Chapter 27

Mafia Kings: Valentino: Chapter 27 The pilot announced over the intercom that we’d be landing in Palermo in 15 minutes. Between the crackling of the speaker and his Sicilian accent, I could barely understand him.

Niccolo came over, sat down opposite me, and buckled up.

“You can literally sit anywhere else in the plane,” I snapped, gesturing at the empty seats around us.

“Not if I want to talk to you.”

“Well, I don’t want to talk to YOU.”

“Good, you can just listen. That’ll make it shorter.”

“Niccolo – ”

“Shut up. This might be our last opportunity to talk by ourselves, and you need to know what you’re walking into.”

I stared at him. “What do you mean, ‘what I’m walking into’?”

“Sicilians aren’t the same as other families in the Cosa Nostra, and you haven’t been around any of them long enough to know the differences.”

“Papa was Sicilian,” I pointed out.

“Nonni and Nonna were from the old country, yes,” Niccolo said, using the words for ‘grandfather’ and ‘grandmother.’ “But they had Papa after they came over. He was raised in Tuscany, and he married a girl from Florence. He was always more Tuscan than he was Sicilian.”

“But – ”

“I need you to be quiet and listen, alright? We don’t have much time.”

“If it was so fucking important, why didn’t you talk to me before?”

“Because you were being a snot-nosed little punk.”

“Fuck you.”

“Valentino, this is a direct order from your consigliere, and it holds the same weight as an order from your Don: shut the fuck up and listen to me.”

Niccolo wasn’t playing around.

I grumbled, but I didn’t say anything else.

“Sicily was conquered repeatedly throughout the last 2500 years. The Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs, the French, the Spanish – every few hundred years, the island changed hands.

“This led to a streak of fatalism amongst Sicilians. They’re a proud people, but they’re a conquered people. There’s a sort of...

underlying attitude that there’s nothing they can do about their fates.

“That’s the environment that gave rise to the Cosa Nostra. The mafia was able to flourish because it was a bunch of men who said Fuck it and decided to take control of their destinies – and everyone around them just accepted it as inevitable, something they couldn’t do anything about. That is, until the Cosa Nostra finally took it too far, the civilians had enough, and the cops and judges started jailing everybody in the 1980s.

“The most far-sighted families of the Cosa Nostra started spreading into the rest of Italy long before that. They were secretive about it, but they built their power bases outside Sicily.”

“Like Nonni,” I said.

“Like Nonni,” Niccolo agreed. “And the other families in the Council, too.

“But here’s the thing: Sicilian mafiosos are old-school. They’re brutal. They rule with an iron fist, not the velvet glove. And they are not afraid of death.

“They’re also exceedingly proud. That’s why I told you never to question a Sicilian’s integrity. That wasn’t just some cute bullshit I was throwing around.”

“So you’re saying a Sicilian never lies?”

“No – but you know how when we make a promise, we swear on the things we cherish the most?”

It was true. In the Cosa Nostra, if you took an oath on the life of your children, your wife, or your family, you were making a blood oath. If you swore on something important and then went back on your word, you were basically calling down ruin on yourself and risking the deaths of everyone you loved.

Superstitious, maybe...

But we all believed it deep down in our bones.

“That comes from the old country,” Niccolo said. “If a Sicilian makes a promise to you and swears on something he considers holy, that’s a promise he’ll never break. To do so would be an infamia. Other Sicilian gangsters – his allies, not just his enemies –

would kill him on principle alone because he can never be trusted again.”

“Fascinating,” I said sarcastically. I was still fucking pissed at him. “Why are you telling me all this?”

Niccolo leaned forward, and the expression on his face was intense. “Do NOT make any promises to a Sicilian you don’t intend to keep. Because if you go back on your word... they’ll fucking kill you for it.”

A shiver ran up and down my spine.

I could tell Niccolo was deadly serious.

But all this talk about promises made me think of something.

“Why does Don Vicari even need an arranged marriage?” I asked. “Is his daughter hideous or something?”

Bad enough I’d had to leave Caterina...

What if I had to marry some chick who looked like Gollum?

“I doubt it,” Niccolo said nonchalantly.

I knew enough Niccolo-speak to realize he was trying to skirt around the truth.

“But you don’t know,” I pressed.

“No, it’s true, I haven’t ever seen her – but I doubt it.” Niccolo smirked. “She might not be up to your usual standards, but I’m sure she’s a perfectly ordinary girl.”

“Then why hide her? Why not bring her to any of the weddings?”

“That’s another thing about Sicilians: they’re intensely protective of their women. Intensely. Don Vicari’s probably been hiding her away, waiting for the right opportunity to make the best match.”

“A match that’ll benefit him,” I said sourly.

“Of course. I already told you, that’s the entire reason for an arranged marriage: to build alliances between families.”

“Then why not build alliances with other families on Sicily?”

“If I had to guess, I’d bet it’s because he already controls all of Sicily, and now he wants to expand his power base and branch out.”

“Then why us? We’re in the middle of a war, and we’re kind of losing. We’re not exactly the best family to make an alliance with.”

Niccolo smiled grimly. “Don Vicari is not looked upon kindly by the mainland families of the Cosa Nostra. They think he’s too violent, too... unsophisticated.”

“A country bumpkin.”

“Never use that term around him. Never, not even as a joke,” Niccolo warned. “Yes, the Sicilians aren’t quite as worldly as some of the other families... but they’re ten times deadlier. Just remember that.”

“So basically what you’re saying is, we’re the only ones desperate enough to strike a deal with him.”

“More or less.”

Fuckin’ GREAT.

My brothers were auctioning me off like a goat to some bunch of hick psychopaths, and their daughter probably had a unibrow.

Then I thought of something.

“Wait a second,” I said. “Mezzasalma was Sicilian.”

Mezzasalma was the guy who’d wiped out the Agrellas in Florence – and nearly killed Adriano while he was at it.

The only reason we’d finally gotten him is because he kidnapped Bianca. While Adriano and Massimo were chasing them, she yanked on the wheel of Mezzasalma’s car and wrecked it like the fucking badass she was.

“Yes,” Niccolo agreed, “Mezzasalma was from Sicily.”

“What if Don Vicari had something to do with Mezzasalma trying to kill us?!”

“I asked that already. He swore on his dead wife’s soul that he knew nothing about Mezzasalma’s plans. Don Vicari says he gave Mezzasalma the green light to leave Sicily and strike out for new territory on the mainland, but he says he had nothing to do with Mezzasalma targeting the Agrellas – or us.”

“And you believe him?” I asked incredulously.

“Dead wife’s soul,” Niccolo reminded me. “Not a lot of things you can swear on that are more serious than that.”

“Unless he fuckin’ hated his wife.”

“Again, do not make jokes like that around Don Vicari,” Niccolo ordered. “Ever.”

“I wasn’t going to,” I protested angrily.

“Actually, his dead wife brings me to my final point, and it’s something that’s not usually acknowledged – even by Sicilians.

Especially by Sicilians.”

“What?” I asked, curious.

“Sicily is actually a matriarchy – and the Sicilian Cosa Nostra even more so. It looks like a patriarchy on the surface, what with men doing all the killing and keeping a tight lid on their women... but at the end of the day, Sicilian mothers rule their sons. Wives don’t rule their husbands, usually – but mothers do. Their influence is subtle, but it is absolute.” Niccolo shrugged. “Not something that’ll necessarily be useful to you, and I would never mention it to Don Vicari unless you want a swift kick in the balls... but it’s something I’ve seen play out in my dealings with Sicilians.”

“You mean watching Fausto’s dealings with Sicilians,” I said sarcastically.

Niccolo had basically been Fausto’s apprentice for years before the old bastard betrayed us.

“Yes,” Niccolo said, annoyed. “Watching Fausto’s dealings with Sicilians.”

“Fausto’s a full-blooded Sicilian,” I pointed out.

“But he grew up in Tuscany, too, just like Papa.”

“Yeah, but he betrayed his family. That’s something only the most cold-blooded asshole would do.”

“Well, good thing we’re forging an alliance with the Sicilians, then.”

“Why’s that?”

Niccolo smiled grimly. “Because it might take a few Sicilians to kill a Sicilian. Oh – one more thing.”

“What?”

“You might be harboring some delusion that you’re going to change Don Vicari’s mind. Maybe you think you can piss him off juuuuust enough that he’ll call the whole thing off.”

I put on my best poker face and said coldly, “I wasn’t thinking that at all.”

Niccolo smirked, and I knew then that he knew the truth. The fucker was a genius at reading other people’s minds.

“Well, in case I’ve inadvertently planted the idea in your brain – don’t. I assured Don Vicari that you would go along with the agreement. I said you wouldn’t like it, but that you’d go along with it for the sake of the family. He agreed to overlook your lack of enthusiasm.

“But if you try to sabotage the deal – if you do something to piss him off or make him think that I lied to him – then there’s a good chance neither of us will walk out of the meeting alive.”

I swallowed hard.

Niccolo could really sell a scary story when he wanted to.

“So you’re saying he’s some kind of evil mastermind?” I asked.

“Not in the way that you mean. From what I know about Don Vicari, he’s not particularly clever. He’s not a strategist. He’s a two-

dimensional thinker and, as a result, has many blind spots. His consigliere is rumored to be the brains of the operation.

“What Don Vicari is, is ruthless. Brutal. He has an iron will and the resolve to do whatever the fuck he sets his mind to. Which is why I want him on our side, and why I wouldn’t want to face him as an enemy.”

“But you just said he’d kill us.”

“What I said was that if you try to sabotage the deal or make him think I lied to him, there’s a good chance neither of us will walk out of the meeting alive.”

“He wouldn’t kill us,” I sneered. “He wouldn’t dare start a war with Dario.”

“Besides the fact that he already knows we’re in a war with Fausto and we’re not exactly winning, there’s one last lesson I have for you,” Niccolo replied. “Don Vicari’s a Sicilian, and Sicilians don’t give a fuck. So, whatever you were thinking of doing... don’t.”

Then he closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the seat as the plane started to descend.