Page 1 of Merciless Daddy

Chapter 1

Salvatore

Ifelt it before it happened.

The call came at six-forty, before the morning’s first coffee. Tonio took it, listened for ten seconds, and said a word in Sicilian our mother would have slapped him for. That was how I knew the day was already ruined.

“Someone’s towing one of the produce trucks,” he said, reaching for his jacket. “West 47th. The driver tried to stop them.”

“Tried,” Pietro repeated, already at the door. Pietro could put a paragraph into one word.

I drove. Tonio complained the whole way, which was his way. “Dawn, Sal. Dawn. Even the federal government waits until nine. I have respect for a man who commits crimes at a civilized hour. This—” he waved at the gray morning coming up over Back of the Yards, “—this is barbarism.”

“Write them a letter,” Pietro said from the back seat.

“I might. Dear thieves. Consider brunch.”

I said nothing. Three incidents in two months since Don Arturo went into the ground. A fire inspection nobody ordered. A health citation for a kitchen that could have performed surgery. Now a tow truck at dawn. Someone was testing the fence line, seeing which posts wobbled.

The warehouse sat on the corner of 47th, a refrigerated block with CARUSO PRODUCE & IMPORTS in green letters that had needed repainting since well before I arrived in Chicago. The tow truck was backed up to one of our delivery lorries, winch cable already hooked to the frame. Four men in matching grey jackets stood around it like they had every right in the world.

And Marco Bellini sat on the wet asphalt with blood on his chin.

He was sixty-eight years old. By all accounts, he had been driving for this company since before Dante Caruso could shave, and one of these men had put him on the ground.

Something in my chest went very quiet.

“Pietro. The truck doesn’t move. Tonio, faces and paper. Everything.”

Pietro walked around the tow truck and simply stood in front of it, hands folded. Tonio pulled out his phone and started shooting—the crew, the plates, the clipboard in the foreman’s hand—narrating cheerfully as he went. “Smile, gentlemen. You, with the neck. Beautiful. Very photogenic. Your mother will want copies.”

I went to Marco.

He tried to get up when he saw me coming, and I put a hand on his shoulder to keep him down. His lip was split, and he’d landed hard on his hip. His hands were shaking. He was still holding the truck keys in his fist like they were the family silver.

“Salvatore, I told them no. I told them, this truck goes nowhere without—”

“I know.” I took the handkerchief from my breast pocket, shook it out, and pressed it to his mouth. He looked at the white linen like I’d handed him something sacred, and that made the quiet in my chest quieter still. “Hold it there. Press.”

“The truck—”

“Is just a truck.” I crouched so we were level. Wet asphalt, dawn cold coming through the knees of my trousers. It didn’t matter. “Marco. Look at me. It’s just metal. We can replace it. You, though, we cannot. The next time a man wants to take a truck, you give him the keys and my phone number, in that order. Understood?”

His eyes went wet at the corners. Old men are like that when someone tells them they matter. It costs nothing to say, and men in my position almost never say it, and I have never understood why.

“Understood,” he said, through the handkerchief.

I stood, straightened my cuffs, and walked to the foreman—a broad man with a lanyard and the particular confidence of someone holding official-looking paper.

“You’re interfering with a lawful repossession,” he said. “This vehicle is subject to a lien—“

“Show me.”

He hesitated, then handed over the clipboard.

It was good work, I’ll admit. Letterhead, notarization block, a lien filed against Caruso Produce & Imports through a finance company. Court stamp in the corner. To most men it would have looked like the end of the argument.

But I have run shipping for my family since I was eighteen years old. I know every vehicle on every manifest the way a priest knows his parish. And the identification number on that lien belonged to a 2009 box truck with a cracked frame that we sold for scrap two years ago. I stood in the yard in Palermo and watched them crush it. It exists now as razor blades and rebar.