The Maid Was Fired In Front Of The Mafia Boss—His Next Order Silenced The Room

Chapter 31

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“I don’t want your offer.”

“You haven’t heard it.” Vittorio came back toward the chair and sat down in it, crossing one leg over the other, a man settling in. “I have accounts you don’t know about. Ships. Ports. Three banks in two countries. I have men in your company, in your security, in your house. I have been running this family for fourteen years while you were learning to read a balance sheet.” He tilted his head. “I don’t want the city. I never did. I want to be left alone to run what I run. You want your mother’s memory and your own conscience. I can give you both.”

“How?”

“Give me the ledger,” Vittorio said. “Burn it. Tell the world your uncle is a ghost and a liar and a thief. Bury your mother again, properly, with a nice stone. And I will give you everything I have in Chicago — the docks, the routes, the properties, all of it. You’d be the most powerful man in this city before Christmas.”

Dante looked at him.

“And if I say no?”

Vittorio’s smile did not waver.

“Then I’ll tell you what I told your father,” he said. “The night before he died.”

The room was very still.

“He came to me,” Vittorio said, “because he thought he could negotiate. He was a good man, your father. Not a smart one. He said he would go to the police, and I said, do you know what happens to your son if you do? And he said, you wouldn’t. And I said, I would, and he looked at me for a long time, and then he went home.” He spread his hands. “And he didn’t go to the police. And he died two years later of a heart attack in his own bed, still believing he had protected you. That is what I am offering you, Dante. A long life. A quiet one. The kind your father had.”

Dante looked at his uncle.

Then he looked at Allesia.

She was standing at the edge of the light, holding the satchel, and she was not looking at Vittorio. She was looking at Dante — waiting, watching, deciding whether the man she had spent three days with was the man she had begun to believe he was.

Dante turned back to Vittorio.

“No,” he said.

Vittorio’s expression did not change.