?? Spectacle ??
It had been half an hour since the Marcettis’ wagon left.
Now another approached, heavier, darker. The first had rolled away behind a team of white horses, their coats glinting like bone under the lamps. This one came drawn by black steeds, their hooves drumming against the cobblestones like muffled thunder. Even the lanterns burned dimmer, their glass sooted from use.
The sky had just begun to change, that faint, reluctant dimming before sunset, when colors lose their warmth but the night hasn’t yet claimed them. Shadows stretched longer, curling around the buildings like something waiting to wake.
Inside, men sat in silence, checking the weight of their shotguns, thumbing open revolvers, loading and spinning with quiet precision. The air smelled of gun oil and damp wool.
They weren’t afraid of death. They had already made peace with it.
This could work or it could fail... they knew that. But they had to try. For their cousins. For their enforcers. For the friends buried under enemy soil. For revenge, or perhaps only to keep the wheel turning, so the world didn’t forget them.
The younger ones trembled more than they’d admit. One had gambled away everything he owned. Another had betrayed the woman he loved and lived with the taste of guilt since. The third was just a street thief, too arrogant to realize he’d stepped into something that would outlive him, calm not from courage, but from certainty. The kind only a traitor can afford.
The veterans were quieter, eyes like stone. Every one of them owed their life to Don Enzo Marcetti and every one of them would gladly give it back if it meant spitting in the faces of Dominick and his Dons.
One street away.
Only one.
Then it began.
From the far right end of the street, a faint orange glow trembled against the dusk.
They appeared.
Hooded figures.
A dozen or more, marching in perfect rhythm. Their robes were black, not cloth-black but void-black, swallowing the torchlight instead of reflecting it. No face. No hands. No hint of skin beneath the folds. Just the steady sway of torches held high, moving like a single body.
Behind them came four larger more, the only ones without torches. Their shoulders bore a palanquin, draped in black velvet and trimmed with dull gold thread. The thing looked heavy, but they carried it with unsettling ease.
Upon it stood a woman, pale against the darkness, in a high-collared stage gown, her gloved hands gripping the rail.
She began to sing. Her voice was cold, resonant, almost too pure.
An operatic cry that seemed to echo off the walls and fold back on itself. Each note rose and fell in perfect time with the hooded figures’ steps, as if the march itself were breathing through her.
Behind the palanquin came dancers, women in modest theater gowns, their skirts full and shimmering faintly with sequins. They moved in circles, slow and deliberate, their hands lifted, wrists bending like clockwork. No smiles. No emotion. Just movement.
Passersby stopped where they stood.
“Mom! Is it some kind of festival?”
“No, son,” she whispered, not taking her eyes off them. “But I hear there’s a party at the hotel. Maybe this is part of it.”
The hooded figures advanced, filling the street. The torches burned steady, almost too steady, as if untouched by wind.
Slow.
Silent.
Dignified
The Marcetti carriage slowed to a crawl. The black horses tossed their heads and stamped, uneasy.
The men inside leaned forward, peering through the carriage windows.
The hooded figures’ march blocked the entire road now, a moving wall of black robes and firelight between the men and the hotel.
Every eye on the street was fixed on the ritual now. Its beauty, its strangeness, as the opera swelled and the torches blazed brighter in the dimming light of the hour before sunset.
For a moment, the world itself seemed to pause.
The carriage of the Marcettis, at a distance, wasn't even in the background of all of this. It was isolated by the spectacle.
“Damn it, of all times,” one henchman inside it muttered, voice tight.
“This… this is creepy as hell for some reason,” another added, whispering.
“Focus!” the elder henchman barked, jaw set. “This could be one of his plays!”
From the rear, unnoticed to the Marcettis and far enough from them, a few men approached the pedestrians lingering in the street near the carriage.
“Sorry, this street’s closed,” one said, voice casual but firm.
“Go from here, all the way forward, then take a detour to the left.” another added, pointing directions. “You’ll find yourself at the front of the parade. Best view.”
The meaning was clear: the street near the carriage had to be empty.
One by one, the few people there, hungry to see the parade, vanished and took detours to join the crowd.
The opera rose, notes threading through the evening like steel.
Every detail had been calculated by a certain man who had orchestrated this spectacle. The singers’ notes, the dancers’ slow, hypnotic circles, the perfectly timed torchlight. The lustful would linger on the dancers; the music lovers would be pulled by the purity of the voice; the children, wide-eyed, could not tear themselves away; even those who craved danger or chaos would fixate on the hooded figures, unable to resist the rhythm, the mystery, the motion. There was no escape, no glance allowed elsewhere, no moment in which a mind could wander. Every eye was caught and held.
Then came the fireworks.
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Sudden arcs of red and gold bursting from the hotel roof, bright enough to illuminate the street. Sparks rained down, mirrored in the eyes of the onlookers, twisting the crowd into awe and distraction. The driver leaned back, drawn to the display, and in that instant, the rhythm of the world fractured.
Two dark carriages slid alongside the Marcetti wagon, precise, silent shadows among the chaos. One on each side.
Two gunshots cracked. Sharp. Quick. Echoing against cobblestone and torchlight, yet somehow swallowed by the fireworks. The driver slumped forward, reins slipping from lifeless hands, and the black horses bolted sideways, startled, their panic swallowed in the chaos.
Then came the storm—men stepping from the dark carriages, a hail of automatic fire from Tommy guns punching through wood, through metal, the echo of death tangled with the screams of horses, whinnies, and the acrid bite of gun smoke. The Marcetti men inside barely had time to register the world tearing itself apart. The shotguns, the rifles, the Tommy guns they bought... lay there useless. The opera singer’s notes soared, piercing and cruel, masking every other sound as if the city itself conspired.
Amid it all, the young Marcetti recruit, the one whose loyalties had already strayed, slumped against the shattered wood, breath ragged and wet. Smoke thickened around him, curling through the carriage like a living thing. He tried to speak, but the sound came thin and broken, half-swallowed by the rising music outside.
His eyes searched the blur of firelight beyond the window.
“Did they... forget about me?”
The men who had finished firing stepped back into their carriages with the same cold, mechanical efficiency that had just erased the Marcetti henchmen.
One of them dragged the driver’s lifeless body aside, laying it among the others, men sprawled in grotesque stillness, a few still breathing, eyes wide with the dawning horror of what had been done.
“H–hey… it’s me. I gave you the information…”
The plea barely carried.
The henchman raised his Tommy gun and swept the wagon once more.
When the echoes faded, nothing moved.
He climbed onto the driver’s seat, gathered the reins, and turned the horses, steering the Marcetti wagon back the way it had come.
The other two carriages followed, slowly, deliberately, rolling away like mourners in a funeral procession.
From a window in the hotel’s upper suites, the Undertaker watched too.
The telephone on the small table rang. He gave the fire one last look, then crossed the room and picked it up.
“Yes?” he said.
“Looks like we won’t have to worry about the outside. Good work, Dom,” Don Carlo reported, his voice even, almost too bright. "It felt like forever since the last time you coordinated a hit and relied on... a classic shooting."
Dominick took a slow breath. “You call that classic? It was still done unnoticed... that's what counts. Believe it or not, I was nervous up here. Though that display outside… maybe a bit over the top, even for me. Good thing that the troupe owed Don Silvano a favor and agreed on a performance.”
“But... were those your men outside, wearing those black… weird robes?” Carlo asked, chuckling.
“Nope,” Dominick replied. “They are real performers. As clueless as the audience. Silvano thought about bringing in the opera singer but I suggested the parade just in case the Marcetti henchmen don't take the warning and decide to be bold. All of this so he can have his beloved Olivia's peaceful birthday on time..."
"But Dominick... we had an informant in there in the carriage. I wished we would somehow spare him." Carlo admitted, a flicker of disappointment in his voice. "Without him, we wouldn't have known about the assassination or the second wagon."
"I planted him there when I heard the Marcettis are recruiting.” Dominick’s voice hardened. “But I didn't trust him enough to risk blowing up the hit. There was no safe play to save him there.”
“Alright... but never mind the bastards burning while the crowd claps,” Carlo said, exhaling. “The hotel infiltration felt… too clean. That's out of character from Enzo, who barges in like a predictable stupid brute every time. They had help from the inside, probably the Veraccis.”
“What makes you think it's the Veraccis and not one of our own?” Dominick asked.
“Don Juan and his son, Faustino, didn’t come, even though they were invited,”
Dominick’s voice went cold.
“What do you suggest we do to them?”
Carlo hesitated.
“You know how it is, Dom. I can’t decide alone. Me, Emilio and Silvano, we’ll sit after the birthday and decide.”
Dominick’s jaw tightened. He hated this: the delay, the committee that dissected decisions into democracy. Action should be swift; consensus wasted time.
Carlo spoke again, softer now. “Don Enzo Marcetti came after us directly. We agreed he must go. Once a don dies like that, public drama, newspapers, politicians... it forces the city’s hand. Police will act to restore order because the uproar hits the press and the balances the powers depend on. It drags the underworld into daylight. That's why we spared him all this time...”
"But now that he came after us," Don Carlo continued, "We have to put him down."
Dominick’s reply was clipped. “Vince is already on it.”
He shifted the receiver, resting it between his shoulder and cheek as he reached for a cigar. The faint rasp of a match scratched through the line. A curl of smoke drifted upward as he drew in, exhaled slowly, eyes half-lidded.
“But this decision... like a thousand others, came too late. Did you all vote on this?” he said, deadpan. “Or are we supposed to ring Emilio and Silvano and ask how they’d like his corpse decorated with chocolate, sprinkles, or maybe a ribbon?”
He inhaled once, slow. “Did you agree whether we bury him, burn him, or toss him in the sea? Was there a committee? A ballot?”
His voice stayed flat, almost bored. “Answer me. Which one is it?”
For a heartbeat, the only sound on the line was the faint crackle of burning tobacco.
Then Carlo’s voice came through, low, almost fatherly.
“That’s our way, son. Always has been… always will be.”
The words sank deep, heavy as lead. Even through the smoke, Dominick’s jaw set tighter, the ember of his cigar burning a dull, furious red.
“Any updates on your side?” Dominick asked, voice steady again.
“Our boys in the lobby are watching the staff. They were searched clean… I don’t think the rats came here to snap necks. They hid their guns somewhere... I don’t know where. Our bodyguards are watching the men, not the tools. Silvano's trying to get them to talk, but no luck. Any guesses where they might be hiding them, Dom?”
"You checked the bathrooms? Locker-rooms?"
"Searched throughly. All the waiters too."
Dominick rubbed his beard as he thought for a few seconds.
“I think I know. Put Alex and Dante on the phone. It’s their turn now.”
“Alright… oh! and Dominick.”
He listened. Carlo’s voice returned, colder.
“Silvano’s request. Tell Vince to do it slow.”
From inside the vast lobby, people pressed against the tall windows, watching the spectacle unfold outside. The opera singer, the hooded figures, the fireworks blooming against the night.
Gasps and applause rippled through the crowd. A few children ducked behind their parents’ legs at the sight of the robed silhouettes moving through the square.
Even Alex and Dante, guiding Olivia’s wheelchair closer to the glass, didn’t notice what really happened to the carriage, just like everyone else but the executors.
“That scared me a little,” Alex admitted, rubbing the goosebumps on his arms.
Dante smirked.
“The opera singer’s striking, though.”
“I loved her voice too,” said Katie, kneeling beside her daughter. “Sweetheart, Olivia… I bet you loved her. You always do when it’s opera.”
“Yes,” Olivia said softly. “Her voice was so beautiful. Even under the fireworks… I could still hear it.”
Alex leaned closer.
“But I saw you uncomfortable with those black robes, Olivia. Did they creep you out?”
“No I wasn’t!” she snapped, her voice louder than she meant it to be. The edge in her tone startled Alex and even herself.
Katie leaned in quickly, whispering to Alex.
“She’s pyrophobic. She’s never comfortable around fire or fireworks. Those dark druids didn’t scare her... the torches did. That’s why Don Emilio suggested she stay inside.”
“Oh. I’m terribly sorry. I didn’t know,” Alex murmured, guilt softening his face.
Across the lobby, Don Emilio noticed Don Carlo and Don Silvano entering together. The three exchanged quiet words, low, private, the kind only old men in power share when the room’s too crowded to trust. It was a rare sight: the three Dons standing side by side, shadows touching under the chandelier.
A few minutes later, Silvano approached Olivia. The crowd’s noise dimmed as he crouched to her level, his expression kind and slightly tired.
“So,” he said, voice warm, “did you enjoy the spectacle, my dear?”
Olivia brightened.
“I did. Especially the singer. She was… perfect.”
Silvano smiled faintly.
“Good. Because she was singing for you.”
“For me?”
“Of course,” he said, gently tapping the armrest of her chair. “Tonight’s show: the singer, the fireworks, all of it, was your gift. A celebration of your courage this year.”
Olivia’s eyes widened. She looked down, shy but glowing. “Thank you, Nonno Silvano.”
“No need to thank me. Just promise me you’ll keep smiling like that... and that someday, you will walk on your feet, hm?”
He rose slowly, brushing a bit of ash from his sleeve, and winked at Alex and Dante. Then, with a subtle tilt of his head toward the far end of the lobby, where Carlo and Emilio waited.
A silent signal to join them.
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?? Aeolwyn's Conquest ??
by Timbecile