"That's one way to put it, yes."
"And you're just going to take that?"
Again I shrugged my shoulders. There were enough other things to do. Should I mourn the extra work? Well, some of it was fun, but I could get that for myself elsewhere.
"It won't last long. Natale needs me soon because of the protection money and Emilio is just pissed off because of the Frenchman." I could have elaborated further and explained what Vincenzo had said about the mere idea of doing business with France, but I let it go. It would just be too much of a good thing to inundate her with everything that concerned my daily life.
"So protection money, too," she opined. It seemed as if she was making a note of it and adding this new information to the list she was keeping.
"The only thing we're not involved in is trafficking in women and people," I ultimately revealed. It made little sense to make a secret of all the things anyway, if she found them out herself bit by bit or got to hear them from me after all.
"For some stupid reason, it’s very reassuring," Gia said, glancing at me.
So there was a difference in crime as well. Crimes that were perfectly fine, and those that were reprehensible. For me, it had always been clear that I was doing forbidden things– it no longer mattered whether it was trafficking in drugs or the murder of one of our enemies. It didn't matter if I was influencing an economic politician or destroying a real estate shark's livelihood. All of it was criminal. To me, there was no difference between terrible crimes and not-so-bad crimes. To me, they weren't even they were my everyday life. It was just what I did. What I lived on.
"Believe it or not, that still gives you a certain level of honor. Those who sell people deserve nothing less than death in my eyes." Gia's statement sounded harsh, but she was right. Just thinking that this was what had happened to Flavia– my brother's girlfriend– made me swallow hard.
The entire case still haunted her and us, as some weekends we would meet to follow up on more leads or arrange for more payments to surviving dependants who had never known what had happened to their own child or wife, sister or mother.
For a few weeks, we had even tried to find the gravesites of all these women, but in the end it had been impossible without causing too much of a stir. So the graves remained, but no longer anonymous, instead marked with a small wooden cross. Flavia had searched out the graves all over Italy and had commissioned some of our men for abroad.
It was a kind of peace, not only for the dead but also for Flavia herself, who had lost her sisters to this merchant ring, and her parents, because they had been the ones to sell their daughters.
I nodded at the thought of all this. In the end, I could only agree with her. "Emilio is pretty ruthless with that kind of offense."
"What about the men who lose their lives to you?"
I thought of the games that I frequently organized and from which I always emerged as the winner. It was the case that the loser ceded their life to me. Not that I killed them. I just let them destroy their entire life until they had nothing left. No family ties, no relationships and then I gave them a new job, a job that benefited my family and me. There's a reason we have a whole cadre of henchmen and contract killers who had nothing else to do but wait for an order from me.
Emilio's empire did not run itself. We needed loyal men. People who had nothing left so that they would do anything. Emilio didn't know how I acquired these men. And that was just as well, because he wouldn't have approved and would have put a stop to my practices faster than I could have defended them.
Well, we all had our dirty little secrets, didn't we? As long as he remained unsuspecting, I would continue my games and deny any rumors should they ever come up. Even if it was false, and meant lying to my brother, I had no problem with that.
"He knows nothing about that. And if I have my way, he will never know about it either. These men are loyal and do not lead a terrible existence." Emilio, however, would scorn the very fact that I was playing for something as significant as a life, and raise the question of who got involved in the first place and how I came to play God in this way.
These games were always fair. I was not a cheater. I couldn't help the nervousness of my opponents, and it wasn't my fault if they chose games they did not know how to win.
If they won, they got precisely what they had asked for. I didn't rip anyone off, and I didn't earn back my winnings afterwards.
"He won't find out from me," Gia assured. "It still makes me curious."
"Casimiro is one of those who lost. You can ask him about it the next time you see each other," I suggested, even though he had been born into a mafia family. For whatever reason I had to prove to her I was not a wicked man in this respect.
It shouldn't matter how she saw me or what she thought of me.
"When will I see him again? Well, I miss having someone standing next to the door and monitoring me. When you feel like it, you can have a quick conversation and when you want your peace, he keeps quiet. That's good cohabitation if you ask me."
"I'll let him know you were fully satisfied with him."
"Very nice." A yawn accompanied her reply. "And now I'm going to visit my bed before I fall asleep here."
Gia opened the door.
Truly, I wouldn't have minded having her asleep in my passenger seat, because that would have meant continuing to have her in my sights. Besides, I had never gotten to have sex in this car before, and with Gia in my immediate vicinity, it wouldn't have taken long for it to happen.
"Until next time,micina," I said, putting a very special emphasis on the pet name.
For a moment, I remembered how Gia reacted when I used it while deep inside her, teasing her even further with words because I just couldn't get enough of hearing her. Or seeing her enjoy sex with me and everything that came with it...no matter how new it was, even if she had to bleed for it.