Mafia Boss

Chapter six

The cracks where the light gets in. He looked at her—her mother’s gentle brow, her father’s stubborn chin, but her spirit was entirely her own. She was the light. A light he had kept carefully shielded from the filth of his world.

“Tell me about the doodles,” he said, and for the next half hour, he listened, allowing the world of medieval Venetian clerks to wash over him, a balm on his soul.

Later, back in the penthouse, the real world reasserted itself with a vengeance. Gennaro was waiting, his face grave.

“The Mazzara account. There’s a discrepancy. A million, maybe more. Funneled through the Cyprus shell.”

Vittorio felt a cold fury settle in his gut. Not at the theft—theft was a cost of business—but at the stupidity. Joe Mazzara was a capo, old school, loyal but greedy. He’d gotten sloppy.

“Bring him here. Tomorrow night.”

The following evening, the study felt different. It was no longer a place of contemplation but of judgment. Joe Mazzara, a bull of a man gone to fat, sweat beading on his forehead, stood before the desk. Two of Vittorio’s most trusted soldiers, silent as statues, flanked the door.