Mafia Boss

Chapter eight

The repercussions were immediate. Word spread through the Family like a virus. The Don had gone soft. The lion’s teeth were pulled. Marco stormed into the study the next day, his face flushed with anger.

“You let Mazzara walk? With a slap on the wrist? The men are talking! Sokolov will hear! He’ll think we’re weak!”

“Let them talk,” Vittorio said, gazing out at the city. “Strength isn’t always a shout, Marco. Sometimes it’s the confidence to be quiet.”

“That’s philosophy, not business!” Marco leaned on the desk, his voice dropping. “This is because of the doctor, isn’t it? Gennaro told me. You’re sick. And it’s making you weak.”

The bluntness of it was like a punch. Vittorio turned, and for the first time, Marco saw not the imposing Don, but an old, sick man. The revelation seemed to fuel Marco’s fury, not quell it. “You need to step aside. Now. Before you ruin everything we’ve built.”

We. The word hung in the air. Vittorio had built this empire alone, stone by bloody stone. “The meet with Sokolov is tomorrow,” Vittorio said, his voice icy. “Handle it. Show me you can lead. Then we will talk.”

But the meet was a disaster. Marco, overcompensating, arrived with four carloads of men, an obvious show of force that Sokolov read as insecurity. The Russian, a man with eyes the colour of glacier ice, had expected the Don, not the snarling cub. Negotiations soured. Insults, subtle at first, then blatant, were traded. Marco, goaded by Sokolov’s smirk and a whispered slur about his father’s age, broke protocol. He drew a gun in what was supposed to be a neutral, weapon-free parley.

He didn’t fire. But the damage was done. The code was shattered.

Sokolov left, his smile chilling. “Tell your father the old ways are dead. Our arrangement is dead. He should have come himself.”

When Marco returned, shamefaced and defiant, Vittorio didn’t shout. He felt a profound, weary sadness. The test had been failed catastrophically. The Sokolov bridge was burned, and with it, a significant revenue stream and, more importantly, a fragile peace.

“You placed your pride before the Family,” Vittorio said, his voice hollow. “You showed him our fear, not our strength. Now he knows he can make us bleed.”

“He disrespected us!”

“And now he will try to destroy us! You think with your temper, not your head! You are not ready!”

The rift was now a chasm. That night, Vittorio made a decision. He summoned his most loyal captains, men whose allegiance was to him personally, not to the abstract idea of “the Family.” He spoke to them not as a Don, but as a dying man. He outlined a plan not for expansion, but for dissolution. A careful, quiet unravelling of his legitimate holdings, a severance package for the soldiers who wanted out, a peace offering to rivals for those who stayed. It was a plan for an orderly retreat, a way to leave something other than a bloody power vacuum.

He was betraying his own life’s work. It felt like the only honourable thing left to do