Mafia Boss

Final chapter

Marco stood, the audience clearly over for him. “I’ll make the arrangements.”

After he left, Vittorio let out a long, slow breath. Gennaro emerged from the shadows near the bookshelf.

“A risky test, Don Vittorio.”

“All tests are risky, Gennaro. That is the point.”

“And if he fails?”

Vittorio didn’t answer. He looked past Gennaro to a photograph on the shelf. A younger, harder Vittorio, standing beside his father, Silvio, on the day of his own wedding. His bride, Chiara, a vision in white, her smile radiant, oblivious to the blood that had paid for her lace and pearls. She had been the conscience he’d learned to silence, the light he’d allowed to be smothered by the business of shadows. She died in a car accident twenty years ago. A faulty brake line, the police said. Vittorio knew it was a message from the Lupo family, a message he had answered with a m******e that cemented his legend. He hadn’t cried at her funeral. A Boss did not cry. But he had, later, in this very room, alone, until his ribs ached.

“I need some air,” he said abruptly was not enough. It would never be enough to balance the scales. But it was something.

The Don. The Boss. The Monster. The Grandfather.

Vittorio Conti closed his eyes. The city’ hum, the sound of a world he had shaped and been shaped by, faded to a gentle whisper. And in the silence that followed, there was, if not peace, then a final, weary cessation. The accounts, forever unbalanced, were closed.