Page 24 of Sweet Poison

The drugs didn’t help.

Eventually, came the day she called me from the supermarket because she couldn’t remember where she lived. After that incident, she withdrew completely into herself. She wouldn’t look anyone in the eye, not even me. Her dementia became so severe she could no longer take care of herself. I told my father I wanted to care for her. I had just finished university and started working so I could afford a private nurse for her at home, but he refused point blank. I had my life to live and she needed the proper care that only a specialized care home could provide. It was almost surreal to pack her clothes and some of her personal items into her olive-green suitcase.

My father checked her into a reputable mental asylum.

I visited her every month, but she hardly responded to my presence. Although, sometimes, just for an instant, I would see the old her again in her eyes. I would see her love for me shining in her eyes and I would eagerly call out to her with hope, but almost instantly her gaze would become blank again.

Five years almost to the day after he checked mother into her care home, my father was found guilty of racketeering and money laundering and sentenced to ten years in Sing Sing Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison. His lawyers told him good behavior could reduce his punishment to seven years, but in fact, with the enemies my father had made, he was looking at the very real possibility he would come out much earlier in a body bag.

As I walked down the courthouse steps a limousine stopped in front of me. A man in a suit jumped out of the front passenger seat, came around and held the back door closest to me open. I knew without being told who was in the car.

I stepped in and the door closed.

Chapter 14

Cole

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmY7kH-KB48&list=PLLhu_aWzuRciPpJIZLYZ7-UsUHojohW0H&index=7

The interior of the car was perfumed and O Fortuna from Carmina Burana was playing softly in the background. I turned my head and met the soulless, glassy, obsidian eyes of the Capo, the Don, the Godfather of Occhi Morti.

Tommaso Paganini was the perfect embodiment of evil incarnate. A demon. Evil poured out of him like oil when he spoke. His nickname was Nice Guy. He earned it a long time ago when he was still doing his own wet work. Always, before he cut his victim’s throats, he told them with believable sincerity not to fear or worry, he was not going to hurt them because he was a nice guy.

Even though he worked closely with my father, I consciously kept out of his way and had only met him on a handful of occasions. He made my skin crawl. I could still vividly remember that hot summer’s day by the pool. I was sixteen and lying on the grass with my eyes closed when I felt a shadow fall on me. I opened my eyes and he was standing over me with his hands in the pockets of his trousers. The sun was in my eyes and, at first, I couldn’t properly make out his expression, but when I shaded my eyes with my hands, I saw it. As clear as day …

He wanted to fuck me!

So badly his eyes burned with hunger as they roved over my almost naked body.

That inexhaustible supply of beautiful women that he dated and discarded was a lie. He was a raging homosexual!

Neither of us spoke as I vaulted to my feet and walked away. From a distance, I heard my father calling to him from the back door. Years passed with no interaction between us and now he was sitting next to me and in the depths of those cold, dead eyes the lust I had seen all those years ago glimmered. He still wanted me.

His thin lips curved into a sly smile.

“I can protect your father,” he said softly. “I can keep him safe and comfortable. I will arrange for him to get his own room, quality steak three times a week, access to alcohol and cigarettes, the services of hookers whenever he has the urge, and I have a small army of men to protect him and run menial chores for him.”

I kept my voice respectful. “Forgive me, Don Paganini, but he’s your second in command. He’s given his whole life to you. Shouldn’t you be doing that, anyway?”

He narrowed his ghoul’s eyes, and the air in the car throbbed with his irritation.

“Is it possible that your father has not informed you of even the smallest detail of how our familia works?”

I said nothing. I knew I was not expected to say anything.

“When a man is careless enough to end up in prison, he becomes a risk to the whole organization. If not now then at some point in the future he may be incentivized to talk. It is in the best interest of the organization to silence that man. Your father understands that.” He paused. “But because of the high regard I have for him and your considerable skills in financial matters, I am willing to consider the option of keeping him so sweet he doesn’t talk.”

I frowned. “What is it you want me to do?”

His voice was smooth, his smile oily. “Nothing too difficult for someone like you. Move some of my money for me. Invest it. Make it clean.”

From a very early age, I’d been something of a savant genius at math. At school, I was called the human calculator. I could remember long strings of numbers effortlessly and using a mental abacus inside my head I added, subtracted and multiplied those numbers with ease.

Less than a year ago I left University and went to work as an accountant. Very quickly I’d begun to make something of a name for myself. My special talent was finding little-known loopholes in the tax code and finding new ways of implementing them. And the best part, they were all completely legitimate methods of reducing taxes. I had a few corporate clients, but mostly I preferred to work for Mom-and-Pop stores or the ordinary man on the street. I got a kick out of beating the IRS at their own game. Whenever I found myself facing petty, hard-faced tyrants masquerading as IRS agents, I thoroughly enjoyed seeing their impotent frustration when they failed to squeeze the hard-earned money of my clients so the government could waste it in ever more spectacular ways.

Until now though, I’d always steadfastly avoided ever dealing with dirty money no matter how much remuneration was on the table for me. Moving money around for this monster would mean I was cleaning the dirtiest of money, money tainted with blood.

I was not responsible for my father’s life choices. When he took his pledge of honor and silence he understood the consequences, both good and bad, of joining ‘the family’. But I also understood refusing the Nice Guy’s offer would mean signing my father’s death certificate.

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