Russo Blood Debt Chapter 08
The First Cuts
The first cut goes through their supplier in Calabria.
Russo Imports has been moving olive oil and “olive oil” through the Port of Newark since 1971. Their main source is a press in Reggio Calabria run by an old family friend.
That old family friend gets a visit from two men in nice suits on a Tuesday morning.
By Tuesday afternoon, the press calls Dante’s office and regretfully informs him that quality control issues have been identified with the entire 2026 shipment. They cannot, in good conscience, send it. They are very sorry. They wish him well.
Dante does not understand. He sends his consigliere on the next flight to Italy.
The consigliere lands in Reggio. Nobody will meet with him.
Three more suppliers go cold by Friday.
The bank goes cold on Monday.
His credit line — the one Nonno personally negotiated in 1989 — gets pulled. Risk reassessment. The branch manager who’s been at Russo Christmas dinners for thirty years won’t take Dante’s calls.
By Wednesday, two major shipping clients cancel and sign with a competitor whose name nobody has heard before.
That competitor is, on paper, a Delaware LLC.
The Delaware LLC is, on paper, owned by a Maltese trust.
The Maltese trust is owned by my father.
I sip my espresso on the terrace in Tuscany and watch the Russo stock chart drop another four percent.
In thirty days, the Russo Family loses thirty-one percent of its market value.
Nonno is hospitalized for stress on day twenty-two. Mild stroke. They put him in the same private clinic where my daughter died.
I send flowers.
White lilies. No card.
Papa looks at the security feed of the old man receiving them. The old Don’s face goes the color of paper. He knows. He doesn’t know who, but he knows it’s a hand reaching out of a grave.
“Brava,” Papa says quietly.
Dante is running on three hours of sleep a night.
He goes to the office at six. He goes to the hospital at noon. He goes back to the office. He goes to the brownstone, where my casket no longer is — they buried “me” two weeks ago in a Brooklyn cemetery he picked himself — and he sits in the empty room where the wake was.
He talks to me out loud.
The cameras pick it all up.
“Cara. The Coppola brothers pulled out of the Atlantic deal today. I don’t understand. We’ve worked with them for six years.”
“Cara. Pop’s in the hospital again. He won’t look at me.”
“Cara. If you were here you’d tell me to slow down. You always told me to slow down.”
I watch him on the monitor and I feel the precise, cold weight behind my ribs and I do not feel sorry.
Bianca calls him from her new apartment in Tribeca, the one he’s paying for. She wants to know why the credit card got declined at Bergdorf’s.
He hangs up on her.
She calls back. He blocks the number.
That night a container ship belonging to Russo Imports gets boarded at the Port of Newark by Customs and Border Protection.
They find forty kilos of cocaine taped under the false floor of a refrigerated unit.
Russo Imports has never moved cocaine. Russo Imports moves heroin, prescription pills, and labor through three different unions, and everyone in the Five Families knows it. Cocaine is not their lane. Cocaine is the Genovese lane and you don’t cross it.
Somebody planted the coke.
Dante knows somebody planted the coke.
He cannot prove it, and the Genovese now think he was poaching.
He sits in his office at two in the morning with a bottle of Macallan and his phone rings.
Unknown number.
He answers.
A man’s voice. Italian-American. Calm.
“Mr. Russo. Did you get our gift?”
Dante goes still.
“Who is this.”
“Doesn’t matter who. Matters what you owe.”
“What do I owe.”
“Everything.”
A pause.
“This is just the beginning, Mr. Russo. By the time we’re done, you’ll have nothing. Not a clinic. Not a brand. Not a Family. Not a name.”
“Who is this —”
The line goes dead.
The number is gone when he calls back.
Matteo, in the next room of the villa, sets down his burner and looks at me.
“Was that necessary, principessa.”
“It was, Matteo.”
I want him to know it’s a hand. I want him to know it’s coming.
I want him to be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his short life.