Russo Blood Debt Chapter 13
Tuscany
Three weeks later I’m on the terrace at Castello Vitali, north of Siena.
It’s harvest. The hills below the villa are full of men I’ve known since I was small, picking sangiovese off the vines my great-grandfather planted in 1947. Papa is out there in a flat cap with them, a glass of red in his hand, telling the same joke he tells every October.
He’s been retired four months.
I have a desk in the library now. The one his father used. I sign things at it.
The Family is mine.
Today there are forty-three documents to sign. A port deal in Genoa. A trucking line out of Naples. Two new soldati getting straightened out next month — both my approval. A wire transfer to a hospital in Brooklyn for the Aurora Vitali Maternity Wing, anonymous.
Forty-three documents. I sign forty-two.
The forty-third sits on top of a thin file Matteo set on my desk this morning. I have been ignoring it for six hours.
I open it now.
A photograph. A Brooklyn alley. A man face-down on wet asphalt. Dark coat. Gray at the temples. One arm folded under him like he tripped.
Two paragraphs of report.
Subject: Russo, Dante. Found 4:12 A.M., alley off Court Street, Carroll Gardens. Single round, back of the head. Professional. No witnesses. NYPD ruled it a Family hit, closed without naming. Funeral was held Tuesday. Twelve people attended. The widow was not one of them. The boy was not one of them.
Per your instruction: no Vitali signature on the work. Buyer untraceable. Likely a Genovese soldato settling the cocaine grievance.
Matteo, in the doorway:
“Principessa. Confirmation came in this morning.”
“Who paid for it.”
“Nobody we know. The Genovese never forgot the coke in the container. Once the Russos couldn’t protect him, he was —” Matteo opens his hand. “Open.”
I look at the photograph for a long time.
Forty-three documents on the desk. I pick up the pen and I sign the last sheet — the wire transfer for the maternity wing — and I close the file.
“Burn that one.”
“Sì, principessa.”
He takes it.
At the door he stops.
“Anything else, principessa.”
“No.”
He goes.
I sit at the desk for a while.
The light moves across the floor. Someone in the vineyard laughs at Papa’s joke. A bell rings, far off.
I look at my hands.
The Vitali ring sits heavy on my right. It always will.
The left ring finger is bare. There’s a faint paler band where Dante’s gold used to sit. It’s fading. By Christmas it will be gone.
I get up. I go to the window. I open it.
The smell of the vines comes in — dust, sweet, the year ending.
Down in the rows Papa lifts his glass to me.
I lift my hand back.
Then I close the window, and I go down to the harvest.
— END —