Luzo: Reign of a Mafia Don (11 page)

Ernesto hung up just as the door opened. Alberti spotted him and with few breaths recant what happened and then said, “Papa I need you help!”

“If she is engaged Alberti, then there is nothing I can do.”

Distraught his son pleaded. “Por favore…I need to see Sabrina…I need to hear this from her. I will walk away papa…I swear but I cannot walk away until I am sure this is what she wants!”

Ernesto nodded. “Give me a moment,” he said and then climbed the stairs to his bedroom. He went inside the closet, lifted a treated floor plank and retrieved his weapon. After loading the gun, he went to the bedroom, placed it atop the walnut comodini, where he reached inside for the ring. He stared at the solid gold jewelry with the Serano crest. This was his father’s ring. After the murders he had put it away. The years had passed and on occasion he forgot about the item. For some reason today, he longed to hold it.

He slipped it on.

Alberti Luca was a Giacanti.

A Protezione must aid La Famiglia Giacanti.

Today he was not a father.

Today he was una Protezione.

Ernesto returned downstairs with the pistol concealed beneath his crisp new shirt.

“We take your automobile, it is faster. But, do not arrive by the main entry. We will use
la strada sterrata
which will bring us to the fields behind the property, capisce?”

Alberti’s features transformed from a jilted youth to a determined man. “Sí, papa let us go, ora!”

***

“Signore Carlo Dichenzo?” The heavily accented voice asked.

Carlo leaned forward on the desk. His secretary went for lunch, leaving phone duty to her employer. Snowzer was busy inspecting the fleet of sanitation trucks manufactured with the latest hydraulic technology as the skeletal staff he hired underwent operational training.

He had yet to receive a collection contract, thanks to Casentini’s monopoly. His patience had grown thin. Luzo had called this morning with an assurance the territories on the outskirts of Palermo would soon be his. But Carlo did not appreciate hand-outs, he had other plans.

“Sí, this is Signore Dichenzo.”

“I am calling from the Italian Consulate on behalf of a Sophie Mila Serano, do you know anyone by this name?”

Carlo tensed. He had not seen Sophie since last year. He had heard she was in America. That is all anyone knew. If Ernesto knew more he had not shared, nor had Carlo pried.

“Sí.”

The news of Sophie’s arrest brought Carlo to his feet. Apparently, she had been injured during a violent protest and his chest beat rapidly at the thought of Sophie in distress.

“She has asked only for you. She implores you do not speak of this to anyone.”

Once Carlo copied the information, he immediately contacted a charter company to arrange a private plane. His next call was to his fratello. “I must leave on urgent business for a few days. I will call upon my return.”

“Can I be of assistance?”

“A list of clients will suffice. I have staff whose salaries must be covered.”

“That I will take care of. You will have business, prometto!”

“Grazie. We talk soon.” Carlo seized his hat and hurried out of the office. The secretary had returned from lunch and received a series of orders and then her boss
exited.

He must go to America.

Sophie required his aid.

CHAPTER
TWELVE

The gun was at Signore Deguardino’s head. He was told to place his hands atop
the desk by the man pressing the barrel to his ear. The degenerate boy had returned with his father. Deguardino swallowed fear, The Butcher had broken into his home. Urine warmed the front of his pants, sliding down his leg, it began to pool in his shoe.

“Where is your daughter?” Ernesto asked.

“She is not here.”

“That is obvious. Stand up!” Ernesto ordered. “You will take us to where she is.”

The man shivered. “You do not understand. She is engaged. I have an obligation.”

“You will take us or I will sever each limb until you acquiesce, capisce?”

Signore Deguardino recognized there was little choice but to oblige. With a gun at his back, he followed Alberti out to the car.

He was pushed, in the
rear seat and forced to sit with a killer as the son drove like a maniac down the rocky hill. He gave directions, as Alberti sped around curves, jerked the occupants forward and back when he had to stop to avoid collisions with an obstruction he had not anticipated, a person or car, in that order.

Signore Deguardino fumed; that is all he could do.

After an hour of a youth’s reckless driving they arrived at the secluded estate and Alberti leaped from the car, running to the door.

Ernesto gripped Deguardino’s throat. His large hand squeezed. “If you mention this to anyone I will come in the night and slice you open like a pig. Now get out!”

There were large red welts around Deguardino’s neck when Ernesto released hold. Deguardino coughed and stumbled out the small car, looking back many times over his shoulder as Ernesto followed. Alberti’s pounding was finally answered by an unhappy housekeeper who met them with screams.

“Sabrina has taken the bambini and locked herself in il bagno. She is not well Signore, she is not well!” The panicked woman wailed.

Alberti did not wait for the  distraught staff to lead the way. He found the stairs and took them in pairs, his mind did not grasp this talk of bambini or illness, only Sabrina’s name.

She was here…she was here.

He pushed open doors until he finally arrived at a shuttered room. He knocked and the voice on the other side shouted, “Vai via!

Alberti would not go away. He spoke to the door. “Sabrina, it is Alberti, por favore open the door
bella.”

“Lascia…you cannot have them. I know who you are. My father has told me…you cannot have the bambini!”

This talk of bambini, what madness. And then he understood.

Ernesto had reached the door. With a kick the hinges splintered. Wood banged hard on a wall
, and inside was a girl leaning over the tub with beautiful wide eyes.

In
side the porcelain bowl for humans were babies, floating face down in a deadly swim, except neither cried.

Neither
infant kicked.

Alberti was horrified and then anger rose. He rushed forward, plucking a child from the water,
pushing Sabrina over to do it as his father ran to his aid and snatched the other child as he bellowed. “Santo!”

The babies limp bodies
were cyanotic skin; a sickly sight to the eyes of anyone, even a seasoned murderer.

Save them…save my bambini, is a young father’s plea as he breathed into the small lungs.

Breathe.

Together with a killer father...life
’s oxygen was returned to the innocent as a mother wailed insanities.

Alberti’s life was forever changed.

The disturbed young woman screamed, “
You cannot have them…they are corrupted by your poisonous blood. They must die…they must die!”

The love he sheltered for Sabrina transferred to his sons.

He did not hate Sabrina; pity is all that remained.

***

Sadness clung to the lovely face. The vibrancy that once exuded from the passionate girl was absent in the woman sitting quietly beside her childhood friend. She could not stay in America. Her deportation was swift; this was her second crime and she was thus barred from entering the country henceforth.

Carlo had come.

He had sat on the benches. Then he was escorted by an armed immigration officer out of view to a room that she could not see. There he had talked with a judge, money was exchanged and Sophie was allowed to go free. Carlo had paid to escort her to Italy on a private plane and not the commercial aircraft for deportees.

They were in a rental car, heading away from the southern city when he softly asked, “Were you hurt donna?”

Sophie’s proud spirit broke in a million pieces. Tears released simply from his question and Carlo pulled off the road to comfort her. She cried on his chest, shaken and desolate by the many days of ill treatment. Was she harmed, she thought? Sí, horrible people had tried to break her spirit. She told him in sobbing whispers of
Miriam and the vile words said to her. They spit in her food and treated her like a dog but she refused to break.

But, now she was safe.

Carlo had come.

Furious, he wiped her tears with his monogrammed handkerchief. He spoke to her in calming sentences. “There is a motel near the airport. We will go there until night. I will find these men and each will die a horrible death, but I must know their names, do you recall?”

“Sí, I will never forget. Sheriff Harrison and Deputy C. Rogers were on their name tags.”

“Bene…bene. I will find them.”

Sophie’s lovely eyes lifted. “Grazie Don Giacanti. Grazie…grazie.”

He cupped her cheeks. Carlo’s hands felt rough against her soft skin. He wanted to tell her his heart but suppressed his selfish desire to talk not of love but duty. “You must never speak that name again Sophie. Anthony Giacanti died as a boy. I am Carlo Dichenzo now. What I do is what an honorable man will do to cowards who
believe law gives license to abuse a donna. We are famiglia and I commit no crime. I ask mercy from the saints and forgiveness that I will kill with elation for your protection. Pledge to me Sophie Mila Serano you will never disclose who I am or what you see tonight to anyone, even the priest?”

Her full lips parted. Carlo wanted to kiss her then, but restraint is best when a woman has endured far more than he could ever comprehend.

Sophie said, “I vow Don Dichenzo, death will not break my silence.”

“Bene,” he said and then released her. He stopped at a convenience store to buy clean bandages for her wound
s and a T-shirt and overalls before checking in at a nearby motel under the name Tony Black.

He had seen the name in a book and figured what the hell. By morning he and the donna will soar over the Atlantic and he would have avenged his love’s pride.

CHAPTER
THIRTEEN

Luzo stood in the center of the floor. His angry voice was raised by several octaves in chastisement. The young brother facing him down had the fiery countenance of their mother, may she rest in peace. He had arrived when informed about the situation with Sabrina Deguardino. The girl’s father was indebted by large sums to the Mangenini’s. His gambling debts were exorbitant and the daughter, through investigation was known to be unwell. A malady of the mind that medication could not cure, yet this is the girl Alberti impregnated during a romp in a flower garden and called it love.

“You will never see her.
That is my order fratellino!”

“I cannot desert her when she is sick,” Alberti countered.

“We will deal with the father. Payment will keep his silence but you must stay away from her. Did this incident not show you the danger of being in close proximity?”

“In the most trying of times a man who says he loves will suffer trials.
But, love requires forgiveness and not abandonment when empathy is needed most!”

Luzo recoiled. “What philosophical nonsense!”

“Nonsense perhaps to an incompetent gardener, who tends the decrepit weeds, neglects the flowers and fails to give water to blooming affections.”

Angered by Alberti’s poetic insults, Luzo seized his brother’s arm
and brought him close to his barreled chest. “Silenzio cazzo, and do not speak to me of boyhood crushes in romantic gibberish. The girl is insane. She tried to kill your blood, my nipote. She is the daughter of papa’s enemy and engaged to a family that detests who we are. You are a love-struck fool who has thrown away reason and created justifications that you drink and then spit out like a simpleton. Stay away from her Alberti, that is my order, capisce?”

“You return after years
of luxurious living and seek to
order
me about fratello. I am of maturity. You are not our father. He died along with our beloved mama and sisters. Where were you then or when I needed you fratello…why did you wait so long to come back…why did you come back at all…I do not want you here…you are not my brother Salvatore…he died!”