Page 11 of Niccolo

One who can match me – and maybe even best me – in the Game.

6

The second-worst day was when I realized that everything we had – everything my father and uncle had built – was actually just a house of cards, easily knocked down by a strong gust of wind…

And that my brother Dario was going to have to pay the price for it.

Not long after I turned 23, a disaster shook the foundations of the family business.

A Florentine police detective named Scordato – who wasnoton our payroll – stumbled across our operations during a completely unrelated investigation.

He’d been looking into embezzlement at a construction firm hired by the city. While he was poking around their finances, he discovered a suspicious series of payments in their ledgers. Whatever genius did the company’s bookkeeping had listed the money underPoliticians.

Scordato started turning over stones and found all sorts of nasty things underneath. One thing led to another, and soon he nabbed Luigi Rivera, a bagman who worked for us delivering payoffs to politicians and judges.

Scordato arrested him with 200,000 euros stuffed into a brown paper bag.

When questioned as to why he had that much money, Rivera had said,I don’t trust the banks.

That wasn’t nearly enough to get him off the hook.

The politicians had covered their tracks well enough and had plausible deniability.They’re just political donations!they cried.

But judges weren’t supposed to receive outside payments fromanybody.

Scordato went after the judges with a vengeance. He worked with a young prosecutor in Florence who was gunning for the top job ofProcuratore della Repubblica– basically, the District Attorney of Florence – and who, unfortunately, was also not on our payroll.

Soon the entire city was abuzz with scandal.

Judges being paid off!

By shadowy organized crime organizations, no less!

The day it all came tumbling down, Uncle Fausto called Dario and me into the study. By that point, we were both deep into our apprenticeships as future don andconsigliere.

The mood was dark. Papa looked angry and defeated as he sat behind his desk.

“Well,” he said, “Rivera cracked.”

Shit.

Our bagman had agreed to testify against us.

“Did he name names?” I asked.

“Not yet,” Papa said. “Our guy on the inside says they’re waiting on approval from the higher-ups for the deal to go through. Once that happens, he’ll start giving them names.”

I felt like I might vomit. “Didn’t we get word to him that we’ll take care of him if he stays silent?”

“Scordato basically tortured a confession out of him,” Uncle Fausto said. “That was the stick. Combined with the carrot of immunity from prosecution, well…”

SHIT.

“Are we going to make sure he can’t testify?” I asked.

Everyone understood exactly what I was asking:

Are we going to kill him?

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