Page 44 of The Don

“In here,” Luca says.

Federico pulls his pistol from his side holster, and he gestures with the barrel for Luca to enter before me again. During this exchange, I turn in a circle, looking for another exit that doesn’t go back through that same hallway, past those same closed doors. Just in case we need it. Once again, I have to content myself with the rushed nature of this meeting. We are flying by the seat of our pants. Alfonso and Giulio will be sorry they missed this.

“Padrino?”

I turn to Federico. He’s inside the room, his gun and gaze still trained on Luca. “It’s clear.”

I nod and enter an ordinary office and check it myself. When I’ve confirmed Federico’s assessment, I focus my gaze on Luca. He’s standing nervously near a tall bookcase on the south wall. His eyes dart nervously around the room, his fingers are twitching. There’s a gun. Somewhere. I know that as surely as I know that this trip is only going to get worse before it gets better.

“Wait outside,” I tell Federico.

“Padrino?”

I’m sympathetic to Federico’s struggle in this moment. He thinks I’m making a mistake. He knows Giulio will kill him without a second thought if anything happens to me. But I have given him a clear order.

“I’ll be fine. Go.”

He gives in reluctantly, stomping from the room with one more threatening glare at Luca. He closes the door behind him.

“Have a seat,” I tell Luca imperiously, just to prod at him.

“This is my office,” he spits.

“Do you want to piss in the corner to prove your point, or do you want to get this over with? Good,” I say when he moves toward a set of four chairs around a low coffee table in the middle of the room.

“What do you want me to tell The Board?” he asks, looking cowed.

“Tell them that I am ready to retire.”

I make sure that I say those words with force and not the wistful hope I feel when I think of Shae and our baby and starting over. Of all the things I never want to share with someone like Luca, it’s hope. In our line of work, that is the biggest liability of them all.

“There is no retirement, Salvatore. We both know that.”

“I’m not coming to you for permission. You said you’d send my request, so send it.”

He starts to reach for his pocket. My gun is in my hand before he realizes what’s happened, and he freezes. “My phone,” he says in a shaky voice.

“Use the one on your desk.”

I keep my gun trained on him as he slowly moves across the room, his hands held carefully in the air.

“Where’s Flavia?” he asks.

“Let it go. She never wanted you.” I do a poor job of hiding my disgust.

“You don’t know that?” He can’t even say it with any surety. His voice is shaking as surely as his hands as he presses the speaker button and dials a number we both know by heart. It would have been easier if I could have made this petition on my own, but The Board loves needless formalities. Another reason I’ll be happy to be rid of them.

“I do, actually. Before I killed her father, he sent her to me like a common whore. She was supposed to seduce me. Her father thought if I fucked her, I would stop trying to kill him. I wasn’t interested, but she and I had a fascinating conversation about her father’s allies. Including you. She told me then that you were in love with her. That her father had sent her to you the same way he sent her to me.” I relish finally being able to say these words. I’ve been holding them in for two decades.

His face and neck are flushing a deeper shade of red. The phone rings loudly in the silence.

Finally, someone with a soft, pretty voice answers the other line with a bright, chirpy “Ciao!”

Luca gives her the message in an admirably clear voice. “I found a bird in the rafters of my bar. I need someone to come set it free.”

Luca and I wait in more tense silence.

“Do you know what kind of bird it is?” she asks.