Mafia Kings: Adriano: Chapter 80

Once we got back to the table, Adriano pulled my chair around so I was sitting by his side.

I grabbed a napkin and dabbed at my eyes.

“That lady at the store would kill me if she saw me ruining my makeup,” I joked.

“Go ahead and ruin it. This is one of those moments I wouldn’t trade for anything.”

“What were some of the others?” I asked, fishing for compliments.

“Every time I had you naked in bed,” he said with a devilish smile.

“Typical man,” I said, but I grinned.

“And every time I heard you come.”

“Oh my god,” I whispered, getting wet just from his words.

“Don’t get too turned on,” he teased me. “We can’t exactly slip off somewhere like I want to.”

“Then stop saying things that get me hot,” I whispered.

“I’ll try, but it’s so… hard…” he said, playfully putting my hand in his lap.

“Stop!” I hissed, but laughed at the same time.

We stopped the double entendres as a waiter walked up with a tray.

It was the first course: three amuse-bouches arranged artfully on plates.

The waiter helpfully explained what I was looking at, because I had no idea, other than the fact it was incredibly pretty.

There was a tiny cone made of a sautéed chanterelle mushroom, with a green gel inside that made it look like an ice cream cone…

Delicate little globes of citrus sorbet, lemon thyme, and olive oil…

And tiny strands of cooked leek on a pillow of foam inside a sea shell.

I tried them one by one, and they were amazing.

Different flavors exploded in my mouth with each one.

“That’s incredible,” I murmured.

“It was pretty good,” Adriano agreed. “But they better give us a hell of a lot more food than that for each course, or I’m going to have to order a pizza when we walk out of here.”

“So cultured,” I said in a deadpan voice.

“I’m a guy. Deal with it.”

There was plenty of fresh-baked bread, though, along with balsamic vinaigrette floating in a dish of olive oil. A few pieces staved off his hunger.

And then…

The atmosphere changed.

There was a palpable shift in the energy of the room…

As a tall, thin man strolled leisurely across the restaurant.

People at their tables looked nervously around…

And the waiters edged away in fear.

The man continued past the dance floor…

And then walked slowly up the steps of the dais towards our table.

He looked to be in his 60s, although it was hard to tell. A life spent out in the harsh sun had deepened the wrinkles on his tanned face. But he moved confidently, like he feared nothing and no one.

He was tall and thin as a scarecrow, but his clothes were expensive and well-tailored. He wore a black three-piece suit that made him look like an undertaker.

He was bald and clean-shaven with a narrow, angular jaw. He was disturbing to look at, mostly because of the crisscrossing scars on the right side of his face –

And his right eye, which was completely white. Like he had sustained some sort of injury that had clouded over his iris and pupil.

Without asking, he grabbed an empty chair from a neighboring table and dragged it over to ours. Then he sat down facing me and Adriano.

“Signor Rosolini,” the man said in a deep, rumbling voice.

The blood in my veins turned to ice.

It was like the devil had just sat down with us…

But Adriano kept his cool.

“Signore Mezzasalma, I presume.”

“Just so.” The old man had a Sicilian accent that made his deep voice all the more sinister. “Well? Here I am. You’ve been dropping breadcrumbs all over the city, just begging me to follow your trail. A visit to Guillardo’s here… a trip to Valentino’s there…”

The old man paused and looked over at me. “Lovely dress, by the way. You have impeccable taste.”

My skin crawled as his one good eye roved over my body.

Not because he looked at me lecherously…

But like I was a thing. An object.

He turned back to Adriano. “And you, Signor Rosolini, must have endless resources.”

“Why, because I bought her a nice dress?”

“No, because you brought so many men that you’re willing to have die.” Mezzasalma gestured casually across the room. “Three by the kitchen, two by the restrooms, five spaced at regular intervals. Not to mention your sniper on the roof to the east.”

My heart hammered in my chest.

He had accurately picked out every one of Adriano’s men in the restaurant…

And I was assuming he was right about Lars, too.

Mezzasalma smiled. “The Swede, isn’t it? The one your brother befriended in jail? Tell me – am I in his sights? If so, you might want to order him to stand down.”

“And why’s that?” Adriano asked.

“Because I have a team of my own in the olive groves outside your house. Last I heard, my snipers had your family in their sights.”

My breath hitched in my throat.

My parents!

Alessandra –

A slight shadow passed over Adriano’s face – but otherwise he kept his emotions in check. “The windows are bulletproof.”

The old man pulled a pack of cigarettes from his jacket and fished one out. As he sparked up his lighter, he said, “Then I’ll just have to burn down the house like I did the Agrellas’, won’t I? My men can pick them off as they try to escape.”

Mezzasalma took a long drag, then expelled the smoke. “By the way, the secret tunnel the Turk used when he took your sister-in-law hostage? I have men waiting for your family outside that, as well.”

I vaguely remembered Alessandra telling me something about a secret passageway –

But I could see that the news hit Adriano like a punch to the gut.

“How do you know about the Turk?” he asked.

“I know about a great many things.”

“Why tell me, then? Why give away your advantage?”

“To make you wonder: if that’s what I’m willing to reveal… what other cards might I have up my sleeve?”

I coughed as the smoke from his cigarette made its way over to me.

His arrogance – his supreme confidence in himself – irked me enough that I did something very stupid.

“You’re not allowed to smoke in here,” I said angrily.

Adriano looked at me with a warning in his eyes – but it was too late.

The old man regarded me with amusement. “My dear… I get whatever I want, wherever I go… or someone dies. Sometimes many people die.”

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up as he stared at me and took another drag on his cigarette.

Adriano tried to call Mezzasalma’s attention back to himself. “Why did you come here? Just to level threats?”

It worked. The old man turned back to him.

“I assumed we were negotiating. You brought something I want…”

Mezzasalma gestured towards me, and a chill ran down my spine.

“…and now I find out what you want. So… what is it?”

“This isn’t a negotiation,” Adriano said.

“Everything’s a negotiation when the offer is good enough. And if it’s not a negotiation, then what was your plan, exactly? I assume you expected me not to show up, so, what – your men and my men engage in a firefight? You capture one, you torture him, he gives up my location?

“…boring. Predictable. A waste of time.

“That’s why I came here… so we could skip all the bullshit and strike a bargain.”

“Like you did with the Agrellas?”

“Exactly like the Agrellas – except they weren’t able to keep their end of the deal. So I had to exercise the… ‘early termination’ clause.” Mezzasalma smiled at his little joke, then pointed his cigarette in Adriano’s direction. “You know, I was very impressed with how you evaded my assassins the other night. You’re a formidable man. Perhaps you and I could make a deal.”

“What kind of a deal? You gonna take me up to the top of the Duomo – the real one, not this place – and say, ‘Bow down and worship me, and all this will be yours’?” Adriano shook his head and smirked. “Florence is already ours… and you aren’t the devil.”

I wasn’t quite so sure of that.

Mezzasalma chuckled. “And you are certainly not a carpenter from Nazareth. But since you like stories, let me tell you one I doubt you’ve heard.”

“I’m not interested in stories.”

“Oh, you’ll like this one. Trust me.”

Mezzasalma stabbed out his cigarette in the olive oil…

Pulled out another from his pack… and slowly lit it.

After a long drag, he began to talk.

“I’m from a small village in Sicily. Mezzasalma isn’t my family name – I took it later because I liked the way it sounds.

“‘Half corpse.’ Very dramatic.

“But did you know that salma not only means ‘corpse,’ but is an ancient unit of land measurement? Like the English with their acres. So a ‘Mezzasalma’ is half an acre of land. That’s all the poorest farmers in Sicily can afford… not even enough to feed their families. Which is how it was with mine. I never had a full belly when I went to bed as a child, and not much of a future to look forward to.

“Then one day when I was ten, I was playing alone in a deserted field when two men drove up in a gleaming black car. I hid in the bushes and watched as they pulled a man out of the trunk, hands bound behind his back. They forced him to his knees… put a gun to the back of his head… and…”

Mezzasalma made a gun out of his hand, jerked it up like he was shooting it –

And silently mouthed pow.

“…that was the end of our friend with his hands behind his back.

“Interestingly enough, I wasn’t horrified.

“Just… curious.”

As Mezzasalma spoke, I trembled at the sound of his voice.

Deep…

Rumbling…

And completely unaffected by the murder he was recounting.

“Then one of those men – the one who fired the gun – saw me in the bushes.

“He walked over. I was alone. He could have easily killed me – no one would have ever known.

“Instead, he offered me a hundred-euro bill. It was more money than I had seen in my entire life.

“The man said to me, ‘You didn’t see anything. Capiche?’

“I took the money. I didn’t even say ‘thank you.’

“But as the man was walking away, I asked him, ‘Did you get paid to kill him?’

“The man turned around and looked at me… and he nodded.

“And I said… ‘How do I do what you do when I grow up?’

“The man smiled. ‘Come visit me when you’re older and we’ll see.’ He told me the town he was from, not too far from where I lived… and then he left. Do you know who that man was?”

I was terrified by Mezzasalma’s voice and demeanor…

But my date seemed bored by the theatrics.

“No,” he said flatly. “Who.”

“It was your grandfather, Adriano. Vito Rosolini.”