She told me that every cent the operation earned would be recorded under my name.
"Could it be that you actually like me?"
I was genuinely curious.
She only smiled and said nothing.
Elena was a daughter who had never been favored by the inner circle.
But I would make sure every woman in Kingsport envied mine.
Before long, Elena's estate, once half in ruins, had a brand-new two-story wing rising above its walls. The front gate had a proper guard rotation. The driveway held three new cars where before there had been one.
Things at the Castellano compound, however, had taken a different turn.
Emilio declared that the stench of commerce would no longer be allowed to corrupt anyone's spirit.
Every associate's monthly cut was slashed to almost nothing.
Only without the temptation of money, he reasoned, could people stop obsessing over profit.
Only then could they preserve their noble integrity.
My portrait was even turned into a cautionary display.
The entire household was made to remember how vulgar and base life had been when I was in charge.
The compound was renovated from top to bottom.
Oil paintings and leather-bound volumes lined every wall and corridor. Marble replaced linoleum. A courtyard fountain appeared where the loading dock had been.
The place looked like something out of an architectural magazine.
You could smell the fresh-cut flowers from halfway down the block.
Visitors marveled: "Emilio Ferraro truly is remarkable. Look how refined he's made the Castellano estate."
Even Don Vittorio heard about it and brought Katarina for a personal tour.
But nobody seemed to realize
that all this elegance
had been bought with the fortune I'd built for the Castellano operation.
It wasn't long before the operation ground to a halt.
A crowd gathered at the compound gates.
They were demanding their back pay.
Emilio had burned through nearly every cent in the treasury on his little vanity project.
And even if there had been money left, it wouldn't have mattered. Emilio had already decreed: one copper coin per person, per month.
Enough to kill any illusion that work here would ever pay.
The household guards didn't truly try to stop the crowd.
After all, with no wages of their own, they could barely feed themselves.
Emilio's voice cracked with fury:
"Is money all you people care about?!"
Someone pointed at the gold Patek Philippe on his wrist: