Page 257 of Lars

Nobody else seemed taken aback by that; they all just seemed resigned. Dario even nodded his head approvingly.

Me, on the other hand…

“Are you kidding?” I asked.

All the brothers turned to me in surprise. They were far more shocked at my reaction than they were at Niccolo suggesting we gun down another family’s representative.

“No,” Niccolo said with a raised eyebrow, like Don’t be absurd.

“Why would you kill him?!” I asked, incredulous.

“To send a message.”

“Which is what?!”

Niccolo looked like he was about to tear me a new asshole when Dario raised his hand to silence him. Then he turned to me.

“This is a provocation,” he explained patiently. “A test. Right now, the families of the Cosa Nostra are sniffing around, trying to determine if I’m a wolf or a lamb. If I’m a wolf, they’ll leave me alone. If I’m a lamb, they’ll slaughter me and take my territory for themselves. It’s nothing personal – it’s just business. The weak don’t survive long in our line of work, so it would happen sooner or later. And the first to slit my throat gets the spoils of war.”

“You’re sure they’re testing you?” I asked dubiously.

“If they’re not, they’re still up to no good. The Oldanis should never have sent anyone into our territory without first asking my permission. For them not to ask me is disrespectful in the extreme; for them to send their enforcer is a blatant sign of ill intent.

“Whatever their reason for sending Fumagalli, the Oldanis know they’re playing with fire. If I don’t respond decisively, they’ll take it as a sign of weakness – and then they’ll be on our doorstep in just a few days, gun in hand.”

“What about when we visited you in San Vittore – and the second time when we took you home?” I challenged him. “Did you call the family that runs Milan and tell them we were coming?”

“Oh yes,” Niccolo said smugly. “That was the first thing I did.”

“…oh.” I felt a little deflated, but I still kept pushing. “Can’t you just call them, then? Tell them you know what they’re doing and order them to pull their guy out?”

Adriano snorted. “That’d tell them Dario has no balls.”

Niccolo glared at him, but Adriano just shrugged. “Well, it would.”

Niccolo turned to me and asked mockingly, “Would your former employers have made a cordial phone call to Vladimir Putin if the Russians sent their deadliest assassin to your country? And would they have politely suggested he remove his assassin at once – or ‘there will be consequences’?”

Even though I’d revealed I’d worked for MI6 during my first meeting with Leonardo, Fausto, and Niccolo, I assumed none of the other brothers knew (except for Dario, whom I had told in prison). I appreciated Niccolo’s discretion, even if I didn’t like his tone.

“No, but we would have tried to take him alive,” I argued. “Killing him outright would’ve risked starting a war.”

“Wars are fought often in the Cosa Nostra,” Dario said calmly. “Especially when a new, untested don takes control. Trust me: if we kill Fumagalli, it sends a message to every other family in Italy not to fuck with us.”

“Aren’t you afraid the Oldanis will get angry and try to get everyone else to help them kill you?”

“No. Everyone will know Fumagalli should have never been here in the first place. We risk a small war with the Oldanis, it’s true,” Dario said, “but we risk a gigantic war with the entire Cosa Nostra if we don’t react decisively. Do you understand?”

I understood one thing: these were entirely different rules than what I was used to.

In the military, I had always been bound by the Rules of Engagement: legal and military guidelines that dictated what I was allowed to do in a firefight – who I was allowed to shoot, and when I was permitted to shoot.

Here, the rules seemed to be Might Makes Right…

Project Strength At All Costs…

And Kill or Be Killed.

These were tribal warfare rules – and the mafia was nothing if not tribal.

---