“Yours, maybe,” Roberto tells him. “Mine, not so much.” Roberto dealt mostly in protection rackets. If you didn’t pay him money, you couldn’t start a business in his neighborhood, not unless you wanted it to be vandalized and robbed daily.
“Wars cost money,” Luciano interjects. “Money that could be going into our coffers. Do we really want them spending millions of dollars on weapons and ammo, and on hiring the men that know how to use them?”
I steeple my fingers and tap my lower lip. Then I say: “Send out the invitations. We might as well get the cogs turning.”
Stefano inclines his head. “In bocca al lupo.” Into the wolf's mouth.
“Crepi il lupo,” I reply. Let it die.
The three video feeds go blank and Luciano gets up to shut off the short-throw projector.
“Wait,” I tell him. I grab my phone and tap onto the hidden camera feed from Angela’s room. Then I pair the app to the projector via Bluetooth, and in seconds the display fills with the same image as my phone.
Angela is sitting in the slipper chair. She’s moved it next to the window, and leans forward, her arms folded on the sill, her eyes gazing out toward the sea beyond. I can partially see the tray near the door. It looks like she hasn’t touched the food.
“It’s too bad she’s still so pretty,” Luciano comments.
“What do you mean?” I ask him.
He gives me a considering look. Then: “Her buyers will want to make as much money as possible from their investment. Just look at her. Think of how much she’d command as a high class escort. Ten grand a night minimum. Maybe twenty or thirty, depending on the client. The first thing her buyers will do is fly her to their massage parlors in Dubai. I suppose she deserves it though, for being the daughter of the man we hate.”
I nod my head, though my mind is far away, imagining other men touching Angela. Rage boils inside me, but I shove it back down and replace it with a different anger.
She deserves it, as Luciano said! She deserves everything she gets!
But I can’t really blame her for the sins of her father, can I?
Yes, yes I can.
I hear the front door open. I could pull up the camera on my phone, but instead glance over my shoulder and peer into the main hall. I see my sister Rosa enter with a bag of take-out.
She’s got the right half of her head shaved, and her remaining black hair combed down the left side, where it droops to her shoulders. The hairstyle seems to be the latest fashion trend sweeping Palermo at the moment, imported from the rest of Europe. I hate it.
She’s garbed in tight-fitting black leather. She drives a Vespa but dresses like she owns a Harley. That’s something else I hate, but it’s her choice, and I try to respect that.
We had invited her to the teleconference of course, but she refused to participate. She doesn’t want anything to do with the kidnapping, or its planning. She thinks it’s “wrong.” Of course, she thinks half the family business is “wrong,” but that’s besides the point: she’s living off the gains of our illicit earnings so she doesn’t get to complain.
She disappears from view as she enters the kitchen, and I hear her unpacking her meal. Then she enters the media room momentarily, pasta bowl in hand.
“How’s she holding up?” Rosa asks, nodding at the display.
“Well enough,” I tell her.
“Hopefully you don’t have cameras installed in the bathroom, too,” Rosa says.
“Of course not.” Luciano shifts indignantly. “What do you think we are, perverts?”
“Uh, yeah,” she says. “I’ve seen the bank of cameras you guys have in your strip clubs. You have them in the change rooms, the washrooms, everywhere.”
“Those are strip clubs,” Luciano says. “There’s a difference between a club and a residence. There’s no privacy in a strip club. But in a home there is.”
“I’m not sure I believe you.” Rosa gazes at the screen for a long moment. “She looks so… sad.”
Luciano shrugs. “Well how would you feel?”
Rosa turns to me. “Is she eating?”
“What do you think?” I ask. “See the tray near the door?”
