I Buried The Don And Took His Throne Chapter 07
The Basement
The silver muzzle flash lights up the doorway.
Dante steps through the wreckage of the doors, boots crunching on splintered wood.
He walks straight past the kneeling capos, past the shooters who dropped their pieces the second they saw him, straight to the dais.
Marco is slumped on the throne — his father’s chair — in a black suit that suddenly looks two sizes too big, like a kid caught in his father’s closet.
He points a shaking finger at Dante.
“This — this is a coup! I’m the Don! I’m the sitting Don of this Family!”
I bend down and pick up the bloody tiara Bianca dropped, run my fingers over the diamonds.
“Marco. A Don runs on soldiers and respect. Not on how well he plays a woman.”
Dante walks past me.
On the way, he plucks the tiara out of my hand.
He doesn’t look at a single capo on that floor. He just looks at me. Mouth pulled up in that same cold smile.
“This crown only fits one head.”
He sets it on my head himself.
The metal is freezing against my scalp.
For the first time in three lives, my head feels perfectly clear.
This life, I’m not anyone’s plus-one. I’m the load-bearing wall of this whole operation.
I walk over to Marco, then look down at him.
“You loved how soft she was. You said I was some knuckle-dragger. Let me do something nice for you two. Let me make sure you’re never apart again.”
Marco flinches so hard his whole body jerks.
—
Three days later, Dante is officially recognized by the Commission as the new Don of the Vitale Family.
Marco and Bianca get put in the deepest room of the compound basement.
I have the wall between them knocked out and replaced with iron bars.
They can see each other. They can hear each other. They just can’t touch.
One meal a day. Moldy bread. Sour milk. Meat that’s turned.
Day one, Marco still plays the gentleman, pushes the tin plate to her side of the bars. All soft eyes.
“Bianca, sweetheart. You eat. I’m not hungry.”
She sobs and shakes her head. “No, baby, you eat. You need your strength.”
Day three, hunger starts eating them from the inside out.
The bowl of sour milk goes in. Marco dives for it, slurps it down straight from the tin, milk running down his chin.
“THAT WAS MINE! Marco, GIVE IT BACK!” Bianca claws through the bars, ripping at his hair.
Marco jerks away, snarling like an animal. “Get off me! I’m the Don! If I starve, who’s going to make you Donna?”
“You’re not a Don anymore! You’re just a stray!” Her nails rip four bloody lines down his cheek.
The golden couple. The rooftop dinners. The custom suits. Rolling in the dirt over a crust of moldy bread.
I stand in the hallway outside the basement, listening to them scream at each other, and I feel absolutely nothing.
At some point Dante appears behind me and drapes a coat over my shoulders.
“You feel better?” he asks, quiet.
I watch the sun coming up through the barred window at the end of the hall.
“This is the opening act.”
I want my grandfather’s crew back. Every man of it.
And the rules of this thing — the whole East Coast operation — I’m rewriting from the ground up.
As for those two? Let them chew each other’s throats out one bite at a time.
Dante’s arm slides around my waist from behind. His breath is warm against my neck.
“Sloane. This Family. Half yours. Half mine.”
I don’t push him off. I just look at the heavy gold ring on my thumb — the Vitale signet, keys to the whole thing.
Love, no love. Doesn’t matter anymore.
What matters is I sit this chair very, very steady.
From down the hall, I catch Marco’s voice, cracked and raw, “Sloane! Just kill me! Kill me already!”
I smile and walk toward the main hall without looking back.