He was standing next to the simulator, where he’d been watching my practice session on an exterior computer screen. He raised one eyebrow and said humorously, “Stop killing my wife.”
“Sorry, boss.”
“She looks alright to me,” Adriano said as he walked into the garage.
“Live fast and leave behind a beautiful corpse, right?” Rachel joked as she got out of the simulator’s passenger side. “What’re you boys up to today?”
“I got business in Florence, and Gorgeous George here is onputtanaduty,” Adriano said as he slapped my shoulder.
‘Puttana’was the word for whore.
A more polite way of putting it would’ve beenprostituta…
But ‘polite’ and Adriano were like oil and water: they didn’t mix.
“Hey,” Rachel said sharply.
“What?”
“Do youhaveto call it that?”
“That’s what itis,”Adriano said, irritated. “No need to sugarcoat it.”
‘Puttanaduty’ was how Adriano referred to Don Rosolini’s orders: go around to all the prostitutes in the family’s territory and offer them 5000 euros to start a new life.
The orders had actually come down seven months ago, back when Dario Rosolini became Don. He’d wanted to clean up the family business by getting out of drugs and prostitution.
It was a job that primarily fell to the foot soldiers. We started by threatening all the pimps in Tuscany and telling them to getlost. A few broken legs later, word got around, and almost all the pimps fled. Most went to Florence, though, where the Agrellas still controlled everything at the street level.
‘Puttanaduty’ came to a standstill when the Turk and Mezzasalma attacked us – and then we fought Aurelio and Fausto Rosolini.
Now that the brothers’ enemies were all dead – including the Agrellas – we’d gone back to the original mission: cleaning up Tuscany and Florence.
It wasn’t easy. Drugs, in particular, were now being peddled by dozens of different street gangs. Piece-of-shit nobodies were coming out of the woodworks, trying to make bank after the Agrellas got whacked.
Trying to stop the gangs, though, was like stomping cockroaches in a city dump. You might get rid of one, but there were another hundred waiting to take its place.
We’d scared most of the pimps out of Florence, but the prostitutes were another matter entirely. The family’s foot soldiers had talked to hundreds of them. I personally had spoken to at least 80.
Unfortunately, very few women had taken Don Rosolini’s 5000 euros… but he insisted we keep trying.
I thought it was pointless, but orders were orders. I kept my opinions to myself.
“Just don’t let Dario hear you call it‘puttanaduty,’” Lars cautioned Adriano.
“That’s what I call it around him all the time.”
“That’s probably why he keeps making you do it.”
“Probably,” Adriano mused, then slapped my shoulder again. “Which is why I keep passing it off to Gorgeous George here, cuz shit rolls downhill. Come on, let’s go.”
“Thanks for the help,Signora,”I said to Rachel.
“Keep practicing,” she encouraged me. “And ignore my husband. He’s just jealous.”
“Of what, his driving ability?” Lars asked sarcastically.
“Of him getting to spend time with me.”
