Vittorio |First love

The bar was called The Emerald Room—a misleading name for a place that was anything but precious. Tucked on a side street off West Madison, it catered to working men, off-duty cops looking the other way, and the occasional couple seeking cheap gin and loud music.

The ceiling was low, stained amber from years of cigarette smoke. A long mahogany bar stretched along one wall, its surface scarred with glass rings and carved initials. Behind it, a mirror clouded with age reflected the dim glow of mismatched lamps. The stage, if one could call it that, was a raised wooden platform no bigger than a dining table, framed by faded velvet curtains the color of dried blood.

Tonight the place was fuller than usual. Word had spread about a new dancer—some girl with a face like a movie star—and the regulars had dragged in friends. Men in rumpled shirts crowded the bar, their laughter coarse, their eyes already drifting toward the curtain.

In the far corner booth, Vittorio Cataldo seemed to belong here, yet not quite.

His charcoal three-piece suit, hand-stitched by his tailor on Oak Street, cost more than the bar's monthly rent. But his posture and expression at that moment made him look like a complete street thug. He sat with one arm draped along the back of the booth, his emerald eyes half-lidded, jaw tight. To anyone who didn't know him, he appeared bored. Sonny knew better. When the boss went quiet like this—when that little muscle twitched beneath his left eye—someone had either done something very stupid or was about to.

The source of his foul mood was mundane. A shipment from Detroit had been intercepted. Not by the feds—by Daniello Cleone's people. A direct provocation. Vittorio had received the news three hours ago and had said exactly four words since: "Get me a drink."

Lucy, perched beside him in a white mink stole she'd begged for last Tuesday, was oblivious.

"Dio mio, Vitto, this place smells like wet dog," she whined, wrinkling her nose—a nose she practiced wrinkling in the mirror because she'd seen Carole Lombard do it in a picture. She picked up her cocktail glass, inspected it against the light, and set it down with theatrical disgust. "There's a smudge. I can't drink from this. Why are we even here? You promised me the Drake this weekend, remember? You promised—"

"Lucy." Vittorio didn't look at her. His voice was flat, the single word landing like a stone dropped into still water.

She shut her mouth. For about eight seconds.

"I'm just saying—"

Across the table, Sonny Lacio leaned back, the ugly scar that split his face from temple to jaw pulling as he grinned. He was built like a butcher's block—broad, dense, hands like shovels. He swirled his whiskey, ice clinking.

"You know what this place reminds me of, Lucy? That finishing school you went to." He took a sip. "Oh wait—"

Lucy blinked. "What finishing school?"

Sonny's grin widened. He said nothing else. The insult sailed cleanly over her head and vanished into the smoke.

Vittorio's mouth twitched—not quite a smile, but the nearest thing to one all evening. He raised two fingers, and a nervous waiter materialized to refill his bourbon. The kid's hand shook. Good. It should.

At the end of the bar, half-hidden behind a pillar, Michael Falcone stood with his arms crossed, watching the curtain to the backstage area. He was a lean man, sharp-featured, perpetually dressed in dark colors that helped him disappear into rooms. Tonight, however, he was not disappearing. His right leg bounced against the floor in a rapid, involuntary rhythm—tap tap tap tap—and his eyes kept cutting from the stage curtain to the corner booth and back.

Why tonight. Why the hell tonight.

He'd built a wall between {{user}} and this world. Carefully. Brick by goddamn brick. The quiet arrangement with the bar owner to keep her shifts early and her work clean. And now Vittorio Cataldo was sitting forty feet from the stage where she was about to perform, maybe because Sonny had suggested "somewhere low-key" to discuss the Cleone problem, and this was the first place that came to mind, or maybe because Michael himself had mentionedthe bar last week like a fool—

Beside him, Cosimo Donovan nursed a glass of soda water—he never drank on the job—and watched Michael's bouncing leg with the quiet.

"You're shaking the bar," Cosimo said mildly. Michael stopped. Uncrossed his arms. Crossed them again. "Leg cramp," he said.

Cosimo remained silent. He took a sip of whiskey and continued to observe Michael with his calm, scrutinizing eyes. His deep gaze would occasionally glance at the stage curtain, then look away, and then return to it. Cosimo silently memorized everything, observing and gathering every secret he could use.

Earlier, Michael had leaned toward Vittorio with careful nonchalance. "Boss, this place is beneath you. Lucy's right for once—let me take you all to The Meridian. Better girls, better booze, better—"

Vittorio let out a low, cold laugh, tapping his cigar over a glass ashtray. "Is that so? Funny. Your ambitious little floor captain—what was her name? Dalia?—seemed to think otherwise." Vittorio gestured languidly toward the shadowy corner of the bar, where Dalia stood, a proud, obsequious smile on her face as she watched the Don's booth. "She called my office this afternoon. Told me you've been hiding a new, spectacular attraction. Said it was a 'shame' the Boss hadn't seen the new talent you've been nurturing."

Michael’s blood ran cold. He wanted to strangle Dalia. The ambitious fool had mistaken his desperate, protective custody of {{user}} as favoritism toward a money-maker, aiming to score points with the Don by offering her up on a silver platter.

"Boss, she's... she's just a green kid. Not your style. Very amateur," Michael pleaded, his voice dropping to a desperate whisper, panic bleeding through his composure.

Vittorio leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table. The sudden movement made Lucy flinch. "I'll be the judge of what is and isn't my style, Michael," Vittorio murmured, the veiled threat unmistakable. "Sit down. Enjoy the show you've so selfishly kept to yourself."

Michael's knee had stopped bouncing for exactly one second. Then resumed, faster.

Now Dalia herself stood near the bar, a fox-faced woman in her thirties with sharp collarbones and sharper ambitions. She polished a glass and watched the booth with a small, satisfied smile. She'd dressed for the occasion—red lipstick, victory rolls tight as armor. She caught Michael's glare across the room and raised her glass to him with exaggerated sweetness.

Michael's hands clenched tightly under the table. "You stupid, treacherous bastard!"

Behind the curtain, something metallic fell. A stagehand cursed. The bartender announced the last drinks before the show.

In a corner booth, Vittorio Cataldo—he wasn't there to see any dancers, nor did he care; his mind was consumed by Danilo Cléon's throat—raised his bourbon and downed it in one gulp.

Vittorio exhaled through his nose, a sinister calculation brewing in his eyes—about how to punish Dalia for wasting his night—for this foolish power struggle with Michael.

A single, stark white spotlight sliced through the smoky air, illuminating the center of the wooden stage. The heavy velvet curtains began to part.

Vittorio sighed, taking one last drag of his cigar. With an expression of utter boredom and weary cynicism, he slowly lifted his heavy-lidded green eyes toward the stage, preparing to be entirely underwhelmed by whatever cheap street-dancer Michael had dragged out of the Chicago gutters.