“No, I took care of her stalker first,” I answered.
“Ooooooh, howromantic!”Bianca squealed, and I realized just how accurate Adriano’s imitation had been.
“Is that why Emilia got it on with you?” Lucia asked excitedly. “You fucked her stalker up, and then she fuckedyouup?”
“Oh my god, please stop,” I begged her.
“Fuck this,” Adriano interjected. “I can tell this is gonna take forever, so we’re leavingnow. You can tell them on the way to the house.”
Adriano always referred to his family’s mansion in Tuscany as ‘the house.’
I looked at him in surprise. “Why are we going there?”
“Because Niccolo wants you with him when he talks to Milan, and he’s recallingeverybodyuntil it gets cleared up.”
Oh shit.
‘Recalling everybody’ meant Niccolo wanted every single person at the estate where they were safe…
Which meant he was expecting Don Camerota to try to take revenge.
Adriano saw my face and shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. You had my permission to do what you did. And if the dipshit hadn’t been here in Florence, he wouldn’t have gotten his ass kicked. So come on, let’s go.”
“All of us?” Bianca asked, startled.
“Yes – let’s go.”
“But we have work to do today!”
“Take it up with Niccolo,” Adriano said as he ushered us all out the front door.
“What about changing my clothes?” I asked.
“We’ll drop by your place on the way,” Adriano said.
“When are you going to fuck atyourplace?” Lucia asked.
“Lucia!” Bianca fumed.
“Sorry – when are you going to make sweet, sweet looooove atyourplace? Tonight?” she asked, wiggling her eyebrows.
“You see?” Adriano asked as he tossed me the car keys. “Now it’syourturn to suffer.”
53
Niccolo
My brothers and I had killed my treacherous Uncle Fausto in Rome over a month ago.
Now it felt like he was laughing at me from beyond the grave.
I stared at the ancient flip phone in my hand, which had belonged to my uncle. I remembered seeing it occasionally during my apprenticeship as aconsigliere.
Dante, thecapowho handled Fausto’s old territory, had pulled it off my uncle’s corpse shortly before burying his body out in the wilds of Tuscany.
Dante had retrieved a smartphone, too. We’d paid a professional to crack it, but all it held were phone numbers I’d expected to find.
His son Aurelio…
