Page 31 of The Seventh Circle
We moved down the stone steps into the courtyard, our footsteps echoing in the quiet. Vito’s head snapped up. A smirk spread across his scarred face when he saw us.
"Well, well. If it isn't the Benedetto prince, out for a stroll with his muscle." He ostentatiously drew one of his knives, tossing it from hand to hand. The polished steel caught the weak sunlight. "Come to apologize for ruining my suit?"
"We came to deliver a message, Vito," I said, my voice even. I stopped a few paces from him, letting Antonio and Paolo flank me. "Your men are sniffing around places they don't belong."
Vito laughed, a sharp, unpleasant sound. "My men go where I tell them. This is my territory."
"Your territory ends where my father says it does," I corrected him. "And your little scout," I flicked my eyes toward the man who had been watching Antonio's building, "has been looking at things that aren't his concern. Family is off-limits. You know the rule."
The scout paled, his nervous energy curdling into fear. Vito’s smirk tightened. He was losing control of the situation.
"The Romanos aren't your family, Benedetto. They're hired help. Hired help can be replaced." Vito took a step forward, raising his knife. "Maybe I should show you how."
That was the only invitation needed.
It was not a brawl. It was a dismantling. Antonio moved with a fluid economy that was terrifying to behold. He sidestepped a wild punch from one man and drove his elbow into the man’s throat, dropping him to his knees. I met the charge of another, turning his momentum against him and slamminghis head into the brick wall with a sickening crunch. He slid to the ground, unconscious.
Vito, for all his posturing with blades, was clumsy. He lunged at me, and I simply stepped aside, my foot catching his ankle. He went down hard, his precious knife skittering across the grimy cobblestones. Antonio was already on the fourth man, disarming him with a quick twist of the wrist that elicited a scream of pain.
In less than ten seconds, it was over. Four men were down, groaning or silent on the ground. Only the scout, the watcher, remained on his feet, frozen in terror. Paolo hadn't even moved. He had watched the entire exchange with a look of detached appraisal, his cheroot still jutting from his mouth.
Now, he moved.
He walked past me, past Vito scrambling on the ground, and stopped in front of the terrified scout. Paolo took the cheroot from his mouth and carefully ground it out under his heel. His movements were slow, deliberate. Ceremonial.
"You," Paolo said, his voice soft. "You like to watch people's homes? From across the street?"
The man shook his head, unable to speak. "I... I was just following orders."
"Whose orders?" Paolo’s hand shot out and grabbed the man by the front of his shirt, yanking him forward.
"Vito's! Torrino's orders!" he squeaked, pointing a trembling finger at his boss, who was now pushing himself into a sitting position, his face a mask of fury and humiliation.
Paolo smiled. It was not a pleasant sight. "Good. It's important to know who to blame." He shoved the man against the wall. "My boss," Paolo nodded his head slightly toward me, but his eyes never left the scout, "is a modern thinker. He believes in clean business. Warnings. Measured responses." He pulled a thin, wicked-looking knife from inside his coat. Itwas a filleting knife, long and flexible. "Me? I'm old-fashioned."
He pressed the tip of the blade against the man's cheek. The man whimpered, tears streaking through the grime on his face.
"You watched his brother. A boy. Did you think about what we might do if we found you?"
"Please," the man sobbed. "Please, I didn't..."
Paolo's hand blurred. There was a sickening wet sound, and the man screamed, a high, thin sound of pure agony. Paolo had sliced his cheek open from mouth to ear. Blood welled instantly, dark and thick, pouring down his jaw and onto his shirt.
"That's for looking," Paolo said calmly. He then grabbed the man’s left hand and pinned it flat against the brick wall. "And this..." He raised the knife high. "...is for where you were looking."
He drove the point of the knife straight through the back of the man’s hand, pinning him to the wall. The scream was inhuman this time, a raw shriek that bounced off the stone walls of the courtyard. The man thrashed, his body convulsing, but his hand was fixed to the wall.
I felt a wave of nausea. My gaze flickered to Antonio. His face was a pale, rigid mask, hands clenched so tight that his knuckles bleached white, and his eyes were fixed on a point on the far wall, refusing to watch but unable to escape the sounds. The same bile I tasted was surely in his throat.
Vito stared, his mouth agape, his earlier bravado completely gone, replaced by a primal fear. His other conscious goon had dragged himself into a corner, trying to make himself small.
Paolo was not finished. He worked with a labourer's methodical patience. He took the man's other hand and, oneby one, he broke his fingers. The sickening cracks echoed in the yard, each one punctuated by a choked gasp or a wet sob from the pinned man.
"You use your hands to follow my boss's people," Paolo grunted, twisting a pinky finger until it snapped. "So you won't be using them again."
He stepped back to admire his work. The man sagged against the wall, held up only by the knife through his hand, his face a ruin of blood and tears, his breathing a ragged, hitching mess. Paolo looked at him the way a carpenter might look at a well-made joint. Satisfied.
Then, he turned his attention back to the knife pinning the man's hand. He gripped the handle.
