Chapter 41: Chapter forty

Present day

 

Gino Ricci sat at a booth in a bar that he owned, reclining on the supple leather of the seat and sipping fine Tuscan wine. Across the table was a city councilman who looked ready to sweat through his suit.

The man was in his forties, with short, curly hair and a maroon tie that he probably thought added a splash of colour to his white shirt and brown suit. He liked the ponies but took to it with all the ability of a docker with no arms.

And he owed Gino just shy of thirty-thousand dollars.

Gino treated him to a wide grin, the councilman squirmed in his seat. “Can I assume from your being here that you have good news for me about the city sanitation contracts?”

The councilman paled. “Ah. About that. I don’t think I can get you the contracts. It just… I’m only one vote.”

 Gino’s expression soured.

“Let me explain something to you,” he said, reaching into his fine Italian suit and withdrawing a pair of blood-stained wire cutters. “You owe me, so I own you. If I tell you to do something, you goddamned do it! Put your hand on the table.”

The councilman pulled both hands closer to his body, his eyes fixed on the wire cutters.

Gino nodded to one of his guys who drew a gun and pressed it against the man’s neck.

“Put your goddamned hand on the table councilman. Don’t make me ask you again.”

He was crying now, but he slowly lifted his hand and placed it on the table in front of him.

Gino seized the hand in one of his own, bringing the wire cutters closer with the other.

The councilman curled his fingers into a fist, but Gino’s guy pressed the gun harder against his neck. Weeping, he uncurled his fingers.

“Please. Please don’t.”

Gino smiled a shark’s smile as he placed the wire cutters around the man’s little finger.

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From within Gino’s suit, a phone rang. It wasn’t his usual phone, he had put that on silent when he saw he had business to attend to. This was a phone Gino carried everywhere, never silenced, and answered immediately. The number was only known to one man, and it wasn’t a man Gino wanted to disappoint.

“It’s your lucky day councilman. Get him out of here,” Gino said, withdrawing the wire cutters and taking out the phone. His guy took the councilman away.

While Gino waited for them to be out of earshot, he stared at the phone and wondered how everything had gone so wrong.

From his humble beginnings as a small-time loan shark, he had built his way up to be one of the most powerful mafiosos in the state, answering only to the don himself. He had guys who had their own guys, and a small empire of legitimate and illegitimate businesses spanning three cities.

And now he was at the mercy of a voice on a phone.

He answered.

“Report,” said the voice on the other end of the line.

A shiver ran down Gino’s spine. He had spoken to dangerous people before—it was part of his business—but there was something different about the man on the other end of the line. He knew things. Things about Gino. Things about his family. Gino had plenty of people under this thumb, and he might maim someone to make a point. He might even kill them if the situation called for it. But there were limits to what he would do. Limits to what was practical, and limits to what was decent.

Gino had no doubt in his mind that if he failed to do what the voice on that phone instructed, there would be no limits to his punishment.

 

“Nothing from my friend on the police force,” he said. “Looks like you’re in the clear.”

“That’s because you’re blind,” the voice said. “Detectives Price and Jones have uncovered Agent Branson’s loyalties and are investigating him as we speak.”

Gino stared at nothing, wondering where the voice had gotten that information from. But, in the end, it didn’t really matter. All that mattered was that if the voice said it, it was undoubtedly true.

So, the bastard decided to grow a conscience, did he? That couldn’t be allowed. A message had to be sent.

“I’ll have them both taken out,” Gino assured the voice.

“You’ll do exactly what I tell you and nothing more,” the voice said. “You are going to call Detective Jones for me and make some introductions. Then he and I are going to have a little chat.”

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