Page 90 of Marcello

I couldn’t even bother to pretend I was listening.

All I saw was the blood-smeared face of the prisoner as he stared back at me.

Finally, Cesare told his crew to get back to work. Then he dragged me out of the bar while it was still daylight and shoved me into the Maserati.

I didn’t even flinch as he drunkenly weaved in and out of traffic. If we’d died in a fiery car crash, that would have been a relief.

When he stopped in front of my new apartment building, he turned to me. His eyes were just as empty and dead as when he’d handed me the gun back in the meat locker.

“I’m built different, so killing motherfuckers never bothered me, but everybody else has it rough the first couple of times. Don’t listen to what Ciro and the other guys said in the bar. I was there. I saw it. They were fucked up for a while. Don’t pussy out – you’ll get over it.”

I stared at him. Apparently, this was what passed for empathy from Cesare Caproni.

“Go on, get some sleep,” he ordered. “Big day tomorrow.”

I nodded and, without a word, stumbled out of the car and up to my apartment…

Where I promptly threw up before I could reach the bathroom.

After passing out in my bed for a couple of hours, I woke with my shirt reeking of vomit.

It was dark outside my window. When I checked the clock, I saw it was 10:37 PM.

My head was pounding, but that was the least of my worries. The face of the Cosa Nostra prisoner hovered in front of me like a ghost, tormenting me even more than the Camorra drug dealer I’d killed.

I tried to rationalize away my guilt.

He probably would’ve been dead in a couple of minutes, anyway.

If I hadn’t killed him, it would’ve just prolonged his suffering.

That made me feel a tiny bit better. At least for a couple of seconds.

Then another thought occurred to me that made me feel a lot better:

Maybe this’ll be enough for Fausto to leave my family alone.

I fumbled my phone out of my pocket and dialed him.

He answered after a couple of rings. “Well, I see you’re still alive.”

“I have something to tell you,” I slurred.

I could hear the disdain in his voice. “You’re drunk.”

“Yeah, well, Cesare just made me kill another guy. And this one was Cosa Nostra.”

There was a pause. “Is that so.”

“You’re Cosa Nostra, aren’t you?”

“Just worked that out, did you,” Fausto said sarcastically.

I ignored him being an asshole, which was par for the course. “He worked for somebody named Amato.”

“Well, obviously.”

“What do you mean, ‘obviously’?”