So that’s how he’ll play it.I’m not one for blackmail, but I have something up my sleeve. Frankly, this nonsense has been going on for long enough. These old goats have had their fun, and now it’s time for them to shut up.
“You agree with this, I assume?” I ask, turning in the direction of Don Vespucci.
The shriveled-up face makes a grimace as if he’s bitten into a sour lemon. I don’t actually hear what he says, focusing on watching how he’s almost frothing at the mouth in his vehemence.
I nod, then glance at the other Dons around the table. “Anyone else feel the same?”
A few of them frown, but the majority remains placid. In the scheme of things, they’re Dons yet also small potatoes. Each one controls just a small territory or a single small-scale operation. It’s the likes of Salvatore and Vespucci that hold the controlling interests. I do, too, the third in this trinity of power.
I’m not gonna go against these lesser men, at least not today. It’ll be just these two big-mouthed fuckers, then. They’re been preening and throwing their weight around for way too long. It’s time someone brought them down a peg or two…or completely to their feet.
“I’d advise you to be careful,” I state calmly, my eyes on them.
Don Vespucci sputters in outrage, hand going to his jacket.
“DiPalto, get the gun,” I tell hisconsigliere, who nods at me and stays a hand on his Don’s shoulder.
The man doesn’t answer to me, but even he’s reading the room right and picking up I mean business, unlike those clowns who just like to run their mouths off.
“You think you’re so wise, don’t you?’ Don Vespucci hisses. “You’re nothing but a wet behind the ear child, thinking he can come to grown men’s discussions—”
“Like your son?” I interrupt quietly. “Your heir, Lauro.”
“Don’t you bring my son into this!” he throws out, outraged.
“You brought him in—” I tell him, nodding to his crony at his side, “—when you aligned yourself with this one.”
Don Salvatore stays silent when his friend turns to him. Of course, when the time to step up comes, he’s slithering back in the shadows like the snake he is.
I’m not going to blackmail these men, but I need them to know who they’re fucking with, and ultimately, make them realize they better not test my patience and respect for my elders again.
“He goes to Brazil often, doesn’t he?” I ask. Don Vespucci blanches across the table. If he’s wondering whether I’ll gothere, I put him out of his misery by definitely goingtherewith my revelation. “There’s a particular type of women he’s fond of… Ones who have something, let us say, more between their legs?”
He pales and goes mute, eyes boggling. It’s his best-kept secret that his precious heir is into transexuals and indulges fully in the trans community that’s a big part of the Brazilian population.
I know I’ve shut him up. He’s no longer a threat to me, or to anyone else at this table now with his secret exposed. Anything less than a Mafia child being cis-gender and heterosexual brings shame to the family. Don Vespucci’s son has disgraced him. He has no power now, his influence almost zero.
One down, one more to go.
I turn my attention to Don Salvatore. It hurts me to be doing this, because I’ll be throwing his daughter under the bus next, but he also brought this on himself by thinking he could bully me since I’m the new kid at the table.
“I don’t have anything about your heir, Don Salvatore,” I say, inclining my head a little. “But I know your precious daughter has been in and out of a certain medical facility in the UAE. Their specialty is reconstruction of a certain anatomical part a woman loses when she lays with a man…”
Don Salvatore doesn’t pale—he goes red. Is it anger, rage, shame, humiliation? I don’t care. He’s been peddling his precious Paloma as a sainted virgin all this while, and my grandmother was right when she said half the men in Ibiza had been inside that girl’s vagina. Ardian Abrashi noted the first visit to this clinic in his journals four years ago, and my brothers dug up her travel records and hacked into the clinic’s records.
I watch them as silence descends on the room, both these old men now fidgeting in their seats.
“This is preposterous,” Don Salvatore throws out.
Without breaking eye contact with him, I take out my phone, unlock the screen, and hit ‘Send’ on a file that’d been waiting on the device. The phones in the room ping, all of us on the sameBluetooth network.
“All the proof is right there,” I add with a chin nod.
Some of the Dons are unlocking their phones, eyes going wide as they glimpse what I just shared, aka irrefutable proof Paloma Salvatore has been having her hymen artificially reconstructed every time her father is about to parade her on the marriage market in our community.
“You think you’re so clever,” Don Salvatore spits out.
I lean back in my chair, pocketing my phone leisurely. Now’s the time for the coup de gráce. The victim? It’ll be myself.