Chapter 4 - Bloodlines, Debts, and Broken Knuckles
At 2:00 AM, the rain over Red Hook was coming down in furious, lashing sheets that turned the industrial avenues into black rivers.
Inside the back room of the Bella Vista Social Club on Van Brunt Street, the air was thick with the foul stench of cheap cigars, stale espresso, and the sharp copper tang of fresh blood.
Carmine Rossetti sat behind a massive mahogany desk that had been salvaged from an old shipping line office. He was sixty-four years old, with a belly that spilled over a gold-buckled belt and eyes like two greasy black olives embedded in dough. Across from him stood Salvatore Rossetti, his younger brother and chief enforcer, whose face was purple with fury.
On the leather sofa against the wall lay Trent Kowalski.
A back-alley mob physician had set Trent’s right hand in a crude plaster cast, but the young man was still shivering in agony, his face pale, his nose swollen to twice its normal size and packed with bloody gauze.
"He broke every bone in his hand, Carmine!" Salvatore roared, slamming a heavy fist onto the desk. "He dragged him out through the trash alley like a stray dog! Dante Marchetti did this to our blood! In front of a room full of civvies!"
Carmine did not look at his brother. He slowly cut the tip off a dark cigar with a gold guillotine cutter, struck a wooden match, and puffed until the end glowed like an angry ember.
"Why was he in Marchetti’s Diner?" Carmine asked, his voice low, gravelly, and dangerously calm.
"What does it matter why he was there?" Salvatore shouted. "It’s a diner! He wanted a sandwich!"
"He didn't want a sandwich," Carmine said, blowing a thick plume of smoke toward the ceiling. "Frankie and Paulie already told me what happened. He tried to put his paws on one of Dante’s waitresses. Then he bragged about the Rossetti name when the girl told him to choke."
Carmine turned his cold, black eyes toward the sofa where Trent lay whimpering.
"You stupid, illiterate greaseball," Carmine whispered.
Trent flinched, trying to shrink into the leather cushions. "Uncle Carmine... she broke a salt shaker across my face... I had to show her—"
"You had to show her?" Carmine lunged out of his chair with shocking speed for a fat man. He crossed the room in two strides, grabbed Trent by his leather lapels, and dragged him upward until their faces were inches apart. "Do you know who Dante Marchetti is, you miserable little piece of gutter trash?"
"He’s... he’s just an old man running a diner..." Trent stammered through his broken teeth.
Carmine backhanded Trent across his uninjured cheek with enough force to spray blood against the wall. Trent shrieked, clutching his face.
"He is the man who buried the Genovese crew in Red Hook before you were an itch in your mother’s drawers!" Carmine snarled, saliva flying from his lips. "He is the man who negotiated the Five Families treaty of 1998! The only reason we own the docks from here to Sunset Park is because Dante Marchetti decided he’d rather fry onions and read the racing forms than drown this entire borough in gasoline!"
Salvatore stepped between them, his hands raised. "Carmine, calm down. Trent made a mistake. He’s young. But we can't let Marchetti treat our family like this. The streets are watching. If we let an old retired don break our soldiers' bones without answering, every crew from Queens to Staten Island will think we’ve gone soft."
Carmine let go of Trent’s jacket, letting the young man collapse back onto the cushions. He turned around slowly, walking back to his desk, his breathing heavy.
"Dante Marchetti didn't break Trent because he wants a war," Carmine said, leaning his knuckles on the dark wood. "He broke Trent because Trent broke the rules of his house. Dante is old, Salvatore. He wants peace. But an old lion with a full stomach will still rip your throat out if you step on his tail."
"So what do we do?" Salvatore asked, his eyes narrowing with venom. "We just swallow it? We apologize to a short-order cook?"
Carmine sat back down in his leather chair, staring into the swirling smoke.
"We find out who the girl is," Carmine muttered.
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Salvatore blinked. "The waitress?"
"A man like Dante Marchetti doesn't lock his doors and break a soldier’s knuckles for a girl who pours coffee unless that girl means something to him," Carmine said, a cruel, cunning grin slowly spreading across his jowls. "Find out where she comes from. Find out what she owes. Find out what ghost she’s running from. If Dante wants to play protector, let’s see how much weight his old shoulders can carry before they break."
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