He drove out past the lake across the border, pulling up on the curb, Castillo cut the lights on his vehicle.
They’d waited until nightfall to dispose of the body. The motherfucker was fish food now. Emotionally drained, Bruno closed his eyes.
“How long have you worked for me, De Luca?”
“Five months give or take. I started out as a croupier, moving from table to table until eventually, I started working for you directly. The day I got the job, I lost my only hundred bucks on my first visit to a casino.” Bruno could see a serious chat was coming.
“We’ve got big trouble coming. Everyone’s tense. I lost my son this week. He was going to be great. Movie producers would have made a film about his life….I want you to be one of my inner circle people. I think you could make it as my underboss. Coming on the heels of my son’s murder, I could be gone any day too. All of a sudden one day it could be, BOOM. When I’m gone, I’ll be just another headline, but for you, it will be a whole other story. If I die, you and the boys have got to keep this thing going.”
Bruno said nothing. What was there to say?
As night fell, they had sat silently since Castillo’s declaration.
Then they finally exited the van.
The lake gurgled and trembled, heedless to the two men on the bank. The boss stood where water and land met, eyes filled with confused and angry emotions. Control had been lost from Vincent Castillo’s life. His life had shifted, in a way that could not be restrained, like the unsettled water beneath him. Would this man ever be the same again?
Bruno lifted body parts from the van and tossed them into the lake. Then, they drove to another site to repeat the process.
Castillo muttered to himself. “Enough of this dwelling shit. He’s gone now, it’s time to move on. The head which was concealed in a hessian bag went to the rats in the gutter, next to the shit smelling sewers and trash where it belonged.
“There’s no damn reason to beat yourself up over this,” Bruno insisted. “You were as great a father as you are a boss. Life just dealt your boy an ugly hand.”
Castillo didn’t wait for permission when he grabbed him by the shoulders and fixed him with a stare. A stare so cold and menacing, Bruno felt it in his stomach. “Nobody hears about this, Capiche?”
Bruno nodded. “Capiche.” The old man never told Bruno who the man was, or how he was found. All he knew was the man was a stranger to them, and Bobby hadn’t known him until the ill-fated moment they met. Did Bruno ask any questions? No, of course not. It was better that way.
Castillo dropped Bruno off at the bar that night. The two men said their goodbyes and went home. Bruno had never seen this man afraid but he saw it in his eyes that night. Castillo was taking stock of his life, past present and future. And he feared for his life, fearing that this could be the beginning of the end for the family.
Chapter Six
Home, sweet, home
The alleyway that led to Bruno’s home smelled of piss and the general misery of harsh city life. Holding his breath, he came up to a line of nineteenth-century terraces which dominated the street. Run-down and dingy, each looked nearly indistinguishable from the next, packed in like sardines.
He stopped dead in front of a house with no car out front and all the lights turned out.Home, fucking home.Proceeding through the front gate, he gave the place a cursory glance, feeling nothing but disgust. Was he supposed to be fucking thankful for this BS? It was hard to see it at the time, but this motherfucking neighborhood reminded him each and every day of why he worked so hard. It made him work harder. It was this shitty ass apartment that kept him driven. To get out of it, he needed to rise in wealth and position.
Bruno stood at the front door, sliding his key into the lock, when a rivulet of water splashed onto the top of his head. He groaned, muttering a string of curses.Fucking twisted blessing in disguise.Four times the tiny porch roof above him had collapsed. Four time’s he’d patched up the goddamn death trap.
Twisting his key in the lock, the door creaked open. He stepped inside, wiping his hulking black shoes on the mat. The house was quiet, and as dark inside as it looked from the street. Tracing his calloused fingers over the wallpaper his forefinger found the light-switch. It clicked on, activating a dim and disappointing, flickering performance from the little shit of a light bulb which hung from the ceiling.
Grumbling, he immediately turned around and locked up with his key from the inside. Then, as usual, he busted closed the two rusty deadbolts which clung, top and bottom, to the door. This was important. Particularly from dusk onwards, the neighborhood was especially dangerous. The risk of a robbery was so great, even the windows were double locked and blocked out with newspaper.
Like it was in competition with the menace that existed outside, the interior of the house had spawned a real fucking danger zone of its own kind. Not expecting his woman to be awake at this hour, Bruno tiptoed his heavy body down the hall to the living room. With each assaulting step, the floorboards complained with pathetic squeaks. Meanwhile, he dodged bowls and Tupperware like they were landmines ? containers Annie had peppered all around to catch the water from the leaky roof. The place had the nearly intolerable smell of mold and mildew. The electricity could and would cut out anytime there was severe wind or rain, which wasn’t too often, but often enough. Shit, if hell were a precursor to greatness, he was in the right fucking place.
With tired eyes and a sore body, Bruno nudged open the living room door, clicked on another cheap dim light, and headed directly over to his favorite spot in the entire godforsaken dump. Dropping into his torn leather armchair opposite the television, he kicked off his shoes and rubbed his aching feet vigorously for a minute or so. Straightening, he closed his eyes for a moment and tilted his head back. As the back of the chair titled to accommodate his weight, the tension in his muscles started to disperse, his pain throbbing into the leather fibers.
Body still aching like an old man, Bruno snapped open his eyes and reached for the cabinet drawer beside him. Fingers fumbling inside for several heartbeats, he found what he was looking for. He withdrew his hand with pinched fingers and tapped a few painkillers into his hand. Gulping them down, his dry throat, he waited for the pain to subside, then leaned his head back again. Sitting alone, he stared out into the cage-like walls.
As the drowsy, transient effect of the drugs took effect, it gradually dawned on him that he’d become nothing he thought he’d be. If he were to somehow bring his father back to life, he would see that everything he’d invested in Bruno had been a tired waste of time. Everything his father had thought he would be had seemingly fallen apart. Bruno was a thug. A street-level criminal. Not only was he the underbelly of society, but he was also near the bottom of the barrel as far as the mob was concerned. Sure, he’d only been working for Castillo for nearly six months. But shit, he hadn’t gone anywhere in that time. At least, it didn’t fucking feel like it. It wasn’t often that doubt crept in on him, but when it did, it hit him like an ak47 opening fire on his skull. And shoving those thoughts aside was about as easy as extracting the bullets from his own brain tissue while bleeding out on the ground.
Right, fucking impossible is what it was.
Bruno looked around. Dreary and disenchanting, everything that had seemed exciting and magical about this place at first had oddly leaked away. Initially, Annie begged Bruno not to live here, dug in her heels and threatened not to live with him at all. Yet, here they were. The stubborn ass caveman alpha in Bruno wouldn’t listen to his sweet little saint of a woman. The place was cheap, but they really didn’t have a choice. It had been real difficult finding a place to rent. Everyone knew the key players under Castillo, and no one wanted a scum of the earth criminal as a tenant. It was this shit hole or nothing. Eventually, Annie conceded. But since when did Bruno wait foranyone’spermission to act? By that time, the deal had already been done.
Annie’s fear made sense. She was raised in a sheltered, middle-class bubble, in uptown Coronado. While Bruno hustled the streets back in Italy, she’d studied music and had a scholarship to a fancy-ass American college. The sort with colossal, sweeping pillars holding up the ceilings and statues of historic students sprinkled on the lawn. So blind was she to therealpredator-prey world out there, she thought herself safe to do as she pleased so long as she wasn’t hurting anyone.
What a difference a day makes! She learned her difficult lesson the hard way. When she started College, around the same time she and Bruno met, she’d play viola in the school’s practice rooms down in the basement after closing hours. One evening, right before the holidays, the janitor found her alone and tried to rape her. Walloping him over the head with the body of her viola, she stunned him enough to escape. When Bruno found out, he showed the horny little pervert ways to use a broom he’d never even dreamed of.
