Page 106 of Of Murder and Matrimony

Cosimo unwound a clear plastic tube and approached our father, wiping the end through the blood streaming down his chest. “Blood isn’t lube. This is going to hurt like a bitch.”

He shoved the tube through the metal rings, and his captive couldn’t stop it, no matter the amount of gagging and coughing. Judging by the gurgling protests from his mouth, his airway still worked.

“You would have been a brilliant cock-sucker,” Cosimo observed, picking up a funnel and a bottle of drain cleaner. “Would have been smarter than the shit you pulled all these years. Karma’s a bitch, Daddy Dearest.”

“The beauty of the tube is we bypass the body’s first instinct to expel poison when it burns the mouth and throat.” He inserted the funnel, turned back to us, and flicked his fingers. “You might want to step back.”

We all moved further away as he emptied the entire bottle of cleaner down the tube. It took a few minutes, but my father struggled in earnest, tears running down his face as he gagged again. Cosimo ripped the tubing out, and my father projectile vomited the chemicals across the tarp, screaming and sputtering in agony as it burned everything it touched inside him.

There were three more bottles of drain cleaner on the table, and Cosimo repeated the process for each. That amount of cleaner would eventually kill a person, so we were likely working on borrowed time when he finished the last of it. The chemicals in the air burned my nose and throat, but it was nothing compared to my father’s pain, so I embraced it.

My father's voice cracked and rasped like grating metal when he spoke again, the gag making his words difficult to understand. “My own… fucking blood… turned against me. What would Antonella say…”

I lunged forward when he spoke my mother’s name.

“Don’t you fucking say her name!” I raged, all of my father’s sins hitting me at once, overwhelming my mind and making my heart race. Only I wouldn't freeze and panic. No, it propelled me into action. “In fact, you’ve lost the privilege of speaking altogether.”

I selected a scalpel and a pair of pliers from Cosimo’s table, holding them up so my father could see. “You used to love to say children should be seen and not heard. You silenced us with your fear tactics and physical abuse. Your wicked tongue terrorized my wife.”

I jammed the pliers through the metal rings and clamped them around his tongue, forcing it back through. The muscle hardened as my father resisted, but I swiftly dissected it with the scalpel, letting my father’s agony vibrate through my head as I watched the tongue go limp again, then dropped it to the floor.

“Guess he’s not giving us anything else now,” I said mildly, returning the instruments to a metal pan for cleaning. Returning to stand before the dying man, I kicked him over the sutures my wife had put in his leg, re-opening the wound. Then I kicked him in the balls with all my strength. Blood bubbled through the gag and down his chin. “That’s for Olesya.”

I walked away, and my grandfather stepped forward.

“I entrusted my daughter to your care,” he said close to his son-in-law’s ear, his voice quiet but lethal. He was used to exacting punishment and revenge, but this was personal. Ettore Neretti killed his beloved daughter, and now he would pay with his life. “You signed a contract and promised to treat her like a queen. And like a good mafia wife, she never breathed a word of the crimes you committed against her. Had I known, I would have gutted you and sent parts of your body to every family worldwide as a warning.”

One of his men handed him a gun, and he fired it at my father’s knee. “You disrespected me, the family.”

The other knee went next. “You betrayed us all.”

The shoulder. “You are a traitor.”

The other shoulder. “A murderer.”

He held the gun barrel to Ettore’s forehead, staring him in the face as he pulled the trigger and avenged his daughter. “A dead man.”

I exhaled as I watched my father’s body go limp. Then, for the first time, I took a breath without my father’s oppressive presence looming over me.

It was liberating, and looking around the room, my brothers felt the same.

Ettore Neretti was dead, and I was the new Don.

“Deal with the body,” I commanded. “An explosion seems fitting. Something that won’t leave any evidence behind. Make it look like he was driving drunk and crashed the car. The authorities won’t question it, they’ll be so busy dancing on his grave. Can you handle it?”

Cosimo’s lips parted in a chilling smile. “With pleasure.”

“As for the men,” I continued. “Gather them in the waterfront warehouse. I want them all there in an hour.”

I tore the signet ring from my father’s lifeless pinky and exchanged my soiled clothing for a new suit from the lockers by the door before leaving with Filippo and Stefano. We rode in silence to the meeting location, and I waited stoically at the front of the room as my capos filtered in.

When we hit the one-hour mark, I held my father’s ring in my hand, circling the room until I’d done a full circle in silence, watching their reactions as they realized the implication. My instincts were sound, and I spotted a few guilty faces who would end up with Cosimo before the end of the week.

I tossed the bloody ring onto the table to make my position clear. “Ettore Neretti is dead. I am now your Don. Anybody unhappy with these developments can leave without consequence, but you and your families must leave the city. You have one week.”

Turning on my heel, I strode from the room. I didn’t wait for questions or objections.

I had somewhere more important to be.

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