The last thing I feel like doing is showing this old asshole any respect. But I know as well as anyone that there are traditions around our business. Traditions, expectations, ways of doing things. So it’s out of respect for my Family, for the old ways, when I agree. “Alright,” I say, standing. “We’ll do it right, Lou. I’ll drink with you.”
Finch stays sitting there in stony silence, until Clemenza turns to him. “You, stand up. I want you to see this. To act as a witness, eh?”
Finch stays where he is, looking to me. At my nod, he stands, but slowly, his jaw clenched.
“Not whiskey,” Clemenza snaps, when he sees me lifting the decanter from the silver tray that sits on the drinks cabinet. “None of this Irish shit. Where’s your sambuca? It’s gotta be sambuca, that’s how it’s done.”
“Underneath, Luca,” Finch tells me. He looks down at the closed glass doors of the drink cabinet, and I wait for Lou to shuffle out of the way so I can open them. But I keep an eye on Clemenza, because even now, I don’t trust him.
In fact, I trust him even less in this moment than I have the entire time I’ve known him. It’s too easy.
It’s just too easy.
I bring out the bottle of sambuca, show it to him, and ask, only half sarcastically, “Does this meet with your approval, Don Clemenza?”
He takes it from me, looks it over. With a grunt, he nods. “It’ll do. Coffee beans?”
Finch looks puzzled, but this request is familiar to me. It’s a common Italian tradition to add three coffee beans to sambuca, symbolizing health, happiness and prosperity. I wish none of those things for Clemenza, but there’s no harm in pretending.
Still—there’s something wrong.
I don’t like the way Lou’s eyes are flitting back and forth from me to Finch. But Clemenza is an old man, and unarmed. I can take him if I need to. Hell,Finchcould take him. And I know there’s no way Clemenza has brought a weapon in here with him. My men patted him down themselves.
Clemenza’s holding onto the bottle still, peering at the label.
“You want me to get my bartender in here from Kismet?” Finch asks, his voice cold. “Drink up and get the hell out of my house, Clemenza.”
Clemenza shakes his head. “That’s your problem, right there, D’Amato. Outsiders, they don’t understandtradizione.”
“Enough!” I snarl, and Clemenza gives a satisfactory cringe at the tone in my voice. “Let’s just get this done.” We have coffee beans stored in the drinks cabinet as well, for this very purpose in fact, and I pull out six, dropping three each into small tumblers.
“Notthoseglasses!” Clemenza wheezes. “Do you knownothing?Those ones there—those—” He grumbles on in Italian under his breath, nodding at the glass-fronted drinks cabinet, at the martini glasses he can see in there.
I hesitate, just for a second, as old insecurities rise up.Martiniglasses? Surely not.
But I needed so much help from Finch in the early days—I had no idea how to dress, how to speak, which goddamnforkto use at dinner. My eyes go to him automatically, questioning, seeing reassurance. He gives a tiny shrug, his mouth twisting. And although I just threatened Clemenza for saying it, it’s not untrue—ifIdon’t know the Italian traditions here, I can hardly expect Finch to know them.
Maybe Clemenza is just trying to make me ridiculous, but I’ll play along for now. I want him out of here as fast as possible, before Finch says or does something unwise. So I squat down in front of the drinks cabinet with a sigh, and reach out for the glasses.
From the corner of my eye, I see Clemenza make a sudden movement.
I glance up at him; with hatred and vengeance twisting his face, he’s taken the neck of the heavy sambuca bottle in both hands like a baseball bat, and is swinging it straight for my head.
My arm goes up defensively, but before the bottle contacts my skull, there are three loud explosions, and the sharper sound of shattering glass. The bottle hits my shoulder, but lacks force, thudding to the ground unbroken.
Clemenza staggers into the drinks cabinet before falling to the ground, gasping like a fish out of water. His shirt is turning red before my eyes, blood pooling underneath him on the floor.
There are shouts and running feet deeper within the mansion, and I pull myself to my feet and stare at Finch. He’s coming around the table, gun still in his hand, and once he’s standing over Clemenza, he puts two more bullets directly into his head.
“Are you alright?” he asks me calmly.
In two seconds, Clemenza’s bodyguards will be here. I leap at Finch, grab the gun from him, and shove him behind me.
“What the fuck?” booms the first of Clemenza’s guards, who has arrived in the doorway at the same time as Vitali. The bodyguard stares at his dead Boss, locks eyes with me, and makes an assumption.
“Don’t,” I warn him, raising the gun, but he begins to move toward me despite it, a snarl on his face. From the doorway, Vitali shoots him dead immediately. He drops, his blood seeping across the floor to join the puddle from his master.
Two more bodyguards have arrived, one shoving into Vitali before sending a punch toward his jaw. But before I need to intervene, the other Clemenza bodyguard, the same one who patted Finch down at the start of this evening, wraps an arm around his compatriot’s throat, pulls him away from Vitali, and breaks his neck.
