The Mafia King's Caged Bird

3. The Mirror

Elio

A man should know his own face before he asks other men to fear it.

I studied mine in the mirror the way I study everything — for weaknesses.

It gave me back exactly what I gave it. Dark suit. White shirt, collar open. The ink my father hates running down past the collar and the cuffs, the marks of a life he pretended we didn't lead. I fixed one cuff. Then the other. I did not smile, because the men I was about to walk among have learned to be more afraid of me when I don't.

"Looking good, boss." Marco's reflection appeared behind mine, leaning in the doorway with his tie already loosened, a glass of my wine already in his hand.

Marco was my consigliere, or right-hand man. He'd been with me since I was nineteen. He'd taught me which knife to use at dinner and which to use under the table.

"You look like a don. A real one. Il padrone."

I scoffed at his words. "I’m just a. man going to work."

"Same thing, with you." He came closer, and his voice dropped into something warmer, something I'd trusted for ten years without ever once examining why. "Your father would be proud, Elio. Three months in a city that wasn't ours, after everything back home, and look what you've built. The clubs. The docks. The hotels. Half the Lower East Side already knows your name and the other half is about to. He'll hear about tonight. He'll be proud."

Three months. That's how long it had been since I left Italy in the dark with a scandal at my back and a name that was suddenly worth less than the paper my father printed it on. He'd sent me here to disappear. Prove yourself, he'd said, the way you say it to a son you've already half-decided to bury. Build something on your own, if you can.

So I had. Alone. That was the part that mattered. Alone.

"He'll hear about it," I agreed, and reached for my watch. "Is the car downstairs?"

"Brandon's been out there twenty minutes. Kid drives like his grandmother but he doesn't talk, so." Marco set the wine down. "Ride with me. We'll go together, I'll catch you up on the dock numbers on the way—"

"No." I said it easily. "Rest. You've been running since dawn. I'll see you at the club later."

I shrugged on my jacket and left him standing in the gold light.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I watched as the city smear past the glass window of the escalade. Wet streets, steam coming up through the grates like the whole island was breathing, and I let myself feel, for one private minute, something close to satisfaction.

Brandon did drive like a grandmother, but I didn't mind. The boy kept his eyes forward and his mouth shut, which is the single most valuable skill a young man in my employ can have. I made a note to pay him more.

Soon enough, we arrived at the club. The Gilded Cage sat on a corner that used to belong to nobody and now belonged to me.

The place will open tonight. But it also, as of this exact moment, had several problems.

"There's no sign," I said, getting out of the car.

A slew of bodyguards appeared out of nowhere to greet me, and I simply walked past them.

Laura, the club manager, met me at the door with a tablet pressed to her chest like a shield. She runs the place, and she runs it well, which is why she still works for me. "The sign's on the truck. It goes up soon. I promise you, by the time the doors open you'll see the name from three blocks away." She fell into step beside me as I went in, already reading off her list. "Liquor's stocked. Kitchen's staffed. We're light two singers for the rotation — one quit, one's a no-show — but I've got auditions running this afternoon and I'll have the late slots filled before—"

I had stopped listening.

There was a girl on the stage.

She was small, and pale, and wearing a plain black dress. She had long blonde hair that fell just around her elbows. She had her eyes closed, and she was singing to an empty room like the empty room had broken her heart and she'd forgiven it anyway.

An old song. One my mother used to play on Sundays, before my mother became a thing we didn't talk about.

I don't normally get lost. I want to be clear about that. I’m a man who always knows where the exits are, who is counting the people in a room before I've finished entering it, who has never in his adult life forgotten for a single second exactly what he is and what that costs. That is the only reason I am still breathing.

But for one note — one held, impossible, climbing note near the end of that song — I forgot all of it.

This girl was… alluring.

Then I caught myself. I always catch myself.

"Her," I said. "If she's the no-show's replacement, she stays. Put her on the late set."

“Oh, but she’s a bit young and inexperienced—” Laura tried to argue, but I simply shot her a look. "I mean — of course, sir. She’ll do the late set tonight."

I felt the girl's eyes find me up on the balcony then. She'd opened them, bright blue eyes, mid-song, and somewhere in that pale, startled face she'd located me in the dark watching her. I didn't look away. I have never seen the point of pretending not to want a thing. She flushed and dropped her gaze to the back wall.

Hm. A shy one.

I let her finished her song with her gaze fixed anywhere else but me. Because watching a frightened thing decide to keep singing anyway told me more about her than her voice already had.

"Boss." Brandon, at my elbow, low. "I've got what you asked for."

And just like that I remembered who I was.

— End of Episode Three: To Be Continued. —