consigliere. He was here for Tommy Sacco’s funeral. I don’t know the other guy.”
“Campanotto. He’s Guttuso’s underboss.”
“So the top two men of the Guttuso family are talking in code with Cuccia’s consigliere. Are those families allied?”
“No. They’re at odds and have been for fifteen years or better. They’ve been in a cold-war stage for the past few years, but they are not allies.”
“What are they saying?”
Nick turned to Lara. “Tell him.”
Lara looked at the folder in Nick’s hands as if she were reading it and said, “The Guttusos have turned Leone. They think Cuccia’s distraction with what’s going on here in the U.S. is an opportunity to take him down. This war is hurting them, too, and all the Sicilian families. It’s crippling them, in fact. But Cuccia has a lot of power, and they haven’t figured out how to capitalize on his war with the Americans to take him down without destabilizing Sicily.”
Trey processed that and then said, “You have an answer to their problem.”
“Yes. I don’t care about the Guttusos, except how we might make an alliance there when the war is over and settle this dispute once and for all. But Leone is soft, and we know that because Lara found where he yields. From the conversations here, it doesn’t look like Cuccia has the slightest idea Leone is against him. We can use that.”
“How?” Trey asked.
“Can you play it out?”
“You want Cuccia dead.”
“I do. Yes. What else do I want?”
“An end of the war. The ability to make your family the way you want.”
“Yes. What else?”
That answer took Trey a bit longer to work to. Nick waited him out. He needed Trey to see it himself, because he needed Trey to understand it. A good don would understand.
“You want lasting peace. You want to make the board so all the Italians are true allies. More than just in name.”
“Exactly. That’s justice.”
“So you need to show Sicily enough strength that they see the Americans as equal, and make a deal where everybody feels respected and aligned.”
“Yes. Good. Cuccia has a lot of enemies. He rules Sicily like a kingdom, and thus all of Italy. His fist squeezes all the ports, and every other family has to pay him to get their business done. They don’t have a Council like we do. What they have might as well be called a court, with Cuccia sitting in a throne at the head. None of the other families has managed to change the situation.”
“Killing Cuccia shows strength, especially if you can do it without it tearing Sicily apart. But how do you do that?”
“I reach out to these men.” Nick lifted the folder. “I make them an offer.”
Trey quietly contemplated before he spoke again.
“They help you get Cuccia, and you bring them New England, and maybe New York too, for fresh deals without his interference.”
Nick’s heir was beginning to think like a don. This was definitely the time to start preparing him in earnest. Now that he was made, there was no reason to hold back. “Good.”
“But if they couldn’t take him down themselves, how will they get him for you?”
“You have to use the demonstrated capabilities of the people you deal with, Trey. Enemy, ally, or target, you have to know what they know and what they don’t, what they can do and what they can’t, and work within those constraints to find the path to what you want. I’m not asking them to get him for me. These men have proved they can’t face down Cuccia on their own. But they could get in my way if they stand with Cuccia. What I need to do is nullify their interference. I need them to stand down. If they do that, I’ll get him here.”
“Here? You can get him to come back to the States?”
“I can.” This was why he wanted to keep that compound out of play until he was ready to use it. The compound was Cuccia’s largest holding in the United States. If they attacked it, it would do him irreparable financial and probably legal damage and would therefore be an all-out declaration of war to its bloody end—which was what the other dons intended it to be with their plan to destroy it. But Nick needed Cuccia to continue to think the Americans could be brought to their knees. He meant to use Cuccia’s arrogance against him.
“He needs to think he’s won. If he thinks he’s won, he’ll come to crow.” Nick sat forward and