Killer's Mark (Barone Syndicate #1), page 2
“It’s my family I’m embarrassed of,” I say, grinning at Mateo and taking another sip from my cup. He’s right. I’ve always kept my relationships close and quiet from the family. I like to keep my relationships and my family separate.
“You want to sign this?” Mateo asks, tossing a card across his desk.
“What is it?” I ask.
“It’s the card I’m sending to the Bratva. Our condolences. It seems that Evsei Novikov died in a car accident.”
“You’ve always had a sick sense of humor,” I tell Mateo. He’s the one that ordered the hit on Novikov.
“And you’ve always enjoyed it,” he replies.
I toss the card back to his side of the desk. Mateo looks at me with a serious look.
“How was it?” He asks. “How do you feel about the last job?”
“Fine,” I reply. It seems like Mateo is getting at something else. He doesn’t usually ask me how I’m feeling after I’ve assassinated someone. Or ever.
“You know,” he looks at me. “This one was a bit different. A car accident.”
Ah. I know what he’s thinking. Mateo and I have never really talked about his mother’s death. He was with her when a driver ran her down on the sidewalk and then drove away. We’ve talked about everything else, but we’ve never talked about this. I’m not sure I want to.
“It was fine. It was the best option,” I say, looking down at my cup.
I don’t look up again until I hear Mateo lean back in his chair. There’s a newspaper sitting on his desk. I recognize the headline, having read the article this morning. It’s about the bakery fire in Devil’s Pocket. It was a dispute on our border with the Irish Mafia. It captured a lot of attention from authorities, including the District Attorney.
“How’s Raf handling it?” I nod to the newspaper.
“Surprisingly well. The Irish are fucking pissed,” Mateo says.
“Yeah, well. You knew that would happen when you started pushing into their territory.”
“Raf says he’s got a plan,” Mateo adds.
“Sounds like he’s got that real leadership quality you’re looking for. Someone to possibly take your place when you take your father’s spot as Boss?”
“Well, I’ve got to find a good leader somewhere.” Mateo leans forward with his elbows on his desk. He starts counting people off on his fingers. “Damien barely wants any role, never mind Underboss. Dario’s… Well Dario’s Dario. Give him a few years and we’ll see. You?” He gestures to me. “Have you changed your mind?”
“I’m good at what I do,” I say.
“Knocking people off?”
“Yes,” I answer. “And I’m not good at what you do.”
“Bossing people around?”
“No, being a pain in our ass. What about Raine? She’s not on your list? You don’t think she’s got leadership potential?” I ask.
“She’s got more potential than anyone,” Mateo says. “But you know how Leo is.”
“Traditional?” I offer.
“That’s a nice way to put it. I don’t think he’ll ever let us train a girl to be Underboss. Not as long as he’s Consigliere.”
A buzz comes from the phone on Mateo’s desk. He looks at the screen, then pushes a button.
“Hey, can you go meet Raf at the elevator?” Mateo gestures to the hall outside the door. “Make it look formal. Make him sweat a bit.”
I down the last of my coffee and set the cup on Mateo’s desk as I get up. “Like I said, you’re good at what you do.”
Raf proposed that we could temporarily cool things down with the Irish by offering them something they wanted. Normally, we’d never offer such a thing, but Raf’s suggestion would benefit us as well. He said that we should assassinate the District Attorney. Or that I should assassinate him. That we could negotiate with the Irish for a ceasefire while we get rid of the DA. It would also buy us time stockpile more weapons and be ready for the real fight with the Irish.
He's got a point. There’s no reason we should fight the Irish and the DA at the same time. I like to give Mateo shit, but he never lets his ego get in the way of a good strategy. It’s what makes him a worthwhile leader. He doesn’t care if the Irish think he’s showing weakness if it means he’ll come out stronger in the long run.
And even if the Irish know we’re up to something, they’ll agree to a ceasefire to get rid of the District Attorney. Every mafioso in Philadelphia wants this District Attorney gone. The Irish don’t need to know how we’re going to get rid of him. We like to keep my role in the Barones a secret.
I start researching Richard Nicoletti right after the meeting with Mateo and Raf. It’s a bit trickier with such a public figure. The kind whose death would cause headlines and ensuing investigations. Public figures like this are hard to get access to without being noticed, so it’s crucial it looks like an accident.
Tonight, I’ve come to the Philadelphia Ballet Theatre’s performance of La Bayadére to observe Nicoletti. There aren’t a lot of places that he consistently shows up, but his daughter is a dancer for PBT, and so far, he’s come to every closing show.
I stand outside the theater entrance, watching to see if he’ll show up. I’m sure anyone that sees me just assumes that my date has forced me to take her to the ballet and I’m waiting for her.
It’s getting close to call time, when District Attorney Richard Nicoletti and his wife get out of a black car in front of the theater entrance. He seems like someone who’s being dragged to the ballet. Like he’d rather be anywhere else. His wife is equally dull. They both look as if going to see their daughter in a ballet is a chore.
I let a few people enter after them before I follow. The usher tears my ticket and gives me directions to my seat. I pretend to listen, but instead follow the Nicolettis up to the balcony. As we climb the stairs, the lights slowly flash and a bell rings, signaling to the attendees to finish up their pre-show drinks and make their way to their seats.
The influx of patrons keeps the ushers busy. I grab a program off a stand and head to a row of empty seats at the back. A seat at the aisle gives me a decent view of Nicoletti and his wife as they get to their seats in the front row of the balcony.
Tonight is not the night I kill DA Nicoletti. This is just research. The ballet is one of the few predictable places that I can expect him to be. This is the last performance of the season, but I also know that his daughter is featured in the summer showcase in a few weeks. I know Nicoletti will be there, too.
I’ll be watching the Nicolettis probably more than the ballet. A theater like this isn’t great for staging an accidental death. But it’s not the worst. There are a lot of other people to account for. You have to target the accident to the right person in a crowd of thousands. But if you do it right, there’s almost no suspicion of foul play.
Nicoletti’s front row balcony seats are season tickets, so I know where he’ll be sitting. My first thought is he could fall over the rail. But the first thought is usually the most obvious. And usually the worst. It’s predictable and hard to stage. And in this case, much too dramatic.
For now, I’m just watching what he does throughout the night. Does he head to the bathroom alone? Does he go backstage after the show?
The orchestra begins to play, and the curtain rises. A few men dressed as warriors enter the stage. I open the program to try and make out the synopsis in the dim light. I’ve never actually seen La Bayadére before.
I haven’t been to see a ballet since I was a kid. I feel an odd tightening in my chest as I remember how magical it was sitting in a dark theater, hearing the orchestra and waiting for the dancers to appear.
Fuck. I didn’t anticipate these feelings. I thought I was over it.
When I was two years old, I was abandoned. Nobody knows anything about my biological parents. I don’t remember anything from that time. Domenico Barone found me sitting in an alley behind one of his clubs. He took me home to his wife Marguerite and they took care of me while they tried to find out who I belonged to.
They had a son the same age as me, Mateo. I guess we got along from the start. Like brothers. By the time Domenico and Marguerite realized they weren’t going to find my real parents, they’d gotten used to me being around. They tried having me stay with another couple one night and I guess Mateo threw a fit. They brought me back and raised me like one of their own from then on. We have three younger siblings, too: Damien, Raine, and Dario.
Domenico is now the Boss of the Barone Syndicate. Mateo is the Underboss and will always be the heir. That’s fine. It suits him. Domenico’s uncle Leo is the Consigliere, the Barone’s head consultant. He started training me before I was a teenager, preparing me to take over his role as Barone hitman.
But Marguerite took me to the ballet. None of her other kids, including her daughter Raine, were ever interested in going. But I liked it. I enjoyed having time to spend with Marguerite, just me and her. She was kind and made me feel like she was really my mother. I looked forward to our trips to the ballet together.
She always got us seats close to the stage. There’s something about the way my thoughts are flowing now that reminds me of her. Sitting in a dark theater with the live music, watching the shapes shift and melt, creating patterns in space that disappear moments later. I realize how similar it is to the way my mind works when I’m waiting for a target. But my chest feels tight. I feel like I have to force myself to breath. I feel… anxious.
I don’t think I ever really understood the stories very well, but I enjoyed trying to piece together my own while I watched. I even took ballet classes until I was 12.
That’s when a car jumped the curb of the sidewalk, striking Marguerite while she was walking with Mateo. She died in the ambulance ride to the hospital. She and I were supposed to go to a ballet that night. This is the first time I’ve been to one since then.
I stopped taking ballet and stopped going to see them. Domenico would have let me keep taking classes, but it wasn’t the same without Marguerite. Part of why I loved it was sharing it with her.
I see DA Nicoletti get up from his seat and shuffle up the aisle to the balcony exit. People don’t normally get up during a performance. There’s intermission for that.
I follow Nicoletti but keep a distance between us. He heads down the balcony stairs to the lobby. I follow. The stairs are wide, but twist down to a landing. The final flight of stairs leads from the landing into the lobby.
The stairs are steep and carpeted. The building is old, built well before the International Building Code dictated how deep steps needed to be to make them safe. It’s surprising how much a small change in stairs can mess you up. You can take a flight of stairs and make one step just a quarter inch higher than all the rest and one out of five people will get tripped up by it. Not enough to injure them, but enough that they need to grab for the rail.
I’m sure there have been accidents on these steps before. They’re steep. The carpet is beautiful, with intricate patterns that make it hard for your eyes to distinguish each step. But they’re old and ornate enough that nobody would want to change them, even though I’m sure people slip often. In the right circumstances, someone could trip and die.
I see Nicoletti at the other end of the lobby when I get to the bottom of the stairs. The lobby is empty, most of the ushers have taken a break or gone in to watch the performance.
Even the bar that Nicoletti approaches at the other end of the lobby is empty. He bangs on the counter and calls for service. When a bartender arrives, Nicoletti orders a drink. I turn behind the stairs and head to the men’s room so that Nicoletti doesn’t see me.
After a few minutes in the restroom, I come back out. Nicoletti is swirling the last of his drink in a tumbler. Maybe a scotch. The lobby is so empty that I have to head back up to my seat to avoid any suspicion.
A couple of minutes later, Nicoletti returns to the balcony and heads back to his seat. He’s a bit slower, slightly unsteady even. Maybe he had more than just the one drink.
We don’t think about taking out every District Attorney. Nicoletti is particularly unfriendly to organized crime. He makes a lot of claims, gets a lot of headlines, most of them about how he’s tough on crime and not afraid to take on the mob. He’s as dirty as every other politician, maybe dirtier. He pretty much runs his own organized crime made up of mid-level politicians and corporate dealings. So, I get why he doesn’t like the competition.
The house lights fade up in the balcony as the intermission begins. I busy myself looking at the program until Nicoletti and his wife have reached the stairs heading to the lobby. I follow them, again from a distance, watching for any further vulnerabilities.
This time, the lobby is packed. It’s easy enough for me to keep an eye on Nicoletti and stay hidden in the crowd. Nicoletti has another couple of drinks before the lights flash and the chime rings for the rest of the performance.
4
GINA
I stand at the wings of the stage, waiting for my cue. I check that my headpiece is securely bobby-pinned to my hair. I turn to Lexi, just behind me. She smiles and gives me two thumbs up. I force a smile back at her.
I can’t help but wonder if my mother and father have come to tonight’s show. They have season tickets to Philadelphia Ballet Theatre. It’s the last night we’re performing La Bayadére. This is our last show of the season. My parents always come to the last show in the run. I could always count on that. But the argument I had with my father today makes me wonder if he’s too angry to show up. Will he still be here to support me?
My dad has been hounding me to find a real career since I finished high school four years ago. I graduated a year early, and right out of high school I joined PBT. I know my father would rather I went to college followed by law school. He’s the District Attorney for Philadelphia. His father was the Chief Justice of Pennsylvania. He’s made it clear that he wants me to follow in those same footsteps, even though I’ve never shown any interest in becoming a lawyer. Sometimes I wish I had a brother or a sister, just so maybe they would become the lawyer and my father would leave me alone.
Today my father asked me if I was going to be promoted from corps de ballet to soloist. I told him I didn’t know. The company didn’t plan to make any announcements until after the season was over.
He told me that if I didn’t make soloist, I’d have to quit dancing and find a real job. I teach a few pilates classes as well, but he doesn’t think that counts. Not that he knows anything about the dance world, but my father thinks four years in the corps means I have no future as a dancer. He told me that it was cute when I was younger, but now I should give up my “hobby” and do something worthwhile.
I blew up on him. He shouted back. I don’t think either of us heard any of the other’s words through all the yelling. But the anger was clear. My mother said nothing and stayed out of it. As usual.
Thinking back on our fight, I wouldn’t be that surprised if they didn’t come tonight. Still, I’d be upset if they didn’t. I may be in the corps, but I’m not invisible. And right now, I need to focus.
The music from the orchestra says it’s about time for me to enter the stage. I take a deep breath, lift my head, and drop my shoulders.
When I hear my cue, I step out onto the ramp and into the stage light. The audience applauds as I raise one leg straight behind me into an arabesque. They aren’t necessarily clapping for me. They know this scene. It’s The Kingdom of the Shades, part of the second act of La Bayadére.
I take two steps down the long ramp as Lexi steps out behind me, matching my movement exactly. I step onto my back foot and point my front foot to the floor in a tendu, then another arabesque. Thirty more corps members will follow us. As the lead, I’ll perform this sequence 39 times during our entrance. It’s repetitive, but it creates an absolutely stunning effect.
La Bayadére is about a temple dancer, Nikiya, who is in love with a warrior, Solor. The High Brahmin falls in love with Nikiya, but she rejects him. So the Brahmin plans to destroy Solor. Nikiya ends up dying (spoiler alert) and Solor takes a bunch of opium where he dreams of being reunited with Nikiya.
That’s what this scene is. The Kingdom of the Shades is Solor’s opium hallucination where he sees 32 copies of Nikiya. We’re all dancing in unison in his drug-addled mind. In the end, Solor is to be married and the gods destroy the temple during the wedding. In death, Nikiya and Solor are reunited.
Like most ballets, the story is a bit out there. A prince falls in love with a girl who was turned into a swan (Swan Lake). A guy falls in love with a life-size doll and the creator of the doll wants to steal his soul to put into it (Coppélia). Or a broken toy takes a girl to the land of sweets (The Nutcracker).
The stories are not my favorite parts of ballet. It’s the choreography. It’s the way the stories are told through dance and movement. I love the choreography of La Bayadére. My dream isn’t to become a soloist or a principal in the ballet. I want to be a choreographer.
My mind loves to choreograph as much as my body loves to dance. I love to get lost in every little detail of movement in a performance. I love designing movements to tell a story, evoke an emotion, and accentuate the music all in one. I’m almost finished with my piece for PBT’s summer showcase. I can’t wait to see my vision come to life on the stage.
Before I even realize it, the scene is over. It’s like my mind shut down and my body took over during the performance. I barely remember it, but the feeling is strong. As I exit the stage, the sound of the applause boosts my spirits for a moment.
I hope this wasn’t my last performance. I can’t even imagine not dancing anymore. Will I really have to leave?
5
LUCA
