Her sparkling light brown eyes narrowed slightly, but rather than probe deeper, she said, “What are you asking of my cousin in exchange for my release?”
“The biggest of my demands is ten per cent of the Esposito Group.”
She whistled lowly. “That’s a big ask.” The Esposito Group, the family’s sprawling media business, was solely owned by her cousins, her Uncle Lorenzo’s children.
“It’s not an ask. I’m offering a fair market price for it.”
“Why? Do you have business interests in the media?”
“None. I want a share of it for leverage.” Relieved that she wanted to concentrate on the business, Gino relaxed and hooked an ankle over his thigh. “Taking a share of the Esposito Group links my name to theirs. It makes us public business partners, meaning it will be much riskier to kill me when they bring me in on all their non-public interests.”
“You mean the shadowed world?” At his querying raised eyebrow, she explained, “That’s what it’s known as within my family – the shadowed world. As you would put it, it’s a polite euphemism for the mobster world. Or gangster world, or even mafia. It’s all the same thing. Why do you want to be a part of it?”
“I’m already a part of it. My clubs are used across Europe as neutral grounds to negotiate business.”
“Business like arms and drug deals?”
“What people negotiate is private. What I can tell you is that billions of euros worth of business is conducted within my clubs’ walls. I facilitate this for them and pay a lot of money to ensure the discretion of every employee and to ensure the authorities in all the relevant jurisdictions keep turning a blind eye. I have put a lot of business your family’s way over the years, and it is time I receive a fair cut of the remuneration from it.”
“My family has resisted this?”
“They have. And in retaliation, I have disrupted their supply chains. But I don’t want a war, Miss Marino. I’m a businessman, and your family are business people. Your uncle’s death has opened up new possibilities, and now is the time to strike deals for them.”
“You can’t need the money.”
He laughed. “I haven’t needed the money in a decade. I have more money than I could spend in a hundred lifetimes.”
“Then why risk everything?”
“What is life without risk?”
“A safe one. Have you always been a gambler?”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever had a serious girlfriend?”
Her swerve of subject caught him by surprise.
She smiled knowingly and drank more of her wine. “You’re thirty-eight years old, Mr Vicario. It would be strange if you had not.”
“I’ve had a lot of girlfriends, but the life I lead isn’t conducive to a serious relationship.” And nor did he want one.
“Tell me how you came into the life you live. Is it something you were born into?”
He drained his bourbon. “Not at all. I grew up in an ordinary family with ordinary Italian values. My father ran a garage, my mother was a bookkeeper.”
“Where?”
“Here in Milan. I was raised a twenty-minute walk from here. I had many friends and acquaintances who were in gangs and sold drugs. It was easy money but a fast-track journey to either a morgue or a prison sentence. Not the life for me. I wanted to be one of the men who drove through the streets of Milan in the flash cars that caught everyone’s attention.”
“You wanted to be somebody?”
“Yes. I wanted to be respected, but more than anything, I wanted to be rich.”
“Why?”
“Because I watched my parents work all the hours God gives and still struggle to make ends meet. I wanted more than that. I left school the minute I was allowed and started working.”
