The Message

A gray sedan with tinted windows was parked a few blocks away from Marcel's apartment building. Inside the car, Enzo and Angelo were sitting with somber expressions. About an hour ago, both of them had received a text message from Marcel: I've found the culprit! He's in my penthouse!

Both father and son were extremely skeptical of the message. Especially Enzo, who had already begun to suspect that Marcel had been lying about the whole Buccanti spy thing.

The day before yesterday, when he had ordered Marcel to find out about the person responsible, he'd already ordered one of his men to tail him. And today, when Enzo had asked the man about Marcel's activities, he'd learned that Marcel hadn't left his apartment at all; moreover, no one else had come to visit him!

Coupled with the text message Marcel had sent him and his son, Enzo couldn't help but wonder if something had gone wrong, or if Marcel was trying to do something nefarious. But he didn't think the latter was likely. Marcel was truly loyal to the family.

Regardless, before going to the consigliere's place, he ordered his men to scout his penthouse first and see if something was off.

A few minutes later, Enzo's phone started ringing. He accepted the call and the terrified voice of a capo from the other end was heard. "B-B-Boss! There's nobody here…. B-But you should come and see for your—"

Before the person could finish speaking, Enzo heard the sound of barfing from the phone. His eyebrows furrowed and he instructed his driver to head to Marcel's apartment.

A few minutes later, the pair alighted from the car and stepped inside the building, then took the elevator all the way to the top floor. When the elevator doors opened, they were greeted by their men.

Enzo looked at all of their tense expressions and his heart sank. "What's the matter with you lot?"

The capo who had spoken to him on the phone earlier walked toward him with an uneasy expression. "Boss, you gotta see this." He led the pair to Marcel's penthouse. As they came closer to the entrance of the penthouse, they smelled a foul stench in the air.

When they finally entered the apartment and the capo guided them to the dining room, their eyes widened in sheer disbelief. Angelo couldn't take it anymore and finally puked. He had never seen something so horrendous.

Meanwhile, Enzo continued looking with shock etched all over his face. At the center of the dining room, the corpse of Marcel was hanging by the neck from the fan on the ceiling. But that wasn't what horrified all the men present—what truly terrified them was the condition of the corpse.

Marcel's corpse had turned completely purple and black veins ran across the surface of his body. Dark purple pus was overflowing from every one of his orifices.

And on the dead man's torso, a message was carved by what seemed to be a sharp, pointy object, perhaps a dagger. The message read: ANGELO, YOU'RE NEXT.

Angelo, after wiping his mouth, looked back at the hanging corpse and the message on it. He shuddered in fear and was almost on the verge of tears. If there was someone who could do such a ghastly thing to Marcel, there was no way he wouldn't do the same to him. And the fact that the person had even written such a message on Marcel's corpse was clearly to make Angelo's mind a mess.

When Enzo saw the message carved on Marcel's chest, his eyes narrowed. Even he knew that the person behind all of this was playing mind games with them. If not, they would have taken all of them out right now, instead of letting them witness all this.

But what he couldn't understand was their motive. Right at that moment, Angelo's terrified voice drifted into his ears. "F-Father… there's something I must tell you."

"What is it?" Enzo's eyes narrowed and his heart grew anxious.

Angelo nervously gulped and told him about how he had instructed Marcel to silence David. He even said why he had gone so far as to come to the decision. At this point, there was no point hiding the truth, not when his life was on the line.

The more Enzo heard, the tighter he clenched his fists. He gnashed his teeth in fury and took a deep breath to calm himself down. He patted his son's shoulder and gently grabbed the back of his neck. "So you told Marcel, and he told Nico, eh?"

Angelo meekly nodded, afraid to meet his father's gaze.

Enzo rested his forehead against his son's and sighed in utter disappointment. The next moment, his eyes narrowed and he viciously punched Angelo in the stomach. "For such a small thing, you decided to kill the boy!?"

Angelo dropped to his knees and struggled to breathe. However, his father wasn't done yet. He raised his foot and ruthlessly kicked his son repeatedly. "You, good, for, nothing, piece, of, shit!

"Do you realize what your decision has cost us!?

"All of this happening to us now is because somehow you got annoyed by a hairless fuckin' brat!?" Enzo's face turned red from anger, and it wasn't until his men separated him from his son that he began to calm down.

He brushed back his hair and took a cigar from his pocket. Only after he had taken a couple of puffs did he manage to fully calm himself. He looked at Marcel's hanging corpse, a trace of sorrow flashing past his eyes.

The next moment, his eyes turned cold and he looked at one of his capos and instructed, "Find everyone who David was in touch with. And kill them. Kill them all, ya hear me?"

"Yes, boss." The capo solemnly nodded, then immediately left the penthouse.

Naturally, Enzo was under the assumption that someone close to David was taking revenge for him by killing all the important members of the family, as well as raiding all their storehouses.

Thus, he wanted to kill everyone David had ever come in contact with, hoping to find the person who had been going after the family. He didn't know how far that person would go, so he had to send his loved ones away from New York as soon as possible.

Enzo finally realized what Don Luciani meant when he had said, 'Everything happening to you is your own doing.' The fact that he had said that meant he definitely knew who the person behind everything was. Now, Enzo could only hope that the leader of the five families could tell him the culprit's name.

He instructed his men to dispose of Marcel's corpse, then looked at Angelo who was still lying on the ground writhing in pain. He couldn't help but sneer, "Get up, ya pathetic cunt." With that, he stormed out.

Angelo got to his feet without a single complaint and silently followed after his father.

He knew he had royally fucked up.