Machiavellian: Gangsters of New York, Book 1

by Di Corte, Bella

  Capo came to church for a reason. I need to fade yet be seen.

  Suddenly the weight in my pocket called to me. Fiddle with me, it seemed to whisper, but right in my ear. I pulled out my mother’s rosary, rubbing the cool beads between my fingers.

  For the first time, he looked over at me, at what I was doing. A beam of light went straight through the stained glass and hit his eyes. He became the mosaic—the glass holding back the tide. I glanced down at his throat. Someone had tried to destroy all of his defenses. Whoever it was had shattered him, and then he’d put himself back together. The hard, metallic lines that keep the glass whole were so apparent on his face, if someone had enough courage to see.

  I need to disappear yet be seen.

  Ti vedo.

  I see you.

  I see right through the beautiful blue shattered glass. I see the hard lines that keep you together. I have the courage to see past the hunter and into the man’s eyes that connect to a beating heart.

  I see you, my husband. I see you, my capo. I see you, my heart. I see you, my everything.

  I held the rosary in one hand and reached out to touch his cheek with the other. “It’s nice to have a friend who…doesn’t mind the stillness, no matter how loud the silence.” My voice was as soft as my touch.

  “It’s nice to have you, Mariposa.” His voice was rough. “La mia piccola farfalla.” My little butterfly.

  Then we said no more, meeting in the depths of his silent grief that somehow seemed so loud inside of my heart.

  20

  Mariposa

  After we left church, Capo sped back to his grandfather’s place. He instructed me to pack. He told me we were going on our honeymoon. I felt guilty. We were leaving the family at a time when family should stick together, but Capo said they gave us their blessing. His grandfather would’ve wanted us to go. Something was off, though, and I knew it had something to do with the two men who were outside of the church.

  The tattoos on their hands matched Capo’s. It was understood that he’d run with them at one time. But I wondered…maybe the scar on his throat had something to do with them? I wasn’t sure, and when I asked a few questions, Capo told me to keep packing. I took his refusal to answer as a yes. Maybe he wanted to lead Achille and Arturo away from his family?

  It took us two hours to say goodbye to everyone. They made me promise to bring Amadeo back soon. They felt he was away from “home” for too long. I had no idea how to respond when they kept telling me they loved me and were going to miss me.

  What surprised me the most was that a few tears slipped down my cheeks after we left. I hid my eyes behind dark sunglasses to try to hide them, but Capo noticed.

  He wiped a tear from my skin and rubbed it against his lips. “Leaving doesn’t mean you’ll be gone forever. You’ll be back.”

  I still had no idea where we were going, but after we boarded the biggest boat I’d ever seen, I knew we were going on a nautical journey. Capo met the captain as soon as we boarded. He was related to the Faustis in some way—of course.

  Capo corrected me when I called it a boat. It was a yacht. Boat. Yacht. Floating mansion. It was all the same to me. It had numerous plush cabins, numerous efficient workers, and anything we desired was only a request away.

  I fell asleep somewhere in Sicily and woke up in Cala Gonone, a city in Sardinia. We spent the day there. The water was sapphire, topaz, and a green I couldn’t even describe in words. I could see straight to the bottom. It was like a watery dolphin hole bringing swimmers to another world. The sea was cool, my skin hot, his lips salty when they touched mine, and I couldn’t imagine a more perfect spot if I tried.

  That night, I fell asleep in Sardinia and woke up at a port somewhere in Greece.

  Greece!

  I knew Capo had probably gone through my things when I’d handed them over at The Club. Being in Greece took that probably and turned it into a solid for sure. I’d written in Journey about Greece and how badly I wanted to go. One of the customers at Home Run was from Greece, and he’d tell the most wonderful stories about the sunrises and sunsets, the bright houses, the blinding sea, the windmills, the mountains, the food, and the people.

  The first thing Capo did after the tender dropped us on land was find a shop that sold cameras. He told me it was unacceptable that I was squaring my fingers, putting them in front of my face, and then making a clicking noise when the sight I never wanted to forget was in frame. If I wanted a camera, I’d get a camera.

  He bought me a fancy one, and it took me two hours to figure out how to work it, but once I did, there was no stopping me. Rarely was it not around my neck. And I must’ve gone through five digital cards, filling them all to capacity.

  Sunrises and sunsets, white-washed houses, blinding seas, windmills, mountains, food, and people. Capo and me. Just…Capo. The camera loved his face and body.

  During our time, I got to meet a different side of him. He was more at ease, and when he felt like I was chickening out on life, he urged me to do things I’d never imagined before. Swimming naked at night under the stars with him, hiking to places that were only occupied by wildflowers and goats, crashing a wedding and dancing until my face felt like it was permanently stuck smiling, rafting on Mount Olympus, kayaking over water so clear that the surface resembled glass and the depths blue and green treasure, having sex in secluded coves, and eating things that took some guts, like sea urchin salad (straight from the sea) and lamb. I drew the line at fried ink sack from an octopus and snails that popped when you put them in a pan. I fell in love with pomegranates, though, and the chef kept the kitchen stocked with them.

  We’d been in Greece for a month when Capo received a call from Rocco. Capo had to plug his ear to hear what Rocco was saying. My husband had surprised me with a night out in Athens. The Greek National Opera was performing Carmen at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus.

  The Odeon of Herodes Atticus was an outside stone theater that had been there since 161 AD. It was steep-sloped, almost like a bowl with high sides. Beyond, the city of Athens glowed, while the mountains in the distance created rugged shadows. I’d never been to a place with so much history. Not only could I touch it, I could smell it in the air.

  Capo ended the call and raked his teeth over his bottom lip. With him, passion and anger were closely related. He only rolled his teeth over his bottom lip when he wanted me or when he was pissed off.

  “Something wrong?”

  He didn’t look at me, just stared at the actors playing their roles on the stage. “Boo, bam, boo.”

  I stared at him until he met my eye.

  “We leave tonight, Mariposa.”

  I’d been dreading this day, but I knew it would come sooner or later. “Why?”

  “One of my buildings in New York was blown up.”

  That line concluded our time in Greece.

  We’d be back in New York, back to reality, by the next day.

  21

  Capo

  Every step I took was planned. Nothing I did was by accident. In my world, unforeseen circumstances could get you killed. After my death, I had learned to time my breaths to each second that passed. I remembered all too well how sixty seconds equaled a lifetime—the next possibly my last.

  I had caused the wars. I went in unsuspected and killed brothers, sons, uncles, and good friends. All evidence pointed toward the Scarpone family. I even fucked with the Irish. And as I’d planned, all hell broke loose. No one trusted anyone, not even a cent. It was a cent that usually kept them square with each other.

  I knew whom to kill in each family. I knew how to set it up, how to make it look. At one time, that was who I was: the king’s prince, the one he sometimes called the pretty-boy killer. When Arturo wanted someone dead, someone who had done something personal to him, he called on Achille or me to handle it.

  We were the wolves after sheep to slaughter. Arturo never thought of anyone but the Faustis as competition. He called them lions, a different breed of a
nimal. We didn’t have to worry about them or take them down because they had territory of their own. But when it came to taking other wolves down, the ones who challenged him, wanting to be the alpha, we were sent in to destroy.

  I’d let the daughter of another wolf go, and in Arturo’s eyes, the sin was unforgivable. So he sent a pack of wolves after me. They came close to tearing my throat out.

  Then I became a ghost. I saw it on every face of every man I killed after my death. They thought I had come to lead them to hell. It was especially sweet to see the recognition on the faces of the animals that had a hand in my death. The cowards who held my arms while the knife cut me deep. The ones who held a woman against her will and assaulted her in front of me until they tore her apart.

  One thing about death—you have nothing but time. So that was what I did. I bided my time. I got lost in Italy for a while. I started going by the name Amadeo, to begin with. Then a visit with Marzio Fausti brought me back to life. He loaned me enough money to invest in tanking businesses. In return, I’d kill for his family, until I paid him back every cent with interest. He’d offered to kill Arturo, but I asked that he be spared. I wanted to do it my way.

  I wanted to seek revenge in a way that fed the soul that had been ripped from its body and starved for too long.

  After my investments paid off—the hotels, the restaurant, The Club, plus numerous investment properties, along with investments Rocco made for me—my plan really started to take shape. It looked like a vengeful wolf with teeth sharper than the rest. I left little clues here and there, enough for them to catch a hint of a new but also familiar scent.

  Vittorio?

  No, it can’t be.

  Ah, but it is motherfuckers, it is.

  Small clues led to medium clues until medium wasn’t cutting it anymore. My schemes became bigger. Not enough to give me away, but enough that the scent got stronger. Every so often one of the Scarpones made a trip to Italy on the guise of “visiting with family.”

  I laughed, a cold breath forming out of my mouth. “Family.” I said the word like a taunt, a joke.

  After the father and son’s last trip, when Arturo and Achille almost discovered me in church, they started creeping around buildings in New York. Buildings owned by one Amadeo Macchiavello. If I was still alive, they were trying to draw me out in the only way they knew how—striking. They couldn’t seem to find proof of my existence any other way.

  Achille had even tried to find me at The Club after his son had been killed. I watched him from the private floor above. He was mad with loss of power. He kept grabbing black-haired men and turning them around, looking for me in their faces.

  For the record, they never found Achille’s son’s body. My empty grave was the last place they’d look.

  There was a meaty story. After the man Arturo had sent to kill me thought he did, he was supposed to take my body and dump it in the Hudson River with the rest of the fleshy scraps that were disposed of. However, they hadn’t counted on an angel to arrive.

  Tito Sala.

  He showed up not long before I took my last breath, and he saved me. Rocco and Dario were with him. The man who slit my throat was killed in a car accident two days later. His brakes had gone out. Apparently, he never told Arturo that he hadn’t dumped me because he didn’t want Arturo to kill him. After all of the men had fled, and only the man who had “killed” me was left, he had seen the shadows coming for him in the alley next to Dolce. He had taken off, going straight to the King Wolf to deliver the lie—yeah, he’s gone.

  His lie hadn’t saved him. Nothing would’ve. Arturo never left witnesses. It was too risky. So he had the man killed. It worked out for me, though, because Arturo killed him before finding out the truth.

  Angelina was already dead, our blood mingling in the alley. It was a fitting final goodbye.

  The Faustis left my blood in the alley, but they also left traces leading to the Hudson. I didn’t want to be found, and I knew this was where the man was bringing me next—while he sliced my throat, he had whispered in my ear, “You’re not even good enough to leave on the street next to the dumpster. Your old man wants you down with the fish in the Hudson, a watery grave.” He talked too much when he’d been attempting to slit my throat.

  The detectives labeled our cases, Angelina’s and mine, as murders, but after no clues pointed to the murderers, the case went cold, and the evidence box was sealed shut.

  Yeah, they hadn’t looked too hard. Even if they had, they would’ve never found me. I was a ghost, as some called me.

  The Scarpones were feeling the pressure of that ghost. When medium clues got too boring for me, I started dropping the big ones, the ones that would lead them a little closer. I wanted to fuck with their heads before I chopped them off.

  In an attempt to convince the other families that it wasn’t the Scarpones starting the wars, killing their men and taking their stolen shipments, they pinned it down to one man.

  Me.

  A man they didn’t know. A man who, from out of the blue, started stomping on all of their turfs. Of course, Arturo never mentioned Vittorio Lupo Scarpone to the other families. If he did, it would paint Arturo unstable, and the last thing he wanted was to be labeled mad, unless it came to violence.

  Seeing ghosts? Believing the son you had killed had come back from the dead? Yeah, not good for business.

  So the heat was on me. I was getting hit from all different sides, but after a couple of months, the other families moved on, convinced that the Scarpones were to blame, since no man looking to start a war had been found.

  However, the Scarpones hadn’t let up. They were determined to smoke me out, make me show my face, or throw my fucking ashes to the wind. For every property they set on fire or blew up, I did the same to two of theirs. And their shipments of stolen goods? Gone. Gone. Gone. Never arrived. Then, a few days later, some of their items would float up from the Hudson.

  I’d never seen Achille cry, not even over his son, until millions of dollars worth of drugs went missing. I saw him on the docks, talking to a paid-off foreman, pulling his hair, twisting around, cursing the sky.

  Waaa. Waaa. Waaa. Waa.

  His perfect life was imploding from within, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

  That’s what happens when you try to catch a man you made into a ghost.

  Months had gone by since our honeymoon, and I’d lost a substantial amount of property and money, but it was nothing compared to the payoff I received that had nothing to do with la moneta. I had fucked up a family that no one was able to touch before.

  The Scarpones, led by the King of New York and his mad son, The Joker.

  Word on the street was that the families who had originally decided to help them smoke me out, a man none of them could find, had actually pulled out because they wanted the Scarpone family destroyed. Their willingness to help had been a war tactic. They had agreed at first, but then they pulled out in hopes that I would take the Scarpones out. Completely.

  A little more time, and the entire city of New York would owe me.

  Movement made my eyes turn up. A shadow crept closer to the upstairs window, peeking out. Arturo had two wolf-hybrids as pets, and they didn’t even bother to look away from their treats. They lay at my feet licking the blood from the steaks I’d brought them. I ruled his house, even his dogs.

  Yeah, come on down, we can end this here and now if you want, old man. Arturo was old, and any ruling he did, he did from his office. Achille had complete control of the body, except for the brain and the heart. He hadn’t been born with either.

  As I stood underneath Arturo’s window, dressed in black, he couldn’t see me, but I could see him. I could even hear his wife, the blonde-haired bimbo with fake tits, talking to him. She came into the restaurant, too. And she was a fucking hoot. She was dumber than a sack of bricks. No wonder she gave birth to a joker when she was only seventeen.

  No one would ever be able to replace my mamma. She
gave Arturo a prince, and he destroyed her. He had killed her innocence. Slaughtered it. Then she killed herself because of it. He took something that was supposed to be unique, innocent, and turned it into something dirty.

  My phone lit up. A picture of Mariposa and I from our wedding in Italy appeared on the screen. Not even a second later the song Mariposa and I danced to came through the speaker, the one that sounded like a song that should be on a Tim Burton soundtrack. My wife constantly changed her profile picture on my phone and the ringtone. So I started doing the same to her.

  This time, though, she had caught me at a bad time. It was my own fault. I should’ve put the phone on silent.

  Arturo was going to get curious, so I sent her to voicemail and silenced the phone. I quickly sent her a text.

  Me: At work. You okay?

  A second later her response came through.

  Your wife (she programmed this into my phone): Fine, just lonely in this big house without you.

  I grinned.

  Another text.

  Your wife: It’s nice to have a friend who stays home and watches old movies with me. I’ll make some popcorn and root beer floats.

  The lights in the yard came on, and the dogs jumped up, going toward the back door. A second later, Arturo appeared, holding a gun.

  “Who’s out there?” He narrowed his eyes. Then he called for his men to check the yard. He was getting too careless in his old age. He should’ve known. Send the men out first. One bullet and his life was mine.

  Too fucking easy, though.

  I was gone before his watchdogs even made it behind the tree.

  My phone lit up again as I opened the door to my car. Snow covered the windshield, and the leather felt like ice. My breath fogged when I took another deep breath.

  Your wife: On second thought. Can you stop and get marshmallows? We ran out. Since it’s cold out, hot chocolate will be better.

  Me: You’re going to owe me.