Chapter 2 - The Red-Eye SpecialBy two o'clock in the afternoon, the park had given way to an upscale Italian trattoria in Little Italy, where the owner practically kissed the cobblestones beneath Alessandro's shoes out of sheer, unadulterated terror.
The restaurant was empty. Every table had been cleared. The chef himself was sweating through his white apron as he served a plate of plain buttered noodles to a three-year-old girl who was currently feeding her plastic doll a meatball.
Maria sat across from Alessandro, her hands folded in her lap. She hadn't touched her food.
"You're not eating," Alessandro noted, cutting his veal with clinical precision.
"I’m... I’m not hungry, Signore," Maria replied, her voice trembling slightly. "Mr. Moretti, we should go back. I’m grateful, truly I am, but... Bianchi. Everyone in the city knows what Bianchi does when he's insulted."
Alessandro paused, his knife hovering over the plate. He looked up, his dark eyes locking onto hers with a piercing intensity that made the air in the room feel heavy.
"Bianchi is a loud man," Alessandro said softly. "Loud men build empires of glass. When the wind blows hard enough, glass shatters."
"And you?" Maria asked before she could stop herself. The sheer audacity of the question hung in the air like smoke. She gasped, pressing a hand to her mouth. "I am sorry—I didn't mean—"
"A stone," Alessandro finished for her, a faint, humorless smile touching his lips. "Stones don't break when the wind blows, Maria. They just wait."
Before Maria could process the warning, the heavy wooden doors of the trattoria banged open.
Marco stepped inside immediately, his weapon cleared from its holster before his foot hit the second tile. Behind him, flanked by four men in tailored gray suits, stood Tony 'The Razor' Rossi. Tony was a man who looked like he had been put together by a butcher—thick neck, broken nose, and a smile that looked like a scar across his face.
"Alessandro," Tony purred, walking right past Marco as if the right-hand man were nothing more than a coat rack. "The Don is sitting downtown like an abandoned dog waiting for his master. And we find out you’re here... eating pasta with a maid and a brat?"
Sophia stopped feeding her doll. She looked up at the large, intimidating man with the broken nose, blinked once, and slid her chair an inch closer to Alessandro’s arm.
Alessandro did not stand up. He did not even put his fork down. He took a slow sip of water, dabbed his mouth with a crisp white napkin, and then looked at Tony.
"You have a very loud voice, Tony," Alessandro said, his tone dangerously quiet. "And you have a very bad habit of walking into places where you haven't been invited."
Tony smirked, leaning his palms down onto the mahogany table. "The city doesn't wait for a tea party, Moretti. Bianchi wants answers. Now."
Alessandro raised two fingers.
In a fraction of a second, the double doors of the kitchen flew open. Six Moretti enforcers stepped out, their silenced firearms leveled with absolute, terrifying synchronization at the chests of Tony and his four men.
Marco didn't shout. He just cocked his pistol. The metallic click echoed like a death knell through the empty restaurant.
"You have three seconds, Tony," Alessandro whispered, his voice dropping an octave, "to walk back out that door, get into your car, and tell Salvatore that I am busy."
Tony’s face lost its color. He looked at the barrels, then at Alessandro’s dead-eyed stare, and finally down at Sophia, who was calmly offering a noodle to her doll.
May you like
"This isn't over," Tony spat, backing away slowly. "Bianchi’s patience is running out."
"Tell him," Alessandro replied, "to buy a better watch."
