with a strange, terrible wonder. "She thinks that if you give a bad man some soup and a box of crayons with ninety-six colors, he might remember what it was like to be a human being."
Vincent leaned down, his face inches from his nephew’s.
"She’s wrong, of course," Vincent whispered. "Men like you cannot be fixed. You are rotten at the taproot. If I let you walk out of this basement, you would spend the next ten years looking for a rifle and a high window."
"Uncle, please—"
"You are going to Palermo," Vincent said.
Marco froze.
"Tonight," Vincent continued. "On a fruit freighter out of Newark. You will be met at the dock by Don Ciccio’s people. You will live in the hills behind Corleone. You will pick olives until your fingers are black and your back is broken. If you ever leave that valley—if you ever set foot on a boat or a plane—Don Ciccio will put you in a dry well and leave the lid on."
Vincent straightened his cuffs.
"That is the mercy Emma Dawson bought for you," the Don said. "Thank the child in your prayers, Marco. Because thirty years ago, I would have put you in a meat grinder and fed you to the carp in the bay."
He turned to Silvio.
Silvio was trembling so violently his gold watch rattled against his cufflink.
"Silvio."
"Yes, Don Caruso?"
"You will pay your share of the Red Hook skim back into the fund by noon tomorrow," Vincent said without looking at him. "And then you will resign your position as capo."
Silvio’s jaw dropped. "Vincent... thirty years. I gave you thirty years."
"And I gave you your life thirty minutes ago," Vincent said. "You will retire to Boca. You will play golf. You will never speak to anyone in this city again. If I see your face north of the Georgia line, Gianni will have a conversation with you. Do we understand each other?"
Silvio dropped his head.
"Yes, Boss."
Vincent walked toward the stairs. At the bottom step, he paused, looking back at the two broken men standing in the dim light of the single bulb.
"The girl was right about one thing," Vincent murmured.
He climbed the first step.
May you like
"Veal is terrible when it gets cold."
***
