Chapter 3 - The Cold Marble of the Pool Terrace
Silvio clawed at Dante’s forearms, his manicured nails scratching uselessly against scarred muscle, his eyes bulging into bloodshot spheres as his breath choked off.
“Dante... wait... it wasn't just me!” Silvio gasped, his voice a reedy whistle through his crushed windpipe. “The Commission... the Five Families wanted the digital sports books centralized! You were blocking the offshore transition! They said if you wouldn't take the payout, you had to be managed!”
“Managed,” Dante repeated softly.
He didn't strike him. He simply shifted his balance onto his left foot—feeling the cool stone through his thin leather soles—and twisted his hip, driving Silvio’s back into the solid rim of the fountain with a sickening, wet crunch.
The gold Patek Philippe tore from Silvio’s wrist, clattering across the wet flagstones until it hit Toby’s boot.
Toby picked it up. He tapped the knurled crown against the stone until the casing popped open, revealing the microscopic lithium cell and the tiny directional antenna soldered directly to the watch’s escapement.
“He pressed it every fifteen minutes, Mr. Santoro,” Toby said, holding up the exposed circuit. “Whenever the big hand reached the twelve, he tapped the side. That's when your toes would curl.”
Dante’s gaze did not leave Silvio’s graying face.
“Dante, please!” Silvio wept, tears cutting through the bronze foundation makeup on his cheeks. “We grew up on 14th Street! Your father gave me my first crew!”
“My father gave you a crew because he thought you were an earner, Silvio,” Dante said, his voice flat as an empty desert highway at midnight. “He didn't know you were an electrician who traded in broken spines.”
He let go of Silvio’s collar.
The lieutenant slumped onto the wet tiles, gasping for air, vomiting bourbon and bile across his trousers.
Dante turned his back on him, walking with steady, unhurried strides back toward the center of the terrace.
He stopped in front of Toby’s mother, Rose Quinn, who was still kneeling by the catering doors, her face buried in her apron, shaking with the terror of a woman who expected a firing squad.
Dante bent down.
He reached out, took her red, detergent-burned hands in his own, and pulled her gently to her feet.
“Get your apron off, Rose,” Dante said softly.
“Don Santoro... please, he’s only a little boy, he didn't mean to cause a scene—”
“I made a covenant in front of seventy men, Rose,” Dante interrupted, his deep baritone carrying clearly to every frozen mob boss on the lawn. “The Bellagio penthouse is cleared of Silvio’s belongings by midnight. The title deed is registered in your name before the county recorder closes today. And three million dollars in untraceable bearer bonds will be delivered to your kitchen table in forty minutes.”
Rose choked on a sob, her knees threatening to fold, but Dante held her upright with one iron arm.
He turned toward his chief of operations, Frank Morelli.
“Frank.”
“Don Dante,” the veteran soldier answered, stepping forward with his head bowed in absolute submission.
“Take Silvio down to the concrete counting vault behind the casino cage. Strip his clothes. Strip his rings. Strip his skin if you have to, but I want the name of the orthopedic surgeon in Zurich who took the money to insert that magnetic sleeve into my lower back.”
Frank nodded once.
Two armed operators hauled Silvio off the wet flags by his elbows, dragging his designer shoes through the spilled liquor, his pathetic, echoing pleas swallowed by the roar of the desert wind until the heavy cedar doors slammed shut.
Dante turned his cold gray eyes onto the seventy casino captains sitting around the table.
May you like
“The signing is canceled,” Dante said, his voice dropping into a register that made the hair on the back of their necks stand up. “Pick up your drinks, gentlemen. The King is back in the pit.”
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