Page 82 of Marcello

“Did my son tell you what was gonna happen if you shot him but didn’t kill him?”

“Yes,” I admitted.

“And what – you didn’t believe him?”

I paused to consider my answer.

“…let’s just say I was hoping for a different outcome.”

“‘A different outcome,’” Aristide sneered mockingly. “But you knew you’d probably have to kill him.”

“Yes.”

“So you took a stupid fucking chance instead of doing what had to be done. Why?”

I wasn’t about to say, Because killing is wrong.

Not because I felt like a hypocrite of the worst kind (which I did) –

But because saying it to someone in the Camorra would make me look both weak and ridiculous.

So I did the one thing I was getting better at day by day:

I lied.

“I had no idea what the consequences might be if I killed him. From what Cesare said, it might start a war.”

“But you still ended up killing him,” Aristide retorted.

“Yes – when it became obvious it was either me or him.”

Aristide stared at me silently for a few seconds…

Then barked at his son, “Give us a minute.”

Cesare nodded. As he turned to leave the room, he caught my eye and gave me the barest hint of a smile.

Once Cesare was gone, Aristide motioned to the kitchen’s sliding glass doors, which looked out on a swimming pool a few yards from the house. “Let’s take a walk.”

When he stood up from the chair, I noticed he was about his son’s height – a good six inches shorter than me.

Once we were outside, I looked around. Past the swimming pool was a six-foot brick wall around the property. In the distance lay the sapphire waters of the Bay of Naples.

The pool was nice, but a dozen cigarette butts were floating in it like dead insects. I wondered why – until Aristide pulled a crushed pack from his back pocket and lit one with a blowtorch lighter. He didn’t bother to offer me one.

After taking a long drag, he breathed out a cloud of smoke. “I like you. You know why?”

“No, sir.”

“Because you think about shit before you do it. My son doesn’t think – he just does. Which is good in some situations, but a fuckin’ pain in the ass in others.

“You already made your bones by killing that Mallardo fuck. You obviously got what it takes. And Cesare likes you, which is good.

“I want you to stick close to him and be his right-hand man. You do whatever he asks – but you work for me, understood? And what I want you to do is rein him the fuck in when he starts getting too crazy.”

On one hand, it sounded like I was being offered an incredible promotion.

On the other hand, it also sounded like I was being set up to fail spectacularly.