Chapter 91
Aldo
The midday sun shone brightly over the bustling city square, casting long shadows over the gathered crowd. A vendor market was perhaps the furthest from standard Marcello family business we’d ever strayed, but for some reason, my heart swelled watching the sellers and shoppers mingle across the bright green lawn.
I surveyed it from the top of the wide stone steps leading up to the aged and tiny library behind me. The library’s doors were open wide, and patrons filtered in and out as they wandered over from the open-air market.
I’d created this. Me. Aldo Marcello, Mafia don and harbinger of war and chaos. I’d somehow brought together an event where kids folicked with sticks of cotton candy and caramel-covered apples, where folks young and old pointed and smiled, laughed, exclaimed in wonder over various works of art.
It felt almost idyllic, bucolic, like an old-timey country market. Or maybe I was poeticizing my creation to bolster my own ego.
“Well. This is … something.” Carlo hopped up the steps to stand beside me. Like gods presiding over a tiny world we’d crafted from frothy clouds of stardust. But again, I was building this up in my mind.
You know who else threw together community events like this? High school kids and retired old ladies. Not Mafia dons.
The way Carlo turned to me, I knew he was thinking the same thing. “What’s the game plan here, boss?”
I shrugged, slid my hands into my pockets, stared out over the market. “Don’t have one. I just thought it would be nice to do something for the city, for once.”
“Mm.” Carlo wasn’t impressed. “Eli and Layla gonna be here?”
“Don’t know,” I admitted, still not bothering to turn his way. “I didn’t tell her about it.”
“Didn’t …” Carlo trailed off, and the intensity of his stare could’ve burned my cheek. “Wasn’t that the whole point of this? Impressing your woman?”
“No—”
But a sharp crack stole the rest of the sentence.
Someone screamed. Birds erupted from a nearby tree in a twittering black cloud. Another scream.
“Guns!” Carlo was already moving—but I was faster. I leapt, bypassing all the stairs, my hand already on the pistol in my waistband.
Chaos unraveled around me.
People screamed, shouted, ran. Vendors grabbed at their wares or abandoned them all together. Mothers reached for children. Shoppers ducked beneath tables. And all around me, bodies moved in a frothing sea of panicked uncertainty.
I fought the tide, weaving in and out of flailing limbs and rushing bodies. Toward the epicenter, the eye of the storm.
There.
In the center of it all, a man dropped to his knees. The white of his shirt dissolved into a wash of red, and his eyes stared sightlessly out into the crowd. White-knuckled fingers clawed at his chest.
“Gio!” I raced towards him, a strange panic clouding my mind as I recognized him. Gio Bianchi, one of my father’s most trusted lieutenants, and now one of mine.
Previously one of mine.
I didn’t need to step any closer to see he was dead before he hit the ground. I was much more interested in the man behind him, anyway.
My gun snapped up, trained on the man in the black suit standing by the tree line at the edge of the square. Gun in his hand lowered towards the ground, he watched Gio die.
He was young, surprisingly so. Mid-twenties, lean but muscular, with an arrogant smirk twisting the fine lines of his mouth and creasing the corners of his bright green eyes.
His tailored black suit spoke of wealth, and the easy way he carried himself, the way the gun hung loose in his fingers, the way his eyes flicked from my gun to my face, spoke of power—danger.
He wasn’t afraid of me, any more than he was afraid of the screaming crowd, the sirens in the distance rapidly drawing closer. And when those green eyes found me in the mass of people, his smile grew wider.
He knew exactly who I was.
“Aldo Marcello.” His teeth glinted white in the noon sunlight. “I was hoping you’d come.”
My gun didn’t waver, but somehow, somehow, he knew I wouldn’t shoot him. Not here, not in this frothing, riotous crowd, not at the event I’d thrown together as a display of goodwill and peace.
“Drop the weapon,” I said, keeping my gun on his chest. “And put your hands up.”
“Don’t think so.” He shifted ever so slightly sideways, placing himself within easy reach of the treeline. There were still too many people around him to shoot, some of them even paused to stare at our altercation.
He lifted his voice, like this was all part of some pre-rehersed performance. “My name is Michael Rosetti. Consider this a message: The time of peace is over.”
And with that, he turned.
He turned his back on me.
And he walked away. Disappeared into the crowd like some kind of suit-clad specter. Leaving a sea of chaos and blood in his wake—and me staring after his retreating shoulders, my gun still lifted.
What in the bloody fuck had just happened?
Back at the estate, I stood in my office, gripping the edges of my desk so tightly, my knuckles had gone white. Carlo stood beside me, expression grim, relaying his latest findings.
“Michael Rosetti. Son of Antonio Rossetti. They're a low-level family with Mafia ties, have never really made much noise.”
Never really made much noise—until they’d staged a direct, public assassination? It was a declaration of war. But coming from such a small, insubstantial family—What in the hell did it mean?
“We can probably guess Michael is working on his own then,” I mused. “Tell me about him.”
“He’s young,” Carlo said, “but he’s already started to make a name for himself in the darkest circles of the underground. Know for being ambitious and ruthless.”
Darkest circles of the underground? That didn’t sound good. It meant he probably had dangerous—and powerful—allies. People even I hadn’t dared to deal with.
That’s how Michael had managed to escape my notice. That’s how he’d made his way to Gio’s side untracked and unchallenged.
That’s how he’d managed to pull a gun on Gio without anyone being any the wiser—until it was too late.
“He wanted witnesses,” I mused, squeezing my desk so hard my fingertips throbbed. “He wanted me to see it. He wanted to make a statement.”
“He wanted to send a message,” Carlo confirmed. Just like Michael had said after he’d taken that fatal shot, looked me in the eyes.
“He succeeded,” I gritted through my teeth. “The time of peace is over … but what the hell does that mean?”
“Well it sure as shit don’t sound good.” Carlo crossed his arms and stared me down. “The hell do we do now?”
I didn’t answer right away. I didn’t know.
I turned to face the large window behind my desk to peer out over the estate grounds. The last thing I wanted—the last thing anyone wanted—was another war.
I’d worked so hard to clean things up, to bring peace back after those long months of death and destruction. To carve a future of peace from a history of violence. To pave a new way for my son.
With one shot, Michael Rossetti had erased all of that in an instant.
I exhaled slowly, then turned back to Carlo. “We find him. We send a message of our own.”
“It won’t be easy.” Carlo met my gaze unflinchingly. “We’ll have to go to dark places to find this dark, shadowy bastard.”
“Do it,” I said, my jaw tight enough to hurt. “The time of peace has ended. If it’s a war he wants, it’s a war he’ll get.”
