His Mafia Prince
Chapter 284: Do or Don’t

Chapter 284: Do or Don’t

{TYLER}

Having Clemenza over for dinner on a Thursday night is not my idea of a great time, but the situation in back here is becoming exponentially dangerous. The city is on a knife-edge, the tension making its way all over.

So on Thursday night, having recovered from our jet lag, we invited Lou Clemenza to dinner. It took a lot of negotiating and sweet-talking, but in the end, he agreed.

On his arrival, Sasha’s bodyguards patted down Clemenza, and Clemenza’s bodyguards patted down Sasha and swept the formal dining room for any stashed weapons.

"No one wants to pat me down?" I pouted, fluttering my eyelashes at Clemenza’s biggest bodyguard. He made a visceral face of disgust, and Clemenza actually laughed.

"I’ll do it," muttered the second guard. "Keep the fuckin’ peace."

Once everyone was satisfied, Sasha and I entertained Clemenza privately in the dining room, just the three of us. Meanwhile, the Clemenzas made nice with the Adonises in the sitting room closer to the entrance.

My takeaway from this night so far is that Clemenza is angry. He ate angrily, drank angrily, and made angry small talk. I said nothing and smiled sweetly whenever he glared at me. I acted every inch the perfect Mafia Wife, because I knew it would piss him off even more.

Sasha sat through the whole dinner with his lips slightly curled in the suggestion of amusement.

"I must say, Don Clemenza," my husband says now, "you’re very exercised by this business deal I’ve made. It’s perfectly legal."

"It ain’t the legality I object to," Clemenza growls. "And you fucking know it, Sasha. That company is three centuries old and is important to my Family!"

"Then you should have made that clearer to your business partners in Italy. Or had contingency plans in place."

"Oh, yeah? Like your father had contingency plans? Look where he is now."

My hands clench beneath the table. That was a direct fucking threat.

But Sasha remains calm. "I can’t help it if it suits my purposes to break up that company. It will be very profitable for me. If it hurts you, your investors, you need to get better financial advice. I can give you the name of the firm I use—"

"You must think you’ve done your father proud," Clemenza snarls. "Is that right? Well, perhaps you have. Yes, I think Martino would be pretty proud of himself, seeing what you’ve done to the city. To the Adonis Family."

"I like to think he would," Sasha replies mildly, ignoring the bitter twist to Clemenza’s words. "But Lou, let’s put your feelings about finance aside for the moment. There’s something more important that I want to discuss."

Clemenza barks out a laugh. "More important? What could be more important than—"

"Your life," I tell him, because I can’t help myself any longer. "Your life, Don Clemenza, is hanging in the balance. Has been, all night."

Clemenza’s rheumy eyes have swum from Sasha to me and back again.

"You gonna let this kid speak to me like that, Sasha?" Clemenza asks. For a moment, I get a glimpse of the man he once was, the most feared Mob Boss not just here but on the whole East Coast. I can see in those wet red eyes exactly what he’d do to me if he had the chance.

Sasha bangs a fist down on the table, making both Clemenza and me jump along with the silverware. But when he speaks, his voice is still calm. "You will respect my husband, Don Clemenza, or you will regret it."

"Your husband just threatened me!" Clemenza struggles to his feet. "You invite me into your home—you show me hospitality—" He’s spluttering so hard I wonder if he’s going to just stroke out and save us some time and trouble.

But then I get it. He’s just playing a part, the same part that has suited him since Sasha came to power: a doddery old man, no threat to anyone. But he’s been working hard to undermine the Adonises for a long time. Since before Sasha became Don.

He’s a little like me in some ways, Louis Clemenza. He likes to appear harmless.

"Sit down, Lou," Sasha says, relaxing back in his chair.

We wait, and Clemenza eventually reseats himself, but there’s a wariness to his face that wasn’t there before. "I think it’s time we all laid our cards on the table," Sasha continues. "I know that you’ve been working against me for some time. I know, for example, about your attempted hit on my lawyer. I know about your plant in the law firm, feeding you information." He leans forward, his voice soft velvet. "I know you were there the night I got shot. And I know you helped."

Clemenza snorts. "That’s bullshit, Sasha. Murphy and I we had our differences, sure, but he was a good man."

"He was a great man," Sasha corrects him. "Sometimes I think that’s more important than being a good man, in this city at least. He reshaped the business in many ways. Didn’t he?"

But Clemenza is still stuck on Sasha’s accusation. "I had nothing to do with what happened to you!" he protests.

I take out my phone and scroll through it. Without preamble, I hit play on the video of Peter, his son, and Clemenza caught on the side of the street, which Sasha has sent to me, and I play it for Clemenza. Sasha watches him unblinkingly, but Clemenza just stares at the video with an expressionless face.

"Looks to me like they died relatively happy," is all he says. "Would that we could all expect the same."

"I don’t think you’re paying attention to the right thing," I tell him. I play a portion of the audio again, putting my hand over the video so he can concentrate only on what is being said. I hit stop again and raise a questioning eyebrow.

Clemenza shakes his head, brows creased as though he’s puzzled. "I don’t know what you want me to say," he says. "It’s a terrible thing Peter and his son did that night, but he did it without permission from me. Any of my guys who were there, they went out on their own."

"I’ll play it one last time for you."

I see the moment when Clemenza realizes what he’s supposed to be listening for. His eyes grow hooded, and his fingers clench into fists. He might be an old man now, but those fists are the same ones that beat men to death in his youth. If he still had his strength or his gun, he wouldn’t hesitate to attack me.

Or Sasha.

Clemenza is definitely nervous now. And when Sasha and I stay silent, waiting, he knows, at last, that he’s in trouble. "What’s going on? Why are you two staring at me like that? What the hell’s going on?"

"What’s going on, Don Clemenza," Sasha tells him quietly, "is retribution."

"Huh?" He’s blinking rapidly, sweat trickling over his wrinkled forehead. "What retribution? You trying to give an old man a heart attack?"

"That’d be the easy way to go, wouldn’t it?" I observe. "No one ever got the easy way out. Neither will you."

"I told you," Clemenza insists, "that business had nothing to do with me."

"But you heard it, didn’t you?" Sasha asks. "Because it certainly sounds like you there in the background. ’Let me down there, I want to kill that motherfucker myself.’ That’s you, isn’t it?"

"That ain’t me."

"Of course it is," Sasha chuckles. "And I know for sure, Lou, because you shot your mouth off to the wrong man." He leaves space for a response, but Clemenza just looks mutely back at him, sheer hatred in his eyes, undisguised. "You’ve been bragging to the wrong man about the fact that you planned an attack on me and used those two Irish idiots to take me down and take the blame," Sasha goes on. "You thought you were untouchable after they disappeared—"

I have an unbidden flash of memory.

"—and you thought I wouldn’t find out about your role. But you were wrong, Lou. You were wrong."

"Angelo was a liar!" Clemenza shouts. "You can’t trust anything that comes from his sources! He’d been telling me all about your business, things he shouldn’t—"

He breaks off as Sasha smiles.

"I didn’t say it was Angelo," he points out. "And yet you knew exactly who I meant—which means you must remember having that conversation."

Clemenza bares his teeth in a snarl. "You can’t do this, Sasha. You do this, the Commission will have your head."

Sasha sits back again in his chair with a sigh. "Well, I can’t deny, you have me there, Lou. I’ve spoken to the Commission about you, and they agreed with me that your time is over."

Clemenza’s face goes gray and slack, his forehead beading with sweat. "Unfortunately," Sasha continues, drawing circles on the tablecloth with his fingertip, "they refused to permit me to eliminate you. The Commission was not entirely convinced by my evidence. Big Gee, in particular, spoke up for you."

The Giulianos have always had the Clemenzas’ backs.

Sasha had agreed to compromise, for the sake of stability.

Clemenza is smirking now, relief making him bold. "Damn right," he mutters. "No evidence at all, you got nothin’ on me."

"However," Sasha says, and Clemenza stops smirking. "The Commission has grown tired of your games, Lou. So our decision is this: you’ll step down as head of your Family. You’ll get the hell out of the city, and if you know what’s good for you, out of the country. You’re officially retiring, Lou. Congratulations."

Clemenza takes it in, rubbing a finger over trembling lips. "And if I don’t?"

"If you don’t, I have their backing to remove you myself. Permanently."

That was the only outcome of the meeting I was happy about. If Clemenza refuses to step down, the Commission have granted Sasha permission to execute him, personally, for the good of the city as a whole.

I really, really hope Clemenza will refuse.

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