Page 29 of The Hitman's Secret Baby
Water murmurs somewhere in the distance, likely from one of the artificial fountains shaped like Roman gods.
The Salvatores may have no lineage to speak of, but they've dressed their empire in old-world drag.
Inside, the estate spares no expense in hiding its youth.
The floors shine beneath our shoes, marble shot through with golden veins.
The walls are lined with panels of dark wood and massive oil paintings, the kind that try too hard to look centuries old.
The ceilings stretch high overhead, covered in murals that depict not faith or family, but conquest.
A battlefield of gods and mortals.
Triumph painted in gold leaf and blood.
The chandeliers shimmer with hundreds of crystal pendants, suspended above the ballroom like frozen rain.
They cast fractured light across the marble, turning every guest into a moving constellation of silk and glass and shadow.
There is an unspoken rule in these gatherings: beauty is a mask, civility a weapon.
The room is already full.
Men in formal suits and tuxedos glide between conversations, their smiles tight, their hands always half a gesture from violence.
Women drift like ghosts through the crowd, glittering in gowns that reveal as much as they conceal, trained from birth to make power look effortless.
Waiters pass between them, balancing silver trays with white-gloved precision, offering champagne flutes like bribes no one declines.
There is a stage at the far end of the room.
A string quartet plays a piece composed to sound expensive.
Beyond them, glass doors open to a terrace strung with lights, where cigars will be smoked and real conversations will happen under the stars.
These events exist for the same reason mafia families hold christenings in cathedrals and funerals in cathedrals and weddings in cathedrals.
Appearances. Allegiance. Visibility.
A chance to show who still walks the earth with untouchable confidence, who still controls the ports, who still decides what passes through the gates of this city, and what disappears at sea.
The mafia learned long ago that fear alone was not enough.
That power, once earned, must be paraded.
The Salvatores have perfected the performance.
Every guest here has been curated, every placement is intentional.
The businessmen sipping expensive Scotch near the east alcove?
Loyalists to the Salvatore shipping lines.
The arms dealers by the hearth?
Indebted to Marco Salvatore for a quiet favor years ago.
Even the local politicians, with their freshly pressed suits and hands still warm from dirty envelopes, have been positioned close to the food and far from the exits.
