Ah, but it is motherfuckers, it is.
Small clues led to medium clues until medium wasn’t cutting it anymore. My schemes became bigger. Not enough to give me away, but enough that the scent got stronger. Every so often one of the Scarpones made a trip to Italy on the guise of “visiting with family.”
I laughed, a cold breath forming out of my mouth. “Family.” I said the word like a taunt, a joke.
After the father and son’s last trip, when Arturo and Achille almost discovered me in church, they started creeping around buildings in New York. Buildings owned by one Amadeo Macchiavello.IfI was still alive, they were trying to draw me out in the only way they knew how—striking. They couldn’t seem to find proof of my existence any other way.
Achille had even tried to find me at The Club after his son had been killed. I watched him from the private floor above. He was mad with loss of power. He kept grabbing black-haired men and turning them around, looking for me in their faces.
For the record, they never found Achille’s son’s body. My empty grave was the last place they’d look.
There was a meaty story. After the man Arturo had sent to kill me thought he did, he was supposed to take my body and dump it in the Hudson River with the rest of the fleshy scraps that were disposed of. However, they hadn’t counted on an angel to arrive.
Tito Sala.
He showed up not long before I took my last breath, and he saved me. Rocco and Dario were with him. The man who slit my throat was killed in a car accident two days later. His brakes had gone out. Apparently, he never told Arturo that he hadn’t dumped me because he didn’t want Arturo to killhim. After all of the men had fled, and only the man who had “killed” me was left, he had seen the shadows coming for him in the alley next to Dolce. He had taken off, going straight to the King Wolf to deliver the lie—yeah, he’s gone.
His lie hadn’t saved him. Nothing would’ve. Arturo never left witnesses. It was too risky. So he had the man killed. It worked out for me, though, because Arturo killed him before finding out the truth.
Angelina was already dead, our blood mingling in the alley. It was a fitting final goodbye.
The Faustis left my blood in the alley, but they also left traces leading to the Hudson. I didn’t want to be found, and I knew this was where the man was bringing me next—while he sliced my throat, he had whispered in my ear, “You’re not even good enough to leave on the street next to the dumpster. Your old man wants you down with the fish in the Hudson, a watery grave.” He talked too much when he’d been attempting to slit my throat.
The detectives labeled our cases, Angelina’s and mine, as murders, but after no clues pointed to the murderers, the case went cold, and the evidence box was sealed shut.
Yeah, they hadn’t looked too hard. Even if they had, they would’ve never found me. I was a ghost, as some called me.
The Scarpones were feeling the pressure of that ghost. When medium clues got too boring for me, I started dropping the big ones, the ones that would lead them a little closer. I wanted to fuck with their heads before I chopped them off.
In an attempt to convince the other families that it wasn’t the Scarpones starting the wars, killing their men and taking their stolen shipments, they pinned it down to one man.
Me.
A man they didn’t know. A man who, from out of the blue, started stomping on all of their turfs. Of course, Arturo never mentioned Vittorio Lupo Scarpone to the other families.If he did, it would paint Arturo unstable, and the last thing he wanted was to be labeled mad, unless it came to violence.
Seeing ghosts? Believing the son you had killed had come back from the dead? Yeah, not good for business.
So the heat was on me. I was getting hit from all different sides, but after a couple of months, the other families moved on, convinced that the Scarpones were to blame, since no man looking to start a war had been found.
However, the Scarpones hadn’t let up. They were determined to smoke me out, make me show my face, or throw my fucking ashes to the wind. For every property they set on fire or blew up, I did the same to two of theirs. And their shipments of stolen goods? Gone. Gone. Gone. Never arrived. Then, a few days later, some of their items would float up from the Hudson.
I’d never seen Achille cry, not even over his son, until millions of dollars worth of drugs went missing. I saw him on the docks, talking to a paid-off foreman, pulling his hair, twisting around, cursing the sky.
Waaa. Waaa. Waaa. Waa.
His perfect life was imploding from within, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
That’s what happens when you try to catch a man you made into a ghost.
Months had gone by since our honeymoon, and I’d lost a substantial amount of property and money, but it was nothing compared to the payoff I received that had nothing to do withla moneta. I had fucked up a family that no one was able to touch before.
The Scarpones, led by the King of New York and his mad son, The Joker.
Word on the street was that the families who had originally decided to help them smoke me out, a man none of them could find, had actually pulled out because they wanted the Scarpone family destroyed. Their willingness to help had been a war tactic. They had agreed at first, but then they pulled out in hopes that I would take the Scarpones out. Completely.
A little more time, and the entire city of New York would owe me.
Movement made my eyes turn up. A shadow crept closer to the upstairs window, peeking out. Arturo had two wolf-hybrids as pets, and they didn’t even bother to look away from their treats. They lay at my feet licking the blood from the steaks I’d brought them. I ruled his house, even his dogs.
