Chapter 236: Paying Our Respects
(TYLER)
"I can stretch the pancake batter if you need," Fabio peeps. He’s a sweet kid, but he would really never going to make a gangster.
I follow Marco back through to the door, where Giulio is blocking it, hands up on the frame, leaning out a little towards the stoop, holding a conversation.
"Boss is fine," he’s saying. "And I am not going to interrupt his beauty sleep."
"Don’t try to fucking think, Giulio," comes the wheezy reply. "Your Boss don’t pay you to think. We’re here to pay our respects to the Capo, so get the fuck out the way and let us inside."
"No can do," Giulio says back calmly, just as I arrive and peek under his arm. Just as I thought, based on the croak, it’s Leandro Castillo, and Pietro Alvarado is with him. They’re two very powerful men in their own rights, Bosses of their own Italian Mafia Families, and I’m pretty damn impressed with Giulio standing his ground like he is.
I wonder how these two sniffed out Sasha’s location—but gossip among city mobsters is always rife, and Alvarado and Castillo are the closest thing we have to friends among the Families.
"Pietro," I say with a nod, "and Leandro. To what do we owe the pleasure?" "We heard Don Sasha got let out of the hospital," Pietro Alvarado says. "We’re here to pay our respects."
They’re here to see with their own eyes just how close to death Sasha really is. And behind them, massing like a mini-army, are their multiple bodyguards.