Accardi Chapter 34

Michele waited for them in a corner booth in the furthest reaches of the restaurant. Matteo gave a sharp nod to Frankie, the single man he chose to have with him during the meeting.

“Ah, hello boys,” Michele greeted. 

The oldest of the three Dons was starting to show his age with graying hair and stress lines coating his face. A Don showing stress was never a good thing. Matteo wondered if Alessio considered *this* a weakness or just the opposite sex. Michele stood and grasped each man in a tight hug. They sat around the table while their men watched from a distance that gave them enough space to talk freely. 

“I was surprised you could meet so soon, Palladino,” Michele noted as he sipped some whiskey. 

A bartender appeared and distributed similar glasses to Matteo and Alessio. Matteo discreetly pushed the glass to the side. He had no intention of drinking something handed to him in a family meeting.

“I was already in the country. I was sad to miss Valentina and Antonio’s funerals and wished to pay my respects once I had a few days to spare.” Alessio shrugged, the lie rolling off his lips with ease. 

“It was a beautiful service, Accardi,” Michele said with a nod. “Your father would have been proud.”

“Hm,” Matteo responded, unwilling to discuss anything personal with the man. 

While Alessio seemed keen to make amends between the families, Michele, and the Galantes in general, were not known for their friendly dispositions. While the Palladinos held their ground and the original crime syndicate in Italy, Accardis and Galantes had fought between themselves for decades before finding their own niches in New York’s societal underbelly. It was normal for the two New York families to distrust one another. That was until Matteo and Conor were born. Conor was different, half Irish and half Italian, he’d grown up with a different experience. When he met his girlfriend at a young age, she’d shaped him even further into a man Matteo questioned had the hardness to handle a life as a Don. He looked forward to when he took over the Galante family.

“Why did you call this meeting, Galante?” Alessio asked. 

Michele’s friendly smile faltered. “Before we begin I need to reiterate that nothing discussed at this table can leave this table. Nothing spoken here can be repeated. To anyone.” Both Matteo and Alessio nodded. Michele sighed and the sigh carried with it the stress he’d been under for the last few weeks. “You both have heard by now that one of my most trusted men was arrested?” Alessio and Matteo nodded. Michele’s smile turned to a sneer. “I promised Philip many things and one of those was to find out who the snitch was that tipped the police off.”

“And you have?” Matteo asked. 

Michele nodded. “Luckily for us the pig liked to squeal. After just a few minutes with me, he was spilling his guts in more ways than one. I found out many interesting things. Open investigations that have been going on into the Accardi and Galante businesses. Stakeouts occurring outside our clubs and other businesses. Loads of information only our closest confidants could possibly know.”

“You found a mole?” Alessio prompted.

“No,” Michele said, sitting back and draping his right arm along the booth. “I found an entire colony of them.” He shrugged. “Mostly street types who were given bad batches of our drugs or men in Accardi’s camp whose family had left them after they lost all their money. Rats rather than moles mostly. But,” Michele held a finger up. “There was one particular individual that grabbed my attention. Have you ever heard of the Reaper?”

Matteo’s entire frame stiffened, catching the eyes of both men. Michele grinned. “Ah, I see you have been looking into your mother and brother’s deaths after all. I worried you’d been broken by the incident and lost track of what’s important.”

“You discovered the man who killed them?” Alessio asked, sitting forward and giving Matteo a disbelieving look. 

Matteo put enough pressure in clenching his jaw that he tasted enamel on his tongue. He glanced up at Frankie who gave a sharp nod. “One of my men has been doing some undercover work. He’s heard rumblings of a man called the Reaper who is paid by the Irish mafia to murder with discretion. Killings made to look like accidents like…” Matteo looked off into the empty restaurant. “We haven’t found him. Yet,” he said with deadly promise. His glare connected with Michele. “This pig knew of him?”

“Even better. He knew where we could find him.”

Matteo shot to his feet, lurched across the table, and drug Michele across it by his shirt collar. “Where. Is. He?” he growled as Michele’s bodyguard pointed a gun at his temple. 

“I’d be happy to hand him to you, Accardi,” Michele told him with a smile. “But first, you have to agree to help me with something.”

“Release him and hear him out, Accardi,” Alessio instructed. 

Matteo released Michele with a shove. Michele sat back down and flattened his collar while also giving his man the order to stand down. 

After Alessio was confident Matteo had gotten a grip on himself, he asked, “You have this man they call ‘Reaper’?”

Michele nodded. “I hope you don’t mind. I took a pound of flesh myself when we found him.” Michele unleashed a nasty grin that would cause any other person to run in fear. “Accardi would have wanted it so, I believe,” Michele noted, referring to Matteo’s father. 

“You’re sure this man killed my family?” Matteo asked. 

Michele nodded. “We did our due diligence. We acted as though we were in the market for a hired-hand when he offered it up as part of his resume.”

“Who did you tell him was the target?” Matteo asked.

Michele’s dark eyes focused on him. “The only person he would believe I wanted dead badly enough to hire someone else to do it: You.”

Matteo scoffed and shook his head as he sat back in the booth and crossed his arms. “What the fuck do you want from us, Michele?”

“I want your help.”

“With what?” Alessio pushed, obviously getting just as frustrated with the back and forth as Matteo.

“Going to war.”

“With who?”

“The bloody Micks!” Michele said, slamming his fist down on the table. “The fuckers who killed my wife. The fuckers who think they can trespass on my turf. The fuckers who turned in one of my best men sending my family into chaos in more ways than one. The *fuckers* who did *this* to my son!”

Michele threw a photograph down on the table. Alessio was the first to glance at it. His fingers tightened on the paper, causing it to crinkle. He slid it over to Matteo. At first Matteo wasn’t sure what he was looking at. It was an organ of some kind, presented in a gift box with ribbon hanging off the side. He then turned the picture upside down and his gut churned. It was a female’s reproductive system: her ovaries, fallopian tubes and uterus still perfectly intact.