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Last chapter, only the epilogue left.
“Astra Pagliuca.” Blue Eyes Patriso tipped her head up with the butt of his .44 magnum automatic beneath her chin. “How you doin’?”
She licked at her lips, tasted blood and something with a faint chemical aftertaste. Ran her tongue over the inside of her mouth, flinching where she encountered cuts left behind from her teeth. “Been better,” she said thickly, and spat out a mouthful of blood at Blue Eyes’ feet. He didn’t even blink. Good for him. “You?”
“Actually really good at the moment, thanks for asking.” He shoved a thick lock of salt and pepper hair out of his face. “It’s good to see you awake, Astra. For a while there I was afraid I’d hit you too hard.”
Astra tried to move her arms, couldn’t, and realized she was handcuffed to a chair. Joy. Blue Eyes was just full of tricks today, wasn’t he. “Well, you know us Pagliucas. We got good hard heads.” She glanced over Blue Eyes’ shoulder, saw her brother handcuffed to another chair with his face pale and strained. There were bruises, old and new, blossoming on his high cheekbones.
“You’re bleeding a bit, though,” Blue Eyes continued cheerfully. “From the ear.”
She shook her head, and immediately regretted it as a brass band started out somewhere in the depths of her brain, accompanied by a faint cymbal like ringing in the background. “Great,” she said flatly. “Just fucking great. Inner or outer?”
“A little of both,” Blue Eyes said.
“Great,” she said again, shot another look at Darin. He jerked his head, very slightly, at the door.
She was handcuffed to a fucking chair. What the hell did he expect her to do? Darin must have caught sight of some of her confusion, because he shook his head, nodded at her. Astra blinked at him. Darin sighed.
Blue Eyes misread her facial expressions entirely, because he nudged her throat again with the automag and said thoughtfully, “You know, I didn’t recognize you at first; I thought maybe I’d have to kill you.”
“Goody,” she said, deadpan. “Because being dead would be so much worse than being handcuffed to a fucking chair in fucking Staten Island in your fucking house.”
“You won’t be handcuffed much longer,” Blue Eyes said. “When my assassins kill the Commission –”
“You’ll pat Darin and me on the head, tell us to go take care of our family, and let us go?”
“Your sense of humor is, as always, obnoxious, ill-placed, and insolent.”
“I’m glad you’re amused,” Astra said. “Because at least one of us should be. I’ll go schedule my comedy tour in the Berkshires, shall I?”
“When my assassins kill the Commission –” Blue Eyes said again.
“– they’ll instantly become the subject of a witchhunt by the Families,” Astra said. “And you. We can’t forget you. You engineered this whole fucked up thing, and they’ll kill you for it.”
He ignored her, and tilted her chin up with the gun again. “I’ll legitimize my claim on the position of capo di tutti capi by marrying you,” he said. “After all, I’ll be the only surviving boss. It’s a pity these things happen, but you just have to soldier on, you know?”
Astra glanced at the door a few feet from Darin, and thought she saw the handle move ever-so-slightly. Chances were it was just another of Blue Eyes’ men – but there was a chance – the text message had been a last desperate attempt, when she’d been crammed in a closet filled with enough weaponry to conquer a small country with the echoing sound of Blue Eyes and Johnny West’s feet coming inexorably toward her.
Would Ace come? Would Val Constantine even bother?
“Okay,” she said, throat dry. “We’re going to ignore the fact that you’re old enough to be my father for the moment, and get straight to the what the fuck are you thinking? You think the Families are fucking dumb, Patriso? Well, here’s a newsflash for you: we’re not. And even if you kill the Commission, there are still the consiglieres and the streetbosses, and the heirs, and the caporegimes, not to mention all the damn made men. You really they’ll all take one look at you and bow down? No fucking way, pal. Besides,” she added with grim fervor, “the first time you try to fuck me, I’ll kill you. Or myself. And then where’ll you be, huh?”
Blue Eyes smile. “Any minute now,” he said, “Any minute now, the Commission will declare me don of the Patriso Family, and once they do that –”
“Actually,” a faintly familiar feminine voice said, “I don’t think they’ll be doing that. Not after they hear how you’ve been arrested for kidnapping the boss of all bosses’ kids.”
Blue Eyes whirled, raising the gun.
“Oh, I wouldn’t do that,” a very familiar voice said. Ace Aciello moved sleekly past the two NYPD detectives, a .45 automatic in his hand. “All I want is one reason to shoot you, Patriso. Just one. I got witnesses for it to be nothing but self-defense.” He brushed the barrel lightly against his lips. “You know this gun, Blue Eyes? This is the same one that did for Whackjob. How ‘bout that, huh?”
“That was my father’s idea,” Blue Eyes said coldly. His eyes flickered toward Stella Bonasera and Mac Taylor. “You gone and turned on us, Aciello? Went and made yourself a traitor? That’s a walking death sentence, it is.”
“I’m not here for the NYPD,” Ace said, in the same conversational tone. “I’m here for Constantine. Who you’ve royally pissed off, by the way. Val’s not all that happy with you, ya know. You tried to frame his consigliere for murder.”
“Constantine,” Blue Eyes snorted. “Constantine doesn’t give a fuck about the Families, everyone knows that. They’ll get their piece, when –”
“Yeah, Blue Eyes?” Ace said. “What am I doing here, then?”
“He’s got you there,” Darin said, his voice scratchy and a little hoarse.
“Drop the gun, Mr. Patriso,” Stella Bonasera said. “Drop the gun, slide it over here, and put your hands behind your head.”
“What makes you think I’m going to do anything of the sort?”
“Because if you don’t,” Ace said, “I’m going to shoot you. Through the kneecaps, one by one. Then in the balls. And then I’ll turn you over to the nice detectives here, and then you can spend the rest of your life in jail – short as it’s going to be, because you really think the Commission’s gonna take it all that well when they find out you were gonna have ‘em knocked off? I don’t think so.”
“You’re too late,” Blue Eyes said. “The Commission –”
“– is really, really pissed off at you. Say what you like about the Mafia, but they really don’t take assassination attempts real well. Come on, Marco, where do you think Val and Carmine are right now?”
Blue Eyes froze, and Astra kicked him in the back of his left knee. He yelped in pain and stumbled forward to his knees, and Mac Taylor came forward and yanked the automag out of his hand while Stella put a hand between his shoulderblades and cuffed him swiftly and efficiently. “Marco Patriso, you are under arrest for two counts of kidnapping, as well as conspiracy in murder –”
Ace stood for a heartbeat with his gun on Blue Eyes’ forehead, then he pulled it back and flicked the safety on, holstering it at the small of his back. “Gotta key somewhere there, Taylor?” he asked, and Mac dug in Blue Eyes’ pockets till he produced a small silver handcuff key.
“How ya doing, Astra?” he said, kneeling down by her to unlock the handcuffs.
“My father –” she said, trying to shake feeling back into her wrists as they crossed over the room to Darin.
“The Commission’s safe,” Ace snorted. “From the Patrisos, at least.”
*
Back in the twenties the Christopher Caponigro Building had been a church, before it had been the Christopher Caponigro Building, been the secret headquarters of the Mafia Commission, before three capos and a don had been gunned down as they stood for Mass. St. Christopher’s, it had been, back in those gin-soaked roaring jazz days, back in the days before the Families and before the bureaucracy had taken up its hold even in the criminal underworld. Those were the days when men were men and thieves were gentlemen, when the same man that ripped off the state house and tipped bills into officers’ uniform pockets was the one that payed for your Thanksgiving dinner and your Christmas presents, showed up at your kid’s graduation and handed over a leather attaché case full of hundreds for their college fund, and then took the whole class out to get drunk on illegal vodka and imported wine. Giovanni d’Alessandro sometimes wondered what had happened to those days, when the Mafia had shifted away from that stuttering blurring combination of charity and thievery to the bureaucratic bloodsoaked bullshit they sat through now. Back in the old days it was simple. You’d hit a guy, he’d whack you, done with. Today they took you down, killed you slow, fucked with your whole family, the both of them. Dragged the Commission into every little complaint. Not even a war, not cause for one by anyone’s standards but the new Mafia, but two minutes of bickering could bring three Families and five Commission Families into direct conflict, kill dozens of people, civilians, associates, made men, leave the survivors wondering in the aftermath what the hell had happened. Back in the old days it had been all about the style; today it wasn’t the quality but the quantity.
When Salvatore Caponigro had been killed in the church that would later bear his son’s name, the current capo di tutti capi, whose son was a priest at St. Christopher’s, had taken control of the church, and the heads of the various families – not yet the Five Families, not yet Commission Families, not yet belonging to the Mafia Commission – had met there weekly for Mass, and afterwards, to discuss the fate of La Cosa Nostra as it had been then. Eventually the congregation moved to a different church, maybe hastened out by the sight of a good two dozen dangerous, well-armed men in sleek suits with plenty of cash to throw about, and Christopher Caponigro had purchased the building.
Giovanni glanced up at the rafters, and the organ and choir lofts above the pews. There were angels hidden there, tiny wings and halos tucked into the clean curve and grain of the wood, so that no matter which way you looked you were always surrounded. The features had been worn away by time and wear, but the smooth sweep of a wing, the line of a robe, still remained, waiting in the shadows. For a moment he thought he saw something move up ahead, thought maybe the light had caught the gleam of metal, but when he looked again there was nothing there.
At the head of the long wooden table that had taken the place of the pews on the left side of the church Nicky Pagliuca was sitting, wearing a black suit and a tie in Pagliuca colors and looking extremely tired. Every few minutes he raised his hands to rub at his eyes, and every time he did his brother (and underboss) turned to look at him, worried. There were small murmurs going around the table, as dons exchanged worried words and underbosses flicked their eyes around the room with their hands in their pockets. The two seats at about the center of the table reserved for the Patrisos were empty, and the hole in the midst of the Commission seemed to bleed threat.
Something’s going on. Something bad.
Not just the death of Frederico Patriso and Sammy Marione, although that was a suspicious hit if there ever was one. That wouldn’t account for the strain in Nicky’s gray eyes, or for the rumors that had been flying around the underworld for the past week, about Darin Pagliuca’s disappearance and the attempted hit on Astra Pagliuca, about Blue Eyes Patriso’s plotting and Joey Sforza’s arrest. And the phone call Carmine had given him, not half an hour ago, and his words spitting pidgin Italian and English. He was Constantine’s man, always had been, ever since he and Val Constantine had met thirty years ago, and no matter how much Giovanni might hate that his youngest son had given his loyalty to another Family, to a non-Commission Family, he had to trust that Carmine knew exactly what he was talking about.
After a few minutes, the murmurs going around the table died down, and Nicky Pagliuca raised his head, licking at his lips. “By the power vested in me as capo di tutti capi by the Five Families of New York’s La Cosa Nostra,” he said, and looked despairing, “I hearby call this emergency session of the Mafia Commission to order. Let each Family sound off their presence.”
“Rocchegiani is here,” Vito Rocchegiani said.
“Lancione is here,” from Danny di Bonaventura
“Dellacroce is here,” Luca Dellacroce said.
“Pagliuca is here,” said Nicky quietly.
There was silence, and then Nicky said, formally, “Who stands for Patriso?”
Another beat of silence.
“Then in the name of the Mafia Commission, I move that the first order of business –”
“Don Nicodemo,” Giovanni said, and suddenly found himself the focus of seven startled Mafioso. He swallowed, and thought of Carmine’s earnest voice. I don’t trust you, he thought, but I hope to God you know what you’re doing, Constantine. “A request has been – conveyed – to me from a certain don, and he would like to discuss this matter in front of the Commission.”
Luca swung a startled, faintly betrayed look at him. I didn’t know, his expression said plainly.
Nicky blinked, and something like hope came into his eyes. “This is highly irregular, Giovanni,” he said.
“I know,” Giovanni said. “But I believe that this matter is important enough that the Commission should hear it before anything else.”
“What is this ‘matter?’” di Bonaventura demanded. “I’m not so sure anything outweighs the need to declare a new Patriso don –”
Giovanni let a corner of his mouth quirk up into a smile. “This does,” he said. “Don Nicodemo, with your permission –” He rose from the table at Nicky’s nod, and walked over to the big double doors in the back. He threw them open, and Val Constantine walked in with Carmine d’Alessandro a pace behind him and to his left side.
“Don Nicodemo,” Val said, his face set and faintly unhappy, but determined. He glanced around the table. “Don Vito, Don Luca, Don Daniel.” He blinked a moment at that. “I have a request for the Commission.”
“You said that already,” Rocchegiani said.
Val gave him a tight smile, and his brown eyes flicked to the rafters for a moment before focusing back on Nicky. “I want to bring the Constantine Family into the Mafia Commission,” he said.
Last chapter, only the epilogue left.
“Astra Pagliuca.” Blue Eyes Patriso tipped her head up with the butt of his .44 magnum automatic beneath her chin. “How you doin’?”
She licked at her lips, tasted blood and something with a faint chemical aftertaste. Ran her tongue over the inside of her mouth, flinching where she encountered cuts left behind from her teeth. “Been better,” she said thickly, and spat out a mouthful of blood at Blue Eyes’ feet. He didn’t even blink. Good for him. “You?”
“Actually really good at the moment, thanks for asking.” He shoved a thick lock of salt and pepper hair out of his face. “It’s good to see you awake, Astra. For a while there I was afraid I’d hit you too hard.”
Astra tried to move her arms, couldn’t, and realized she was handcuffed to a chair. Joy. Blue Eyes was just full of tricks today, wasn’t he. “Well, you know us Pagliucas. We got good hard heads.” She glanced over Blue Eyes’ shoulder, saw her brother handcuffed to another chair with his face pale and strained. There were bruises, old and new, blossoming on his high cheekbones.
“You’re bleeding a bit, though,” Blue Eyes continued cheerfully. “From the ear.”
She shook her head, and immediately regretted it as a brass band started out somewhere in the depths of her brain, accompanied by a faint cymbal like ringing in the background. “Great,” she said flatly. “Just fucking great. Inner or outer?”
“A little of both,” Blue Eyes said.
“Great,” she said again, shot another look at Darin. He jerked his head, very slightly, at the door.
She was handcuffed to a fucking chair. What the hell did he expect her to do? Darin must have caught sight of some of her confusion, because he shook his head, nodded at her. Astra blinked at him. Darin sighed.
Blue Eyes misread her facial expressions entirely, because he nudged her throat again with the automag and said thoughtfully, “You know, I didn’t recognize you at first; I thought maybe I’d have to kill you.”
“Goody,” she said, deadpan. “Because being dead would be so much worse than being handcuffed to a fucking chair in fucking Staten Island in your fucking house.”
“You won’t be handcuffed much longer,” Blue Eyes said. “When my assassins kill the Commission –”
“You’ll pat Darin and me on the head, tell us to go take care of our family, and let us go?”
“Your sense of humor is, as always, obnoxious, ill-placed, and insolent.”
“I’m glad you’re amused,” Astra said. “Because at least one of us should be. I’ll go schedule my comedy tour in the Berkshires, shall I?”
“When my assassins kill the Commission –” Blue Eyes said again.
“– they’ll instantly become the subject of a witchhunt by the Families,” Astra said. “And you. We can’t forget you. You engineered this whole fucked up thing, and they’ll kill you for it.”
He ignored her, and tilted her chin up with the gun again. “I’ll legitimize my claim on the position of capo di tutti capi by marrying you,” he said. “After all, I’ll be the only surviving boss. It’s a pity these things happen, but you just have to soldier on, you know?”
Astra glanced at the door a few feet from Darin, and thought she saw the handle move ever-so-slightly. Chances were it was just another of Blue Eyes’ men – but there was a chance – the text message had been a last desperate attempt, when she’d been crammed in a closet filled with enough weaponry to conquer a small country with the echoing sound of Blue Eyes and Johnny West’s feet coming inexorably toward her.
Would Ace come? Would Val Constantine even bother?
“Okay,” she said, throat dry. “We’re going to ignore the fact that you’re old enough to be my father for the moment, and get straight to the what the fuck are you thinking? You think the Families are fucking dumb, Patriso? Well, here’s a newsflash for you: we’re not. And even if you kill the Commission, there are still the consiglieres and the streetbosses, and the heirs, and the caporegimes, not to mention all the damn made men. You really they’ll all take one look at you and bow down? No fucking way, pal. Besides,” she added with grim fervor, “the first time you try to fuck me, I’ll kill you. Or myself. And then where’ll you be, huh?”
Blue Eyes smile. “Any minute now,” he said, “Any minute now, the Commission will declare me don of the Patriso Family, and once they do that –”
“Actually,” a faintly familiar feminine voice said, “I don’t think they’ll be doing that. Not after they hear how you’ve been arrested for kidnapping the boss of all bosses’ kids.”
Blue Eyes whirled, raising the gun.
“Oh, I wouldn’t do that,” a very familiar voice said. Ace Aciello moved sleekly past the two NYPD detectives, a .45 automatic in his hand. “All I want is one reason to shoot you, Patriso. Just one. I got witnesses for it to be nothing but self-defense.” He brushed the barrel lightly against his lips. “You know this gun, Blue Eyes? This is the same one that did for Whackjob. How ‘bout that, huh?”
“That was my father’s idea,” Blue Eyes said coldly. His eyes flickered toward Stella Bonasera and Mac Taylor. “You gone and turned on us, Aciello? Went and made yourself a traitor? That’s a walking death sentence, it is.”
“I’m not here for the NYPD,” Ace said, in the same conversational tone. “I’m here for Constantine. Who you’ve royally pissed off, by the way. Val’s not all that happy with you, ya know. You tried to frame his consigliere for murder.”
“Constantine,” Blue Eyes snorted. “Constantine doesn’t give a fuck about the Families, everyone knows that. They’ll get their piece, when –”
“Yeah, Blue Eyes?” Ace said. “What am I doing here, then?”
“He’s got you there,” Darin said, his voice scratchy and a little hoarse.
“Drop the gun, Mr. Patriso,” Stella Bonasera said. “Drop the gun, slide it over here, and put your hands behind your head.”
“What makes you think I’m going to do anything of the sort?”
“Because if you don’t,” Ace said, “I’m going to shoot you. Through the kneecaps, one by one. Then in the balls. And then I’ll turn you over to the nice detectives here, and then you can spend the rest of your life in jail – short as it’s going to be, because you really think the Commission’s gonna take it all that well when they find out you were gonna have ‘em knocked off? I don’t think so.”
“You’re too late,” Blue Eyes said. “The Commission –”
“– is really, really pissed off at you. Say what you like about the Mafia, but they really don’t take assassination attempts real well. Come on, Marco, where do you think Val and Carmine are right now?”
Blue Eyes froze, and Astra kicked him in the back of his left knee. He yelped in pain and stumbled forward to his knees, and Mac Taylor came forward and yanked the automag out of his hand while Stella put a hand between his shoulderblades and cuffed him swiftly and efficiently. “Marco Patriso, you are under arrest for two counts of kidnapping, as well as conspiracy in murder –”
Ace stood for a heartbeat with his gun on Blue Eyes’ forehead, then he pulled it back and flicked the safety on, holstering it at the small of his back. “Gotta key somewhere there, Taylor?” he asked, and Mac dug in Blue Eyes’ pockets till he produced a small silver handcuff key.
“How ya doing, Astra?” he said, kneeling down by her to unlock the handcuffs.
“My father –” she said, trying to shake feeling back into her wrists as they crossed over the room to Darin.
“The Commission’s safe,” Ace snorted. “From the Patrisos, at least.”
*
Back in the twenties the Christopher Caponigro Building had been a church, before it had been the Christopher Caponigro Building, been the secret headquarters of the Mafia Commission, before three capos and a don had been gunned down as they stood for Mass. St. Christopher’s, it had been, back in those gin-soaked roaring jazz days, back in the days before the Families and before the bureaucracy had taken up its hold even in the criminal underworld. Those were the days when men were men and thieves were gentlemen, when the same man that ripped off the state house and tipped bills into officers’ uniform pockets was the one that payed for your Thanksgiving dinner and your Christmas presents, showed up at your kid’s graduation and handed over a leather attaché case full of hundreds for their college fund, and then took the whole class out to get drunk on illegal vodka and imported wine. Giovanni d’Alessandro sometimes wondered what had happened to those days, when the Mafia had shifted away from that stuttering blurring combination of charity and thievery to the bureaucratic bloodsoaked bullshit they sat through now. Back in the old days it was simple. You’d hit a guy, he’d whack you, done with. Today they took you down, killed you slow, fucked with your whole family, the both of them. Dragged the Commission into every little complaint. Not even a war, not cause for one by anyone’s standards but the new Mafia, but two minutes of bickering could bring three Families and five Commission Families into direct conflict, kill dozens of people, civilians, associates, made men, leave the survivors wondering in the aftermath what the hell had happened. Back in the old days it had been all about the style; today it wasn’t the quality but the quantity.
When Salvatore Caponigro had been killed in the church that would later bear his son’s name, the current capo di tutti capi, whose son was a priest at St. Christopher’s, had taken control of the church, and the heads of the various families – not yet the Five Families, not yet Commission Families, not yet belonging to the Mafia Commission – had met there weekly for Mass, and afterwards, to discuss the fate of La Cosa Nostra as it had been then. Eventually the congregation moved to a different church, maybe hastened out by the sight of a good two dozen dangerous, well-armed men in sleek suits with plenty of cash to throw about, and Christopher Caponigro had purchased the building.
Giovanni glanced up at the rafters, and the organ and choir lofts above the pews. There were angels hidden there, tiny wings and halos tucked into the clean curve and grain of the wood, so that no matter which way you looked you were always surrounded. The features had been worn away by time and wear, but the smooth sweep of a wing, the line of a robe, still remained, waiting in the shadows. For a moment he thought he saw something move up ahead, thought maybe the light had caught the gleam of metal, but when he looked again there was nothing there.
At the head of the long wooden table that had taken the place of the pews on the left side of the church Nicky Pagliuca was sitting, wearing a black suit and a tie in Pagliuca colors and looking extremely tired. Every few minutes he raised his hands to rub at his eyes, and every time he did his brother (and underboss) turned to look at him, worried. There were small murmurs going around the table, as dons exchanged worried words and underbosses flicked their eyes around the room with their hands in their pockets. The two seats at about the center of the table reserved for the Patrisos were empty, and the hole in the midst of the Commission seemed to bleed threat.
Something’s going on. Something bad.
Not just the death of Frederico Patriso and Sammy Marione, although that was a suspicious hit if there ever was one. That wouldn’t account for the strain in Nicky’s gray eyes, or for the rumors that had been flying around the underworld for the past week, about Darin Pagliuca’s disappearance and the attempted hit on Astra Pagliuca, about Blue Eyes Patriso’s plotting and Joey Sforza’s arrest. And the phone call Carmine had given him, not half an hour ago, and his words spitting pidgin Italian and English. He was Constantine’s man, always had been, ever since he and Val Constantine had met thirty years ago, and no matter how much Giovanni might hate that his youngest son had given his loyalty to another Family, to a non-Commission Family, he had to trust that Carmine knew exactly what he was talking about.
After a few minutes, the murmurs going around the table died down, and Nicky Pagliuca raised his head, licking at his lips. “By the power vested in me as capo di tutti capi by the Five Families of New York’s La Cosa Nostra,” he said, and looked despairing, “I hearby call this emergency session of the Mafia Commission to order. Let each Family sound off their presence.”
“Rocchegiani is here,” Vito Rocchegiani said.
“Lancione is here,” from Danny di Bonaventura
“Dellacroce is here,” Luca Dellacroce said.
“Pagliuca is here,” said Nicky quietly.
There was silence, and then Nicky said, formally, “Who stands for Patriso?”
Another beat of silence.
“Then in the name of the Mafia Commission, I move that the first order of business –”
“Don Nicodemo,” Giovanni said, and suddenly found himself the focus of seven startled Mafioso. He swallowed, and thought of Carmine’s earnest voice. I don’t trust you, he thought, but I hope to God you know what you’re doing, Constantine. “A request has been – conveyed – to me from a certain don, and he would like to discuss this matter in front of the Commission.”
Luca swung a startled, faintly betrayed look at him. I didn’t know, his expression said plainly.
Nicky blinked, and something like hope came into his eyes. “This is highly irregular, Giovanni,” he said.
“I know,” Giovanni said. “But I believe that this matter is important enough that the Commission should hear it before anything else.”
“What is this ‘matter?’” di Bonaventura demanded. “I’m not so sure anything outweighs the need to declare a new Patriso don –”
Giovanni let a corner of his mouth quirk up into a smile. “This does,” he said. “Don Nicodemo, with your permission –” He rose from the table at Nicky’s nod, and walked over to the big double doors in the back. He threw them open, and Val Constantine walked in with Carmine d’Alessandro a pace behind him and to his left side.
“Don Nicodemo,” Val said, his face set and faintly unhappy, but determined. He glanced around the table. “Don Vito, Don Luca, Don Daniel.” He blinked a moment at that. “I have a request for the Commission.”
“You said that already,” Rocchegiani said.
Val gave him a tight smile, and his brown eyes flicked to the rafters for a moment before focusing back on Nicky. “I want to bring the Constantine Family into the Mafia Commission,” he said.