Page 4 of Brutal Legacy

A clock in the hallway beyond my room chimed the hour. Four a.m. I didn’t need the clock to tell me the time. I was well-acquainted with the particular kind of darkness that descended right before dawn broke. The deepest, most desolate kind.

I was awake, like I usually was, sitting at the table in my room, cleaning my guns. It was my nightly ritual. I had started it in the military, where the hours of night felt like days and your conscience was a boulder crushing your lungs.

I learned the measure of a man’s soul in that darkness. In the quiet between spaces where normal life should be. Every night, at four a.m., I was back there, sand beneath my feet, sweat running down my back, and the knowledge that in the morning, I’d lose a little more of my soul.

I wasn’t sure how much was left to give.

The gunin my hand shone in the low light from the dying fire in the corner, painstakingly cleaned and oiled. I enjoyed the weight of it. It was comforting. Other men turned to drink and substances to numb the terrible pain of being alive, but those did nothing for me. There was only one thing that calmed the storm inside, and that was my nightly ritual.

I laid out my collection and cleaned each piece carefully, my mind blissfully blank.

After, when there was nowhere to go but back to my bed and the nightmares that waited for me there, I loaded a single bullet, spun the chamber, and played my Russian friends’ favorite game.

Click.

Another stay of execution. Another miss.

The shutters on the window were open, so I could watch the lightning lingering over the city’s silhouette. The air was thick and damp, heavy with the coming rain. Ozone and petrichor flooded my senses. Below, a car drew up and stopped outside, blocking the narrow lane.

Men in dark suits got out, and then a stooped, shuffling figure emerged. It was late for guests, but the man outside was no guest in this city. I left my gun on the table and went to meet the Godfather of Naples himself.

They werein the parlor by the time I got downstairs. Renato, my best friend and capo, was well put together in a silk dressing gown, like he was on his way to the world’s most lethal pajama party.

Salvatore De Sanctis, his uncle, was in a three-piece suit, like he usually was. The only concession to his age was the jeweled walking stick he gripped in his gnarled hand. Time had passed here in the city of my birth. Sometimes it felt like it hadn’t. Time had stopped for me decades ago, on hot, foreign soil, baking under the sun, unsure whether there was a tomorrow. Somehow, life had paused, and it had never restarted.

But looking at Zio Sal, it was undeniable. Time was ticking, bringing me every day closer to death. It shouldn’t have been comforting, but it was.

“Elio, boy. Why does it seem like you were already up? I take it you already cleaned up Franco, the idiot who thought he couldundersell me?” Zio Sal rasped at me, shooting me a warm glance when I entered the room.

My errand tonight had been for Zio Sal.

I nodded and took in his guard detail. As I scanned them up and down, Zio Sal chuckled.

“Be careful, boys. You’ll be getting a performance evaluation in a minute, so stand up straight.”

Renato inclined his head toward me. “Since we’re here, Zio, if you want Elio to do some training, I’m sure we can twist his arm.”

Zio Sal shook his head. “I lost too many men last time. I can’t afford another of Elio’s trainings.”

“Fair enough. To what do we owe this early call? I thought we were having lunch?”

Zio Sal shrugged irritably. “This is lunch. I can’t sleep for shit anymore. If it’s not the aches and pains, it’s visiting the fucking toilet. Don’t laugh, it’s not funny. It’ll happen to you, too, one day, if you’re lucky to live as long as me.”

Renato smoothed his face into a sympathetic expression. “Of course. Forgive me, I don’t want to wake Charlie so early. She needs her sleep.”

Zio Sal waved a hand dismissively. “Don’t gloat about your new wife and all the fun you’re no doubt getting up to. We will meet again later. I want to see the woman who has tamed the great Renato De Sanctis.”

I held back a smirk at his statement.

“Very funny,” Renato said, irritated.

Zio Sal pointed at me. “He got it. Anyway, this isn’t a social call. I wanted to see you boys.” He turned his head to the guards standing around the room.

They swiftly headed for the door. I moved closer, knowing I wasn’t included in the silent command to get the hell out. If there was important De Sanctis business, then I was there. After Naples, and the shit show that had unfolded, my sister and I had become De Sanctis inner circle, and they were more family to us than our own had ever been. I sat on the couch opposite Sal. There were three of us left in the room, and the door had been closed a good few minutes before Sal felt safe enough to talk.

“We have a minor problem.” Zio Sal pulled a cigar out of his pocket and lit up. “An old friend of mine, you might remember him from when you were younger. He’s finally gotten in trouble for taking bribes and who knows what else… He’s going down, and word on the street is that he could sing to cut a deal, lessen the sentence.” He gestured with the cigar, the lit end dancing circles in the air.

Tension hit my system. One thing I’d developed while scraping by and surviving in my twenties was great gut instincts. I could just tell before something devastating happened. Before the bomb went off, before the mission went to shit, before the bullet rang out. I could just tell.

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