Page 104

ENZO

There are fourteen men with guns in this warehouse. I count them on the walk in, the way my father taught me to count exits before I was old enough to know why.

Fourteen guns. Three cameras. One laptop full of old men.

One woman on the floor with blood on her mouth.

I have never wanted to kill anyone the way I want to kill Luca Santini right now. I keep it behind my teeth.

“On your knees,” Luca says. “Right there, on the tape. I want the good light.”

He has marked my spot on the concrete like a stage manager.

I could refuse. I could make him force me, and his men would do it with the butts of their rifles, and the old men would watch me fight and lose, and it would look like strength.

But Stevie is ten feet away, and my son is behind a pane of dirty glass, and every one of those fourteen guns can turn toward them faster than I can cross the floor.

So I kneel.

I hear Stevie make a sound, low and broken. I don’t look at her. If I look at her, I won’t be able to do the rest.

The concrete is cold and wet through my trousers. Luca walks a slow circle around me, savoring it. He stops beside the center camera.

“You see this?” he asks the laptop. “This is the man you were about to hand the Accardi chair. Five years ago, he stood up in a mask in front of every one of you and made a fool of me over a fat waitress. Look at him now.” He crouches in front of me. “Beg, Enzo. Beg for them. Say please.”

I look past him, into the center lens.

“Vittorio,” I say. “Tommaso. Dellucci.” I say their names slowly, the way you say names at a funeral. “You know me. You knew my father. For months you’ve been asking whether I can hold what he built.”

“That’s not begging,” Luca says.

“Tonight, this man took a woman and a four-year-old boy out of their beds at gunpoint,” I tell the camera. “He killed the men guarding them. He put his hand on her face. He told me that if I brought anyone with me, he would put the boy in the creek. And he invited every one of you to watch.” I let it sit. “You all have grandchildren. Ask yourselves whose door he knocks on next, if you let this stand.”

On the laptop, one of the little boxes goes dark. Then another. Then all of them.

Luca’s smile slips. “What are you doing?”

“Answering your question,” I say. “You asked them if I’m strong enough. I’m showing them what strong looks like.”

“Beg.” He has his pistol out now, pressed to my forehead. It’s cold and smells of oil, and his hand is not steady. “Beg, or I swear to God I do her first. Right now, on camera, and you watch.”

He swings the gun away from me, toward Stevie.

Three things happen at once.

In the office, the lock snaps over with a crack like a gunshot, and Genevieve drags the steel desk across the door with my son underneath it.

Stevie comes up off the floor with the folding chair in both hands.

And I move.

She swings the chair like she’s been waiting five years to swing it, and it catches Luca across the forearms. The pistol goes off into the rafters. Rust rains down over all of us, and I come up off my knees and into him before the echo dies.

I take the pistol out of his hand. I break his wrist doing it. I don’t mean to. I don’t mind.

Then I spin him around, get my right forearm across his throat, and put his own gun to his ear. Every one of his fourteen men finds out at the same moment that the man who’s paying them is the only thing standing between them and me.

“Anyone who wants to get paid tonight,” I say, “lower your weapon.”