I took a slow step forward, my leather soles sinking into the plush pile of the carpet. "Bruno. Heel."
The mastiff’s ear twitched once, but his body remained anchored to the floorboards directly beneath the head of the white casket. Slowly, he shifted his massive jaw, resting his heavy chin against the lower ledge of the white wood, right near the polished brass handles.
He let out another whimper—longer this time, vibrating through the thin floorboards beneath my feet.
It was an impossible sound. In ten years, I had heard Bruno roar, snap, growl, and rip, but I had never heard him mourn. He didn't care for strangers. He tolerated my lieutenants, ignored my drivers, and only showed affection when I tossed him a marrow bone from the kitchen at night.
Yet here he was, prostrating himself before a little girl he had only seen two or three times when her father brought takeout boxes to my office on Sunday afternoons.
"Carmine..."
The voice came from the right side of the room, near the decorative stained-glass window that looked out over the funeral home's parking lot.
I turned my head slowly.
Marco Ricci stood there. My underboss. My shadow for twelve years.
Marco was forty-two, dressed in a black double-breasted silk suit that cost more than Tomas Vasquez earned in six months of flipping pizzas. His hair was slicked back with lavender-scented pomade, his jaw clean-shaven, his hands manicured. On his pinky sat a heavy gold signet ring featuring the crest of my family's old home village in Calabria—a gift I had given him the night he took a blade to the ribs to protect my brother during a warehouse raid in Jersey City.
If I was the brain of the Queens outfit, Marco was the edge of the blade. He managed the collections, oversaw the docks in Flushing, and kept the younger soldiers from stepping out of line when the money got tight.
Marco held his hands clasped neatly in front of his belt, his face set into a carefully rehearsed expression of quiet, solemn sorrow. But as my eyes met his, I noticed the slight, almost imperceptible twitch in his left jawline—the muscle tightening and relaxing every three seconds.
"Boss," Marco said softly, taking a small step toward me. "The family is suffering enough. Look at Tomas. Let's get the dog outside, pay our respects to the casket, put fifty grand in the envelope for the burial costs, and go back to the club. We got work to do in Flushing tonight."
"We have time, Marco," I said, my voice flat.
"Carmine, it's bad optics," Marco persisted, lowering his voice further as he cast a glance toward theVasquez family. "A ninety-pound beast whimpering at a dead kid's box makes it look like we don't have control of our own house. The boys outside are starting to talk."
"Let them talk," I said. "Since when do you care about optics, Marco? You were the one who tossed a Russian lieutenant into an automated car wash in Corona three years ago during broad daylight."