Page 59 of My Dark Fairy Tale
After my weekly security brief with Ludo, I was even more on edge.
When I had taken over the outfit, I had moved our focus from trafficking mostly drugs to prioritizing imitation products. The counterfeit trade was a wildly lucrative market with huge audiences in Asia, Europe, and America, and none of the other clans had monopolized it yet, so it was rife for the dominating. In the last four years, we had made over €250 million from that part of our portfolio alone. It seemed everyone wanted knockoff designer handbags and garments. Since we’d opened five factories run by Clan Riva and Clan Burette in Lombardy, our profit margins had doubled.
So why was Ludo reporting that the anti-Mafia police force was looking at the Camorra for the influx of street drugs through the port of Livorno?
“When was our last drug shipment?” I asked, tossing my pen to the leather desktop in exasperation.
Carmine and Renzo were both in attendance, too, the former seated beside Ludo across from me and the latter standing by the window with his arms crossed.
“Over a month ago. We were finishing out our agreement with the Albanians. We’re scheduled for one last delivery in two weeks, but with the DIA looking into us, it’s a risk,” Carmine admitted.
“Porca puttana,” I cursed, driving both hands through my hair. “How the fuck did this happen?”
“The Albanians?” Renzo suggested. “I know Carmine said they didn’t seem aggrieved about finding someone new to work with, but they’re fucking crazy. They could have turned rat out of bitterness.”
“No,” Carmine argued. “Yeah, they’re nuts, but they’ve got their own sense of honor, same as us. Ratting on a former business partner is just not their style.”
“Are you only saying that because you’re sleeping with Drita Hoxha?” his older brother asked with raised brows.
“Fuck you,” Carmine snapped, but before they could get into it, I raised a hand for silence and waited until I received it.
“Not the Albanians,” I mused, chewing over my thoughts. “But who are they working with now that we have cut ties?”
When no one answered, I sighed. “Fine. Ludo, find out who they have moved on to. I do not like any of this. Why have we had relative peace for years, and now we have police interest in Livorno, which will fuck up our counterfeit production and transportation, an assassination attempt on me in Roma, and what?” I looked at my tablet. “Three cyberattacks on three separate holdings. Whoever our enemy is, he knows too goddamn much about our business.”
“A traitor,” Ludo said baldly.
The silence seemed to echo around those words.
I flashed back to first carving that word into the forehead of one of my father’s enemies and wondered if I would be forced to do the same again.
“Signore Romano?” My housekeeper, Signora Angelucci, knocked on the door. “Signora Imelda Sabitini is here.”
“Let her in,” I ordered.
Imelda appeared in the doorway looking unusually haggard, her salt-and-pepper hair collected into a haphazard bun and her mouth pulled taut and pale like stretched taffy.
“What has happened?” I asked, moving to take her arm and help her to the empty chair between Ludo and Carmine.
She sat and let out a shaky sigh. “Mario caught someone in the laboratory last night. He will be okay, but they hit him over the head with a gun.”
“Why am I finding out about this now?” I demanded.
“Be calm, Raffa. It has happened before that someone comes sniffing around to learn our secrets. You do not become one of the top wineries in this country without inviting espionage.”
“Yes, but this is a pattern,” I muttered as I shared a quick glance with mysoldati. “These are obviously not isolated incidents. They are coming at us from all sides, trying to sense where we are weakest.”
I checked the brief Ludo had emailed me again and noted that in the last month, ten of our top-grossing vineyards had been victims of either attempted cyberhacking or on-site breaking and entering.
That wasnotnormal.
And it lent itself to the growing picture I was puzzling together.
Someone was coming for Clan Romano, which could only mean someone wanted to becapo dei capifor themselves.
I thought through the most dominant families in the region and concluded that three of them were the only real threats.
The obvious choice was the Pietra clan, which had feuded with my family over control of Tuscany for decades before they’d killed my father and I had, in retaliation, killed their patriarch and two eldest sons. The détente had lasted almost half a decade, but perhaps they had regrouped enough to make a serious comeback. Renzo and Carmine had urged meto wipe out the entire clan, but my life outside the Mafia still lingered in my soft tissues and made me weak.
