Chapter 69

  ?? Echoes of Terror ??

  The men were already standing when Don Emilio entered the living room in his mansion. Don Carlo on his right, Don Silvano on his left.

  No greetings. No ceremony.

  The lamp over the table burned bright this time — intentionally. Emilio wanted faces seen.

  He did not sit.

  “By night,” he said, “you use your guns.”

  A ripple passed through the room — not surprise, but readiness.

  “Every Marcetti man you can name.”

  “Every one you can’t.”

  “If he carried their name, ran their errands, slept under their roof—”

  Emilio’s gaze cut through them.

  “—he does not see the morning.”

  Silvano’s mouth curved into a thin, satisfied smile. This was the language he had grown up with. The old music. It was nostalgic for him—an old man who is still having trouble to get used to the fake diplomacy when he wanted to be real, to show his true face. He knew the people have always seen him as no one but a criminal with a suit and money.

  “I don’t want whispers,” Emilio continued. "I don't want efficiency."

  "I want chaos."

  “I want shots.”

  “I want windows shaking.”

  “I want mothers waking their sons to make sure they’re still breathing.”

  He leaned forward slightly.

  “The night belongs to us.”

  Then his tone shifted — colder, sharper.

  “When the sun comes up,” he said,

  “you put the guns away.”

  “Daylight is for memory.”

  Carlo’s eyes flickered, just once.

  “Anyone who did business with the Marcettis,” Emilio went on, counting on his fingers now.

  “Shopkeepers.”

  “Bartenders.”

  “Street vendors.”

  “Anyone who sold them bread, shelter, information, or silence.”

  His finger came down on the table.

  “You don’t kill them.”

  Silvano exhaled through his nose, amused.

  “You beat them,” Emilio said.

  “In the open.”

  “Slow enough for people to stop walking.”

  “Hard enough that no one forgets why.”

  Another finger.

  “Any newsboy pushing papers we don’t pay for—break his mouth.”

  “Any man who stands in the street to read them—break his hands.”

  The room felt smaller now.

  “If someone doesn’t step aside when you march,” Emilio said,

  “teach him when to move.”

  Carlo shifted his weight, jaw tightening. He had voted against this. He had lost. Now he would make sure it didn’t spiral further than ordered.

  Still, he will see it to the end, for his two childhood friends, his two brothers.

  Emilio straightened.

  “No silence,” he said.

  “No relief.”

  “Gunfire at night.”

  “Screams in the day.”

  He looked at them — all of them.

  “Don’t let the city rest until it understands.”

  Silvano’s smile was gone now. His eyes were bright.

  Emilio finished, voice steady as stone.

  “Get to it."

  The men turned to go.

  Behind them, the lamp burned on.

  That Same Night

  The first shot cracked sometime after midnight.

  By instinct, every door along the tenements slammed shut. Curtains snapped back. Mothers pulled children away from windows. The alleyway lamps burned alone.

  Bootsteps pounded through the backstreets—men running, stumbling, swearing under their breath. Marcetti loyalists, hired blades, old enforcers who’d sworn the wrong oath. Word had spread fast: the Don was hit earlier that evening, and now the reckoning had begun.

  A man tripped at the corner and skidded on the cobbles. He got up limping, glanced behind him—and froze.

  Figures in black coats were coming down the street at a steady pace. No shouting. No threats. No rush. Their coats hung heavy, their silhouettes clean, deliberate. They looked less like men and more like a verdict.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Gunfire spat once. The runner jerked and fell forward. Another burst echoed deeper in the alley; someone else had been found.

  Inside the orphanage, the nuns pulled young girls close, arms wrapped tight around trembling shoulders. They whispered calm, steadying words that didn’t match the sharp cracks outside. Mira crouched among them, one hand on a younger girl’s back, keeping her breathing slow—quiet—while she hid her own shaking behind the fall of her red hair.

  Not far from there, in a narrow apartment building, Pinch, Tonno, and Lino were curled up together in the basement with their families. Fathers and grandfathers stood at the stairwell—brooms in hand, one old man clutching a rifle handed down from a war no one talked about. They held their ground, forming a wall between the noise outside and the women and children huddled behind them.

  Down the street, Leo knelt alone in the cramped backroom of the pub he worked in. His hands were raised, head bowed over a steady breath. He whispered the names of his friends—every single one—and begged whatever listened to keep them alive until morning.

  Outside, the black-coats kept moving, rifles angled low, boots striking the cobbles at the same steady rhythm.

  This was the price of an attempt on Don Silvano’s life.

  And in the tenements, everyone understood: by sunrise, the district would fall silent—but only because anyone foolish enough to make noise would already be gone.

  Next day

  “Mr. Tommaso! No—stop! You’ll kill him!”

  Lucia’s scream tore through Guilder Street. She hadn’t recovered from the last time she saw a man shot in front of her—yet here she was again, helpless, and this time the victim was her own boss. Two Marviano henchmen shoved her back as the others circled Tommaso, an old man who could barely shield himself. Boots slammed into his ribs, his jaw, his temple. Each blow sounded wet.

  A young man pushed through the forming crowd, face draining of color as he took in the scene.

  “What the hell is happening?”

  “Marvianos,” muttered the man beside him, eyes fixed on the attack. “Tommaso’s bar dealt with Enzo. Looks like the Marvianos want to make a point.”

  “I thought they were past this kind of thing.”

  “Guess diplomacy’s over.” He swallowed. “This is the third beating today. And… they say worse is coming.”

  The words rippled through the crowd. Doors slammed. Shopkeepers dragged iron shutters down.

  Whistles wailed in the distance.

  The henchmen scattered instantly, vanishing into alleys like cockroaches fleeing torchlight. Constables stormed in, batons ready, shouting for people to step back.

  Lucia broke through the line the moment the attackers fled, dropping to her knees beside Tommaso.

  He was barely recognizable—face swollen, blood pooling under his cheek, breaths shallow and wheezing. His fingers twitched as he tried, and failed, to sit up.

  “Please! Somebody help me!” Lucia cried, cradling him. “He needs a hospital—now!”

  But the crowd wasn’t safe either. Some slipped away from the constables—men with no papers, thieves with warrants, women afraid of being questioned. Within seconds, half the street had evaporated.

  Lucia clung to Tommaso, shaking, voice cracking.

  “Please—someone. Anyone. Help us…”

  One young constable—no older than twenty—slowed as he caught sight of Lucia. His eyes widened at the state of the old man: the blood smeared across the cobblestones, the swollen face, the way Tommaso wheezed like his lungs were collapsing.

  “God… ma’am, is he conscious?” the young officer asked, crouching toward her despite the chaos.

  Lucia looked up, hope flickering.

  “He needs a stretcher! Please, please—help me get him up!”

  The constable reached out uncertainly, torn between duty and instinct.

  But a voice like a whip cracked across the street.

  “Hollis!”

  A sergeant with a thick mustache stomped toward them, spit flying as he barked:

  “What do you think you’re doing? Get moving!”

  Hollis flinched, straightened, but hesitated.

  “Sir, she—he’s dying. We should at least—”

  “You let that mob scum bleed.”

  The sergeant jabbed a finger into Hollis’s chest.

  “Our job is to catch the rats who did it. The city sees us pick up bodies instead of thugs, we lose this district for good. Move!”

  Lucia stared, stunned.

  “Mob scum? He’s an old man!” she cried. “He ran a bar! He did nothing!”

  The sergeant didn’t even look at her.

  “If he dealt with Marviano business, that’s his bed. Now get out of the way.”

  He shoved Hollis forward. The young constable shot Lucia an apologetic look—guilt twisting his face—before he forced himself to run after the others.

  Lucia’s voice cracked.

  “Please! I can’t carry him alone—please!”

  None of them slowed. One did raise his hand in a vague gesture toward the north end of the street.

  “Hospital’s that way,” he called without stopping. “Move quick, miss!”

  Then he disappeared into the chase.

  Lucia was left kneeling in the street, surrounded by retreating footsteps, staring down at her boss—his breaths thin, his eyes unfocused.

  “Hold on, Mr. Tommaso,” she whispered, gathering him into her arms. “Please… hold on…”

  More days passed after the horrific display of Pablo’s rotten corpse in the slums.

  The sign “VIVA I MARCETTI?” said it all.

  Don Enzo Marcetti—missing for fifteen days—was now presumed dead. A man who had been around for forty years, always at the three Marviano Dons’ throats, never giving up despite always being three steps behind and constantly struggling financially.

  All his close enforcers were dead.

  The ones burned in the carriage in front of the hotel.

  Giovanni and Robert—killed in a play set up by Dominick, who wasn’t even at the scene.

  And his son, Lorenzo, shot by a gun smuggled in a box of sweets. Again, by a teenage Dominick.

  The war never truly stopped, yet every few years, both sides pretended they could do business together or pursue some false peace. But the reality was that one family was silently destroying the other from within, while the latter kept charging up—recruiting, buying guns—believing it would eventually make them stronger.

  The war that had lasted this long, that had cost both sides their sons, was now over.

  And the message from the three Dons was clear after displaying the rotten corpse of Pablo—the one man who came closest to killing one of them.

  If any of you Marcettis are still out there—hiding—hoping to carry on Enzo’s will:

  Think.

  If any new family wants to rise and try their luck at the table:

  Think twice.

  The news of the hanging body in the slums reached all of Portenzo City.

  Faustino Veracci, the man who helped the assassins infiltrate the hotel and sold them the guns, learned of it while in the hospital.

  He had listened to Vince’s advice and shot himself in the arm and the leg, terrified at the thought of seeing his father hanged next. Don Carlo Marviano, who had been the first to suspect his involvement in the assassination attempt, believed his story that he had been attacked that same night.

  And so... he and his father were spared.

  Meanwhile, in the slums, anyone who had done business with the Marcettis—a bartender, a gambling-den manager, a small shop owner—was beaten in public. A punishment and a warning to everyone else never to deal with the enemies of the Marvianos.

  Every time the men in black coats walked the streets, families dragged their children inside, windows slammed shut, and the homeless pretended to be corpses.

  The Marvianos were now more feared than ever.

  The constables, rattled by the mob’s boldness, began marching through the slums with a new, almost frantic authority. They arrested anyone they could—pickpockets, drunkards and street gamblers. To them, every petty crime was now a spark that could ignite another riot, every slum-dweller a potential Marcetti loyalist or informant. Their orders from above were simple: restore the image of state control at all costs.

  Terror kept spreading.

  Shops closed earlier than usual.

  Children went out less.

  And with winter approaching and the sun hiding behind autumn clouds, the slums were slowly becoming ghost streets.