I Buried The Don And Took His Throne Chapter 11
The Consigliere’s Files
I clean up Marco and Bianca and figure I get to breathe for a week.
Wrong. This life is never short on old men in suits with opinions.
First sit-down after Dante is confirmed.
The old consigliere Genovese — beard down to his belt buckle, been kissing rings in this Family since before I was born — is first on his knees.
Tears rolling down his cheeks. The whole show.
“Boss! A woman at the table — this is how a Family dies!”
Behind him, half the old capos drop right along with him.
“She used to be nothing but a lapdog.”
“We’re begging you—make her the Donna, give her any title you want. Just don’t let her sit at this table. It’s a disgrace!”
“A woman giving orders — this is a disgrace to the Vitale name.”
Lapdog. Cute.
I stand at Dante’s right shoulder, running my fingers along the gold trim of my sleeve.
These are all Marco’s people. They’ve been sitting on this for months. Finally couldn’t hold it anymore.
The whole room is watching me and Dante. Waiting.
Dead silent.
Dante’s on his father’s chair, chin in his hand, watching the show like it’s Sunday night TV. Something ugly flickers behind his eyes.
He doesn’t say a word, just tips his head toward me and asks with a look: “Do I have the permission to kill them?”
I shake my head, small. Barely there.
We don’t bring a machine gun to a rat problem.
I step forward. My voice comes out cool and clean, and it fills the whole room.
“Mr. Genovese. You call me a lapdog. Care to show me your evidence?”
Genovese sticks out his chin. “A woman at the table is the evidence!”
“A woman at the table. Alright.”
I smile, clapping my hands, twice.
The doors open. My personal aide walks in carrying a stack of manila folders a foot high and drops the whole stack on the marble in front of Genovese.
*Whump.*
“Mr. Genovese. Take a look before you keep talking.”
“Nineteen eighty-nine. You brokered the East River shipment for the Old Don. Skimmed thirty percent. Sold the rest to the Bratva under the table. Ten million clean, into a Cayman account I have the number for.”
“Three of our soldiers up in Buffalo got made because of that leak. Frankie Delgado. Sal Marino. Tommy Ricci. They died with their tongues cut out.”
Genovese’s face goes from red to white in about a second.
I don’t even look at him. I turn to the loudmouth capo behind him.
Aide throws down the next folder.
“Capo DiMarco. Last year. You sold the North Jersey construction contract — Vitale territory — to a Russo cousin for a hundred grand cash. That contract cost us three million and one of our best soldiers.”
“His name was Anthony Bruno. His mother is still alive. She lives in a walkup in Bay Ridge because he was her only son and nobody in this Family sent her a dime.”
“And you, Capo Ferrara —”
“And you, Capo Santini —”
Every name I call, another folder hits the marble. Every capo in the room flinches like I’m shooting them.
Every one of those files — I pulled them together for Marco.
Two lives ago. I dug the dirt so he could squeeze them.
He used those files to keep old men obedient. And now, I’m using them to bury them.
The room is dead quiet. Just the sound of old men trying not to breathe too loud.
Genovese collapses onto his hip on the marble. Points a shaking finger at me.
“You — you’re making this up! Slander!”
“Yeah?”
I look down at him. My smile freezes over.
“Want me to bring Frankie Delgado’s widow in here? Or Anthony Bruno’s mother? Ask them what they think of you personally?”
Genovese’s eyes roll up in his head and he drops sideways in a dead faint.
“Get him out.”
That’s when Dante stands up.
He slides a knife out of his jacket. Long, black-handled, custom-made. The blade’s got a name on it — *Silenzio.* It’s been in more men’s chests than I can count.
“Lapdog?”
He walks down off the dais and crosses the marble to the youngest, loudest capo in the room. That young man already got a stain spreading down the front of his slacks.
“My Donna. Which one of you wiseguys thinks he has the right to put the word *lapdog* in front of that.”
The knife goes in under that man’s jaw and out the back of his neck in one clean motion. Nobody in that room even had time to blink.
The body drops, blood splashing on the marble and on Dante’s shoes.
Dante uses the bloody tip to lift the chin of the next man over.
“Anybody else got an opinion on my Donna? Speak up. Floor’s open.”
Every head in the room hits the marble.
Dante wipes his blade on the dead man’s shirt, then walks back to me and takes my hand right there in front of every made man on the East Coast.
His palm is hot. Blood-hot.
“Sloane. My Queen. Room’s clean.”
I look up at him.
What’s living behind his eyes is a hundred times crazier than anything I ever saw in Marco’s.
It’s just that his teeth are all pointed the other way. Out. At the world. Not at me.
I can live with that.
—
That night, after Dante signs the last set of papers on the desk, he doesn’t go to his own bedroom. He walks down the hall to mine.
He still smells like ink and iron. His eyes are almost feverish.
“Sloane.”
He leans down. His breath is against my ear, low and rough.
“Family’s stable. The capos are broken.”
“When are we going to move on to the next important task? Maybe have a kid?”