Chapter 1 - The Blood Debt of Prizzi
The silence in La Cattedrale was not merely the absence of sound; it was the sudden drop in atmospheric pressure before a strike of lightning.
Dante Gallo’s hand remained frozen an inch above the polished mahogany of table four. His jaw was set like carved granite, his dark eyes fixed upon Nora with a mixture of disbelief and lethal curiosity. Behind him, Angelo—the taller of the two bodyguards—had already opened the lapel of his tailored jacket, exposing the matte-black holster of a Kimber .45. Across the room, Paul, the floor manager whose promises were as cheap as his polyester vests, pressed himself against the pantry doors, his face drained of every drop of color.
Salvatore Gallo did not blink. His ancient, heavy-lidded eyes, the color of wet river stones, bored straight through Nora’s mended collar and down into the marrow of her bones.
“Pietro Rossi,” the old man murmured. The name sounded like gravel being turned over with a rusted spade. He did not speak in the harsh, testing bark he had used moments before. His voice had dropped into a register of profound, reverent disbelief. “Pietro... the blacksmith’s son from the upper ridge of Prizzi.”
“He was no blacksmith in America,” Nora said, though her throat was so dry the words felt like broken glass. She kept her chin lifted, refusing to look down at Dante’s drawn, menacing figure or the deadly steel hidden beneath Angelo’s jacket. “He cleaned grease off freight trucks in Jersey for forty years. But he carried Prizzi in his mouth until the night he stopped breathing.”
Salvatore slowly pushed his silver-handled cane forward, leaning his frail weight onto it until the rubber tip squeaked against the Italian marble. His knuckles were swollen with arthritis, bearing a heavy gold ring stamped with an archaic crest—two wolves circling an olive bough.
“Dante,” Salvatore whispered without looking at his son.
“Papa,” Dante said, his voice low, velvet-smooth, and vibrating with controlled menace. “Step back, Nora. Move toward the kitchen. Now.”
It was the first time Dante Gallo had ever spoken her name. For seven months, she had been a shadow in a black apron who refilled his San Pellegrino and cleared his espresso cups without ever looking him directly in the eye. Hearing her name roll off his tongue—deep, resonant, and dangerous—sent an electric chill racing down her spine.
“Did I tell you to speak, Dante?” the old man snapped, his tone crackling with sudden, ferocious authority. He did not take his eyes off Nora. “Look at her face. Look at the bridge of her nose. The eyes. She has the mountain stare. The ones who look at wolves and refuse to cross the street.”
Salvatore reached out with a trembling, spotted hand. Nora instinctively pulled back half an inch, but the old man’s fingers did not strike; they hovered near her cheek, trembling with an emotion that looked terrifyingly like grief.
“In 1968,” Salvatore said, speaking in that melodic, ancient Sicilian dialect that made the room feel centuries away from the Manhattan rain outside, “three men came to my father’s house with shotguns. I was twenty-two, stupid, and cornered in the wine cellar. It was Pietro who barred the door from the outside with his own shoulders. He took two buckshot blasts through the wood into his back so that I could climb out through the cistern.”
Nora felt the breath leave her lungs.
Her grandfather’s back had been a map of purple, puckered scars. Whenever she had asked about them as a child, while applying the medicinal ointments that never quite soothed his chronic pain, Pietro had simply laughed his dry, coughing laugh and told her he had fallen into a briar patch while chasing goats.
“He disappeared three nights later,” Salvatore continued, his voice dropping lower, thick with ancient ghosts. “They told me he took a boat from Palermo. They told me he was dead in the harbor. I searched for him for fifteen years, until the graves of our enemies grew cold and the trail turned to dust. And all this time, the blood of Pietro Rossi was carrying dirty plates in my son’s restaurant?”
Salvatore turned his head slowly, leveling a look at Dante that could have stripped paint from iron.
“You let Pietro Rossi’s blood scrub your floors?”
Dante did not flinch, though a subtle muscle ticked beneath his sharp cheekbone. “I run twelve establishments in this city, Papa. I do not review the family trees of every banquet server hired by middle management.”
“Then you are blind,” Salvatore said coldly. “A man who does not know who walks behind his back will eventually find a knife between his ribs.”
The old man turned back to Nora. The mocking disdain that had prompted his initial insult—the test he routinely gave to the terrified staff who catered to him—had vanished completely. In its place was something far more dangerous: a profound, immovable sense of debt.
“How long did Pietro suffer?” Salvatore asked.
“Two years,” Nora whispered. She thought of the hospital bills, the collections agencies that called her at four in the morning, the second mortgage on her grandfather’s tiny, crumbling row house in Queens, and the loan sharks who had begun loitering near her subway stop when the bank refused her last credit line. “The cancer started in his lungs. Then his bones.”
“And you?” Salvatore’s eyes swept down her body again, lingering on her cracked leather shoes and the hem of her trousers that she had hemmed by hand with mismatched black thread. “Who helped you bury him?”
“Nobody,” Nora said, and for the first time, her voice broke slightly, though she instantly bit her inner cheek to punish herself for the weakness. “I buried him where he wanted. Facing east. In St. Michael’s cemetery.”
Salvatore closed his eyes for three long seconds. When he opened them, the fragile, ailing patriarch was gone. In his seat sat the man who had ruled five boroughs with an iron fist for thirty years before passing the mantle to his ruthless son.
“The debt is open,” Salvatore declared softly.
Dante stiffened. “Papa, this is not the time or place for old-world theater.”
“Every place is the place for honor, Dante!” Salvatore slammed his palm down onto the linen table with a force that rattled the crystal stemware. The entire dining room jumped. At table nine, a city councilman spilled his Chianti. “Without Pietro Rossi, you would not exist. This empire would not exist. We would be bones rotting under the limestone of the Madonie mountains!”
Salvatore pointed a gnarled finger at the chair directly opposite his own.
“Sit,” he commanded Nora.
Nora looked at the velvet-cushioned seat, then at Dante.
Dante Gallo was looking at her now, really looking at her. He took in her pale skin, the wild curls of dark auburn hair pinned back with cheap plastic combs, and the fierce, defiant posture she maintained despite trembling from head to toe. There was something dark and possessive brewing in his gaze—not just the shock of his father’s revelation, but the realization that this girl, whom he had passed a hundred times without a second thought, was suddenly the center of gravity in his world.
“Sit down, Miss Rossi,” Dante said quietly, his voice carrying an underlying command that was impossible to disobey. “Before my father has a stroke on my finest tablecloth.”
Nora did not move. “I am on the clock, Mr. Gallo. And Paul will dock my pay.”
At the back of the room, Paul let out another wheezing whimper.
A razor-thin smile touched Dante’s lips—cold, sharp, and mesmerizing. He turned his head toward the pantry doors where the manager stood trembling.
“Paul,” Dante said, his voice barely louder than a whisper, yet it cut across the cavernous room like a gunshot.
Paul practically fell over his own feet as he scrambled forward, bowing so low his forehead nearly touched the table. “Y-yes, Mr. Gallo? Mr. Gallo, sir, I can get another girl to take over right away. Carla is free, she—”
“You are done,” Dante said smoothly.
Paul blinked, his face turning gray. “Sir?”
“Pack your belongings. If I see your face on this block after midnight, Angelo will escort you to the river to see if your shoes float. Get out.”
Paul didn't even ask for his final check. He turned and sprinted toward the service exit, leaving the heavy swinging doors shuddering in his wake.
May you like
Dante looked back at Nora, his dark eyes glittering with dangerous amusement. “Your schedule appears to be clear, Miss Rossi. Please. Take a seat.”
***