Chapter 9: The Table Turns in Ferrara's House
Ferrara's house was in Carroll Gardens, three blocks from the church where his father had been married and his grandfather had been buried.
It was not a large house.
It was not meant to be.
The Ferrara family had always understood that the appearance of modesty was its own kind of power.
Enzo called ahead.
We were expected.
Gianni Ferrara met us in the front room — a man of sixty-two, compact and deliberate, with the careful eyes of someone who had spent a lifetime measuring the distance between what people said and what they meant.
His second son, Nico, stood near the window.
He did not offer his hand.
"Moretti," Gianni said.
"It's late."
"I know.
I apologize.
I wouldn't come at this hour if it weren't necessary."
"Sit down."
We sat.
Enzo placed the leather case on the low table between us.
Gianni looked at it but did not reach for it.
"Say what you came to say," he said.
"Someone has been working to destroy the port agreement before it closes," I said.
"I believe you'll be contacted in the next twenty-four hours with information designed to make you doubt my family's reliability.
I came tonight so you would have the full picture before that call arrives."
Gianni's expression did not change.
"Who."
"Domenico Caruso.
Working with a man named Fabrizio Ricci, who is my father's exiled brother.
They placed a listening device in my private study.
They recruited a woman close to me to gather intelligence.
Their plan is to present you with recorded conversations out of context and leverage that against old information about my father's history — information they believe is damaging enough to make you walk away from the agreement."
Nico shifted near the window.
Gianni did not look at him.
"Open the case," Gianni said.
Enzo opened it.
Gianni went through the documents slowly.
He was not a fast reader.
He was a thorough one.
He spent four minutes on the Meridian incorporation record.
Six minutes on the transcript.
He held the signed Ricci settlement agreement up to the lamp and read it twice.
He set it down.
"The device," he said.
Enzo placed it on the table.
The green light was off.
Gianni looked at it without touching it.
"Caruso," he said quietly.
Not to us.
To himself.
"He has a relationship with your son," I said carefully.
Gianni looked up.
"Had," he said.
"Past tense.
As of this conversation."
Nico said nothing.
His jaw was tight.
"I want to ask you something directly," Gianni said.
"Please."
"The information on the recording.
The port numbers.
The attorney.
Is any of it damaging to me or to my family if it becomes public?"
"No.
Nothing discussed in my study touches the Ferrara family.
The exposure is entirely mine."
"Then Caruso's play was always to damage you, not to offer me something better."
"Yes.
He needed you to walk away.
He didn't have anything real to offer you.
He only needed to create enough doubt."
Gianni sat back.
He folded his hands in his lap.
He looked at the device on the table for a long moment.
"My father knew your father for thirty years," he said.
"They disagreed about many things.
They never lied to each other about the things that mattered."
"My father said the same."
"I'm going to tell you something." Gianni leaned forward slightly.
"Caruso called me this afternoon.
Before you arrived.
He said he had important information about your family and asked to meet tomorrow morning."
The room was very still.
"I told him I would think about it," Gianni said.
"I had not yet decided whether to take the meeting."
He reached out and picked up the Ricci settlement document one more time.
Looked at the signature.
The notary seal.
The date.
He set it back down.
"I won't be taking it," he said.
He stood.
We stood.
"The agreement closes on schedule," he said.
"I'll have my attorney confirm the date with yours tomorrow." He looked at me steadily.
"Deal with Caruso."
"I intend to."
He walked us to the door himself.
On the front step, he paused.
"The woman," he said.
"The one they used to get close to you."
"Yes."
"Is she gone?"
"She's gone."
He nodded once.
"Good.
That kind of thing — it takes time to see clearly afterward." A pause.
"Your father took two years after your uncle.
Don't take two years."
He went inside.
The door closed.
Enzo and I stood on the front step in the cold night air.
"He knew," Enzo said quietly.
"About Fabrizio.
He knew the history."
"Everyone from that generation knew.
They just never said it to my face."
We walked to the car.
The street was empty.
A cat moved along the top of a garden wall and disappeared.
My phone buzzed.
Marco.
I answered.
"Caruso just called the house," Marco said.
"He asked for you.
I told him you were unavailable.
He said—" a brief pause, as if Marco was reading from a note — "he said, 'Tell Luca that what happened tonight with Ferrara changes nothing.
I still have Fabrizio.
And Fabrizio has things that cannot be signed away.'"
I looked at Enzo across the roof of the car.
"Tell me something, Marco," I said.
"Is Fabrizio Ricci in New York?"
"We think so.
A hotel in Midtown.
We've had eyes on a possible address since this afternoon."
"Confirm it tonight."
May you like
"And then?"
"And then," I said, "I'm going to have a conversation with my uncle that is thirty years overdue."
