The Mafia's Nightmare

The Cost Of A Name

On getting home, George poured himself some liquor and relaxed in his sitting room still feeling overwhelmed with different thoughts running in his head.

The penthouse was silent. Too silent.

Sixty floors above Düsseldorf, the city was a spill of lights and rivers, but none of it reached him. The walls of his sitting room were bulletproof glass, designed to keep the world out. Tonight, they were failing because she was already inside his head, and no amount of steel or money could evict her.

He didn’t bother with a measure. The Macallan hit the crystal tumbler with a heavy glug. His hand wasn’t steady. That was the first wrong thing. George DeLuca’s hands never shake. Not when he signed death warrants. Not when he stared down a gun barrel in Palermo. Not when he buried his father with dry eyes after he was shot by an enemy.

But they were shaking now.

He sank into the leather chair, the one that cost more than most cars and the leather didn’t give him comfort. It gave him nothing. The liquor burned on the way down, but it didn’t burn her out.

Her face. Her voice. The way she’d looked at him like he was a stain on her shoe.

"Who is this daughter of the devil, I couldn't even hear myself speak. All my life, my father's words have always been true but today made me doubt".

He said it out loud to the empty room, and his own voice sounded foreign.

Daughter of the devil. That’s what she had to be.

No human looked at George DeLuca and felt nothing. Fear, yes. Desire, yes. Hatred, yes. But nothing? Indifference? That wasn’t human. That was witchcraft.

Not been able to speak up ! That was the worst part. He opened his mouth, the same mouth, that had ordered men to their deaths without a tremor and his own words had gotten lost somewhere between his brain and his tongue. She’d sucked all the air out of the room and taken his voice with it.

His father’s words. The creed. The law. "Take, don’t ask, George. The world belongs to the man who’s willing to bleed for it, and you, son, you were born bleeding". They kept echoing in his ears.

True. Every word had been true for thirty-five years. Until a 26 year old law student in a borrowed dress walked up and treated him like a badly written parking ticket.

Doubt. He didn’t know the taste of it. Now it was in his mouth, bitter and metallic, like blood.

He drained the glass. It didn’t help.

He quickly placed a call across to Rex asking him to come quickly.

His thumb almost missed the screen. Another wrong thing. George never missed.

Rex picked up on the second ring. “It’s 1 AM.”

“Get here. Now.” He said.

A pause. Then, “What, Who died?” Rex asked?

Me, George almost said.

“Just get here.” He replied instead .

He hung up before Rex could ask questions. Questions he didn’t have answers to.

The wait was twenty-three minutes. George counted every second. He poured another drink. Didn’t touch it. Stared at the city. The city that was supposed to be his. Tonight it looked like a stranger.

When the elevator dinged, Rex came in like he owned the place because he was the only man alive who almost did. No knock. No “sir.” Just Rex, in jeans and a hoodie, hair a mess, eyes sharp even at 1 AM.

When Rex arrived, he watched George's moves for some seconds without saying a word, suddenly he burst into a wild laughter "I loved what I heard man. Was that you or someone else". He said still unable to control his laughter.

The sound exploded in the penthouse. Loud, Unrestrained and Disrespectful.

Rex was doubled over, one hand on his knee, the other wiping his eyes. “Marco told me,” he gasped between laughs. “He said she... God, George, I wish I’d been there. “Was that you or someone else, man? Because the George I know would’ve had her in the back of a car before she finished the sentence.”

George didn’t move. The crystal tumbler was back in his hand. He wasn’t drinking. He was holding. Like an anchor. Like a weapon.

Rex kept laughing. “I mean it, I’ve never, you should’ve seen your face, Marco said you looked like someone stole your...”

But something happened that made him pause. George angrily smashed the glass cup he was holding and Rex opened his mouth wide as he watched the cup fall to the ground with a shattering sound.

It wasn’t a throw. It wasn’t dramatic. It was a twitch. A sudden, violent clench of his fist.

The crystal didn’t break clean. It detonated. One second it was whole, the next it was a hundred screaming shards and amber liquor spraying across the €40,000 Persian rug.

The sound was obscene in the quiet. CRASH

Rex’s laughter died like it had been shot. His mouth was still open, but no sound came out. His eyes went from the floor, to the wet stain on the rug, to George’s hand now bleeding from a cut across the palm and finally to George’s face.

That was when Rex realised it wasn't going to end well.

Because George DeLuca wasn’t angry. Angry was shouting. Angry was a bullet. Angry was familiar.

This was something else. This was quiet. This was cold. This was the look George got before he made people disappear.

The blood dripped from George’s knuckles onto the rug, drop by drop. He didn’t feel it.

"How dare her humiliate me.? "I am George DeLuca The Mafian King". I will make her life a living hell, every soul around her will feed on my wrath. I go for what I want no matter how much it costs."

His voice wasn’t loud. It was worse. It was soft. The kind of softness that comes before a storm takes the roof off your house.

"How dare her humiliate me?"

He took a step forward. Glass crunched under his thousand dollar shoe.

"I am George DeLuca The Mafian King."

Not a name. A statement. A fact. Like gravity. Like death.

I will make her life a living hell, every soul around her will feed on my wrath.

Rex knew that tone. He’d heard it twice before. Once before the docks burned. Once before the Caruso family stopped existing.

I go for what I want no matter how much it costs.

The cost. That was the part that made Rex’s blood run cold. Because George wasn’t talking about money. He never was.

George was talking about her.

And Rex, who had known him since they were kids with scraped knees, realized with a sick lurch that George wasn’t only talking about destroying Sophia.

He was also talking about owning her.

No matter how much it costs him.

Rex finally found his voice. “George… brother… don’t.”

George turned his head, slowly. The blood from his hand was smeared across his white shirt now. He looked like a painting of vengeance.

“Don’t what?” George asked.

And Rex didn’t have an answer. Because for the first time in twenty-seven years of friendship, he wasn’t sure if he was looking at the George he knew or someone worse.

The words were still hanging in the air of his penthouse, mixing with the smell of spilled Macallan and blood. Rex hadn’t said another word. He’d just backed toward the elevator, hands up like George was a bomb with three seconds left.

George didn’t stop him. He didn’t notice him leaving.

The cut on his palm was still bleeding, dripping onto the Persian rug in a slow, steady rhythm. He didn’t feel it. He felt only one thing: "her"

That face was a brand behind his eyes. The voice "You’re blocking my way" played on a loop until he thought his skull would split.

The feeling, the humiliation, the weakness.

"George DeLuca never acts weak" he said.

He picked up his phone with his unblooded hand.

He placed a call over to Marco his head of security.

“Marco.”

“Sir.” Marco’s voice was instant, alert, even at this hour. He’d heard the glass shatter through the phone when Rex called. He knew better than to ask if George was alright.

“I want everything,” George said. His voice was flat. Dead. “The girl from the gala. I want her background investigated. Everything that has to do with her. Her family. Where she was born. What she eats for breakfast. I want to know everything .Do you understand me?”

A pause. Then, “On it.” Marco responded.

The line went dead.

George finally looked at his hand. The cut was deep. He wrapped it in a bar towel, not bothering with finesse. Pain was good. Pain was real. Pain was better than whatever this was.

Marco was efficient. Marco had to be. Men who weren’t efficient didn’t work for George DeLuca for long.

Forty-seven minutes later, his phone buzzed.

Next episode drops soon. please share your thoughts and opinions.