Chapter 39 The Ricci
"How's business in the north so far?" my father asks.
Now that everyone is already at the table, my father begins asking about the Ricci's business. I have a feeling tonight won't go as we planned, but it won't hurt to try, right? Hopefully, we'll get a bit of information out of them despite the circumstances.
"It's been good. There were some obstacles with the police, but things got resolved very quickly," Fabio says.
"How about the goods I ordered?" my father asks.
What did my father order from Fabio? Probably the usual drugs, since the Ricci is basically our middleman to every other part of Europe. I really need to step up my game and ask my father everything about the business so I'm not behind on anything. I've been in the dark for too long. I need to get an update on everything related to my family's business, whether it's illegal or legal. I just realised I lacked the knowledge of my family's illegal business. It's my father's fault. I wanted to know everything in the past few months, but he still keeps everything away from me, including everything connected to the Romanos.
"All good. They've been secured and will arrive at your warehouse in three days or so," Fabio says.
"Good," my father says, nodding at the information.
Three days? Now I'm torn. Should I push my father to bring me to the warehouse just so I know a little bit more about our illicit business, or should I go and stay at the Ricci's house? Fuck. This is confusing. Decisions, decisions. I think it's more important to dig into the Ricci's secret for now than to need to know more about our family's business. I can do that another day. Next week is my one and possibly last chance to find out the truth about the Ricci until the deadline. I can't wait until Antonio proposes to me. I don't want him to propose to me. Breaking someone's heart is not something that's on my life's bucket list, so I'd rather break off our relationship before everything gets even more serious.
"Let's not talk about business now, shall we? We might have prying eyes around us, and we don't want them to pay attention to us for too long, do we?" Fabio says in a lower tone. My father nods, chuckling awkwardly.
There goes our chance. Well, it's okay. We still have another chance to get them to talk, but I need to be in the lion's den to do so, which is staying at the Ricci's house. If I'm not mistaken, their house is a few hours away from our house, so it's going to be quite a long drive to get there. It's risky to go there alone with only Dante as my protector, but we have no other choice. Let's just hope they're not planning my demise while I'm there.
"Right. My apologies. How about a meeting tomorrow? I have something to discuss with you and Mariano," my father says.
Nice. I know I can rely on my father for this kind of thing. He's way better than me in negotiating and making people talk, so I hope tomorrow's meeting will be sufficient to get some information out of Fabio and Mariano. I know it's impossible to make them talk while we're here, considering we're celebrating their front company at the moment. Just like what Fabio has said before, we might have someone spying on us. It'll be a bad choice for us to talk about our underworld business in a place like this.
"Sure. Same time like always?" Fabio asks.
"Same time," my father says.
We continue eating our dinner. Everyone is quiet for a while, focusing on their evening meal and good wines. I glance at Dante and catch his eyes already on me. He immediately looks away, and then I frown as I notice Marianna getting closer to him. She smiles widely at him, and Dante doesn't react, just giving her cold shoulders as he guards the place, searching for possible threats. Marianna pouts at him, trying to act cute and innocent, and I only roll my eyes at her.
Mariann thinks she can make Dante fall in love with her. Unfortunately for her, Dante only has his eyes for me, and only me. Poor girl. She did all that for nothing. I hope Dante rejects her right away just so she'll shut up and leave him alone.
I can't make out what Dante is saying to Marianna, but it's enough to make her leave him alone. Dejected, Marianna's gaze falls to the floor as she walks away from Dante. I press my lips at the sight, holding myself back from laughing, and stare at my half-eaten medium-rare tenderloin steak and continue eating. What a wonderful sight to witness. That girl really needs to be put in her place. She thinks she can get everything she wants, but unfortunately for her, the world doesn't revolve around her fake ass sweet and innocent identity.
"I heard you're doing business with De Santi," Antonio says.
Now that Antonio mentions it, I just remember how insane the family is. We need to deal with De Santi before they do anything to us and others. We can't have another family like the Romanos around us. Maybe I'm just reading into things too much, but from what it seems, they either already joined forces with the Romanos or they're planning to be a part of those crazy bastards' family. Their killing method is way too similar to the Romanos' to be considered a coincidence. There has to be something between De Santi and the Romanos. Also, now that I think about it, De Santi lives somewhere near the Romanos' territory, so they could probably have a connection with them.
"Yes, you're right. We just started our first production earlier this week," my father says.
My father tells the truth. Giovanni and my father decided to name the joint company L'Amore Bellisimo. Sounds corny, I know, but I don't have any other name suggestion. So, I let my father and Giovanni pick one name from their suggested 20 name ideas. Their first product is nothing out of the ordinary, just a simple and traditional red wine made with a new recipe they came up with, but then again, the recipe is not much different from any other red wine. They basically just add one more ingredient, which is black pepper, to strengthen the taste or whatever they try to achieve. Just the thought of it makes my stomach churn and feel nauseous, but then again, I'm no wine expert, so I have no idea if it's a good idea to add black pepper into a wine recipe. Even if people say it tastes good, I'm not really interested in tasting it in the future.
"Didn't you know about their situation?" Antonio asks.
"What do you mean?" my father asks, seemingly confused about what Antonio is implying.
Well, this is bad. How does my father not know anything about De Santi's dark secret? Didn't he do one already with Dante before deciding on anything related to De Santi? I guess he didn't do a thorough background check on them before deciding to partner up with Giovanni. Shit. This could be a nightmare for us since we just now know how bad of a family they are.
Wait, what if the attack that happened to Dante and my father before was because of Giovanni, and not the Romanos? Why was my father so sure that it was because of the Romanos? Did he actually have clear evidence that it's the Romanos, or is it just a baseless accusation? I should ask him again about that later.
"Let's just say they've been quite the nuisances," Antonio says.
"In what way?" my father asks. So it's confirmed. My father doesn't know everything about De Santi. How could he be so reckless? Oh wait. Could this be a trap? What if what the Ricci are saying now are lies, and they're trying to make us call off the partnership with Giovanni? However, by seeing how strange Marianna is acting earlier, they could be telling the truth. I guess we need Dante to get his people to dig into De Santi family secrets since we can't rely solely on the Ricci's information just yet. We need to do our own investigation.
"I'll let you know about it later. Saying they're insane is an understatement," I say.
"Well, unfortunately, if what you want is for us to break our contract, we can't. Breaking the contract first can only mean one thing for us, which is losing the ownership of the joint company. It'll cause us more damage than good," my father says with a frown.
"What other damage would it cause us?" I ask.
"If Giovanni becomes the sole owner of the company, we'll get no revenue from the sales and lose the ownership of the recipes as well. All the money we've spent to build the winery and everything will go down the drain," my father says.
"That's bad," I say.
It sounds bad, but I think it's better to call off the partnership now than later. Right now, we've only shared one recipe with Giovanni, so I don't think it's that much of a loss. If we keep doing business with them, we might end up getting killed by Giovanni if he wants the joint company all for himself. Thankfully, Giovanni and his family are seated at the back of the room, so he won't be able to hear our conversation. If he hears this now, it'll be bad for us.
"It is. If what you're saying is true, then I'll have no choice but to handle the problem myself," my father says.
My father definitely thinks of torturing or killing Giovanni. There are no other options when it comes to traitors or anyone who's planning anything against our family. I think he'll do the former first before the latter. I hope we don't have to do it, though. It's only going to cause us more trouble than solving the trouble itself.
"If you need any help, just ask me," Fabio says.
"I will," my father says.
"Why did he even get an invitation here?" Antonio asks.
Thank goodness he asks the question, because I'm curious about it myself. How do they know about each other anyway? Where did they get acquainted the first time? There are so many things I didn't know about the Ricci than what I realised. My father probably knows about this already, but I don't, and it's eating me alive that I know nothing about this life I'm living. But then again, my father didn't even know about all the cruel things Giovanni has done, so he's probably as clueless as I am about the relationship between the Ricci and De Santi.
"I'm trying to get some information out of him," Fabio says.
"What information?" Antonio asks.
"Something related to this clan in the south, the Livaccari," Fabio says.
The Livaccari? Wait a minute. Aren't they one of the Romanos' clans? I remember my father mentioning it to me while we were eating dinner, like a year ago, if I'm not wrong. And Giovanni? What does he have to do with the Livaccari and the Romanos? What could Fabio know that we don't know? Oh no. Could what I've been thinking in the past couple of hours be true? Could Giovanni actually be connected to the Romanos?