[fic] morituri te salutamus
Title morituri te salutamus
Rating: G
Characters/Pairing Sanji, Chopper, Usopp, Luffy, Zoro, Nami, Robin
Word Count: 2655
Notes Mafia AU, prequel to this and this and based off the Jinginai Time omake from the anime
“Hi, Sanjino,” Chopperini greets him from the operating table, looking up to give him a small but genuine smile, which is as rare as peace these days. “Have you been well?”
“Yeah, kid,” he says. “Cold in here though, isn’t it?”
“Has to be.” Chopperini gestures to the body he’s in the middle of examining . It’s someone Sanjino recognizes-it always is-a man whose family has been loyal to his since before Sanjino was born. “The bodies go bad otherwise. You know.”
He nods and he tries not to remember the man’s name but he does-it’s Michael. It’s been a while since he’s seen Michael. He played harmonica and liked his coffee black with three sugars. His father, dead in the ground over a decade now, was the one who taught Sanjino how to palm coins. Now Michael too is cold and ghost-white and Sanjino feels hot with anger. There are no visible marks on Michael's body, and it makes Sanjino sick to think of what it must be-poison. He asks, a bit louder than he intends to in this room with the high ceilings, “Was it quick?”
Chopperini pulls off his surgical mask and blinks at him under the bright, fluorescent lights. “No,” he says quietly.
Sanjino drops his cigarette to the floor and grounds it out with his heel. "Fuckers," he hisses. "We have to get rid of everything in the kitchens now. We can't risk it." He thinks of all the food they’ll have to cart away, such waste when the town under their protection is already half-starved. They’ll have to burn it all to prevent desperate families from scavenging.
Chopperini pulls the sheet over Michael's head and says nothing.
One of Michael's hands is dangling over the edge of the table, gold wedding band, calloused knuckles, scar on his pinky. Sanjino takes a deep breath of sterile air, resolve swirling in his lungs. "Kid, I need to ask you something."
"What? Are you all right? Your eye?”
He shakes his head no. He doesn’t know where to start, how to explain the weariness, the heaviness, and that nauseatingly sweet taste in the back of his throat, but he has no use for those words anyway. He pushes all that away and says what he needs to say. “I'm taking over soon. I need you to be my right-hand man.”
The color immediately drains from Chopperini’s face until he’s as pale as Michael’s corpse. “Me?” he whispers, brown eyes wide. “But I’m-”
“The best,” Sanjino finishes for him. “I won’t take no for an answer.” He can't afford to.
"I couldn't." The kid is starting to cry now and Sanjino finds that he feels nothing at all. “I don’t-I don’t want to kill anyone!”
“You won’t,” he promises, in a voice he hopes is soothing despite its roughness. “I’ll take care of that. Gino will take care of that. I asked him and he’s already said yes. You know how he is, there won't be any work left for the rest of us. But I don’t need you to kill people. I need you to fix people if I mess up, and I’m going to mess up a lot, kid. I won’t be able to help it.” It's a daring concession, too honest, but this is the game he has to play.
Chopperini wrings his gloved hands, so small, and he sobs, “What if I can’t?”
“You fixed me,” he points out. “Remember?”
Chopperini glances up at him and then away, shoulders hunched and trembling. ”You're still blind in that eye."
"You fixed me," he insists. “And you’re even better now than you were then.”
“I am.” Chopperini sounds both proud and broken. “I am, but I still don't-”
“You're the best there is."
And what he does next he knows he's not supposed to, not as heir apparent, not as a man who's going to be commanding his own empire as soon as tomorrow, but he needs Chopperini (Gino is too destructive and Michael is dead and no one else even comes close) and this is how to win him-he bows his head and says what he should never say: "Please."
Chopperini inhales sharply but he does not answer right away, and in the silence, Sanjino thinks briefly of Michael's wife and young daughter, who had gasped when Sanjino showed her her grandfather's coin trick. Then he closes his eyes against the glint of Michael's ring and he lights another cigarette, allows a tremor in his hand, calculated and subtle, but he knows Chopperini will catch it. He knows Chopperini is watching and he knows Chopperini's heart breaks easily. He knows he's won when he hears Chopperini taking off his gloves, hears him walking around the table, and when he opens his eyes, Chopperini reaches up to take his hand.
Chopperini whispers, "All right, boss."
Sanjino pretends not to hear the quaver in Chopperini's voice. The kid's so young, the tears still wet on his face, but talent marks you, especially in a world like this, and Sanjino has never had a choice either. He smiles thinly, ruffles the kid's hair. "Time to see old man Zeff, yeah?"
Gino is waiting for them outside, key in the ignition.
+++
“Best friends,” says Luffione, an entire leg of lamb in one hand, the other propping up his chin. “Right?”
There are two things of which he is absolutely certain in this world. The first, that they are indeed the best and truest of friends. The second, that he will never be able to find the words to describe how much he hates this place.
“Right,” he confirms, and Luffione smiles.
“So you’ll say yes.”
He should, but the thought of all the job entails still terrifies him to the core. Sanjino and Zoroscia are in his nightmares more often than he can count, larger than life with elongated limbs and hollow eyes and gaping mouths like dark caverns. His knees feel weak and he needs to sit down, but that would be presumptuous. Luffione hasn’t offered him a seat yet, so he stays standing.
Luffione stares up at him with that grin on his face, and Usotuya wants desperately to run. The wind lifts the corners of the tablecloth laden down with meats and wine, and Luffione’s straw hat threatens to fly off his head. Luffione holds it down and says again, “You’ll say yes.”
The voices from the forest come on the wind, the murmurs building until it’s a rumbling between his ears and his teeth chatter. He's heard them all his life and he should be used to them by now, but it’s so much worse when he’s this close to the edge of the forest with the sun low in the sky. And how could he say no when a hundred dead souls are demanding vengeance and he’s the only one who can hear them.
He’s not brave like his father was, not like Luffione is, but there are things he can’t turn his back on. This is his job and being brave has nothing to do with it.
And he knows already that he would die for Luffione, after everything Luffione’s done for him and for Kaya, and he knows that he is Luffione’s best bet in this protracted, decades-long war.
So he accepts all of it as an inevitability and he says, "Yes," and it feels like the ground’s going to drop out from beneath his feet. He wonders how he’s going to tell Kaya, and would she hear his voice calling if one day too soon he joined the legions haunting the forest?
“I knew it!” Luffione seems oblivious to his fear and the screaming filling his head. He drains the last of the wine and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. He tosses the empty bottle into the air with artless grace, and Usotuya follows its trajectory with a practiced eye.
He puts a bullet through the bottle before gravity reasserts its pull, and the shards catch the dying light as they rain back down on them. Luffione barks a laugh, shakes the shards from the rim of his hat, and punches him on the shoulder.
“You’re so cool!” he chirps. “Sit down and have some meat with me!”
Usotuya swallows hard and all but collapses into the proffered seat. He puts his gun on the table with hands that are steady despite the shaking in his legs and the chaos in his head. He runs his hands down his face. “But Don Shanks… he’s ok with this?"
“Yep! He says there’s no one better! Your dad would be proud.”
He’s about to cry, he can feel it, the familiar burn in his eyes, panic seizing his chest, but a hundred dead souls are counting on him now. Luffione is counting on him and Kaya expects him home for dinner tonight. She's making stew from one of his mother's old recipes. So he musters a soft thanks and holds himself together, though just barely.
“I’m going to be don of this island, Usotuya. Capo di tutti capi!"
“Y-Yeah, I know,” he says.
“Then we’ll have everything to ourselves!”
“Yeah,” he agrees half-heartedly. “And people won’t have to be afraid to leave their houses anymore. Kids can finally play outside again.”
Carota, Cipolla and Pepe huddled inside on resplendent summer days, Kaya trying to coax them down from the attic hours after gunshots had sounded in the streets-and Usotuya thinks maybe this is where he can find the strength to do what he needs to.
“Wouldn't that be great!” Luffione beams at him.
“Great,” he echoes. It’s such a long, long way to go and he might not be alive at the end of it. Luffione hasn’t taken on the mantle yet, but once he does, Usotuya, as his right-hand man, will no longer have the luxury of being in the shadows. He’ll be the first on any hit list because despite his quaking and stuttering and the voices in his head, there will be no doubt at all that no one is getting to Luffione so long as Usotuya is alive. He’ll make sure of that. It doesn't matter if he's a coward; he has steady hands and he would die for Luffione and for all he represents (justice, if not exactly peace), and that is more important than being brave.
“I’m glad we’re friends,” says Luffione, his mouth full and eyes bright.
“Sure, boss,” he croaks, and the new title rolls easily off his tongue. He manages to smile back, somehow. “Friends.”
+++
"You know why you're here," says the don. "Zoroscia."
"Yes," he says from the doorway.
The don smiles and adjusts the glasses on the bridge of his nose, leans back on his desk. "Come in, then."
He does so, steps into the study and into the pool of warm, yellow lamplight. Namimore and Robita are sitting cross-legged on either end of a long, low settee and it's all Zoroscia can do to keep his hand from reaching for his gun. The women are dangerous, quick and cunning, invaluable to the famiglia, but they are outsiders and Zoroscia cannot imagine why they would be here now.
"Have a seat," offers the don, and Zoroscia doesn't know if he's being cruel or magnanimous. But he takes a seat dutifully, between Namimore and Robita, and Namimore gives him a smile, deceptively sweet.
"You are ready for this?" the don asks him, as if there could be any answer other than yes. It is almost an insult to ask. Zoroscia has been waiting for years, ever since the don's daughter fell and broke her neck and the don had shaken him from sleep and said, it's you now. And for the next almost-decade, it had been him, growing to fill in the empty spaces that she had left, even though the don will always wish, darkly, that it had been Zoroscia they found at the bottom of those stairs instead.
But Zoroscia can't help that. The don has no sons and has never wanted a son, not when Kuina was alive and not even now, when she is dead. Zoroscia can't help that, but he's tried and he's trained and he's learned how to be great anyway, in her place.
So Zoroscia nods.
The don heaves a sigh and turns his back on them, and Zoroscia does not allow himself to feel hurt.
"I've chosen Namimore and Robita as your seconds-in-command," the don says, infuriatingly casual. "They'll take care of you. Make sure you don't stray."
Something ugly rises in him at those words and he fights to put it down. Wounded pride and disbelief and betrayal. He had been groomed for this part, he had endured for years under the don's unforgiving eye, and now the don wants to put him in the hands of some war orphan and some landless refugee from a distant country? It's not enough that Namimore has saved them from financial ruin, that Robita has thwarted every attempt on the don's life-they are still only mercenaries while Zoroscia is famiglia in all but blood. Suddenly, he feels Robita's hand on his hand, a comforting gesture if it were from anyone else, and a snarl almost escapes him. He snatches his hand back just as the don turns around again, his expression serene.
"Is that acceptable, Zoroscia?"
"No," he says curtly. Now is the time to be brazen, to show his mettle. "I want Johnny as my second."
He has been cultivating Johnny's loyalty ever since he saved him and his brother from being gunned down in a drive-by. Johnny is unquestioningly dedicated to him, and that's what Zoroscia needs-someone who will follow him and no one else, not even the current don, not even Kuina, if she were still alive. Johnny's life starts and ends with him, Zoroscia has made sure of it.
"Johnny is incompetent," the don dismisses easily and just like that, all of Zoroscia's carefully laid plans crumble to dust. "I'm not giving you a choice," he explains gently, though Zoroscia can hear the edge in his voice, sharp enough to cut.
The don knows what this will bring, knows that the men will revolt once word gets out. He's testing Zoroscia, even now, unrelenting.
Zoroscia stands, too abruptly, and Namimore makes an annoyed sound that he ignores. He walks over to the don, his footsteps muffled by the carpet but his pulse loud and angry in his ears. The don regards him calmly and something in Zoroscia flares and roars to life, bares its teeth.
Fine, he decides, jaw tight. Fine, because he can do this too. Everything will be his soon, this study, this mahogany desk with its drawers full of secrets, this estate, even the mountains in the window-his. He'll raze Don Shanks's forest to the ground, salt the earth, take apart Don Zeff's manor by the sea brick by ancient brick. Luffione and Sanjino will bend their knees and offer up their throats to him. The don will understand, finally, that Zoroscia will never be her, but he can be better. He can be the best, and then the don will have to let go, will have to let her memory rest, let her find the peace that was never here on this island.
If this means he has to prove that he can hold his own before Namimore and Robita, that he can put down a mutiny across the ranks, then he will. There has never been much love for him, but there has always been fear, and he will not lose. All he has to do, now, is this-
He bows to kiss the don's ring. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Robita's smile, small and vicious, and he hears Namimore laugh, soft and low and pleased.
Rating: G
Characters/Pairing Sanji, Chopper, Usopp, Luffy, Zoro, Nami, Robin
Word Count: 2655
Notes Mafia AU, prequel to this and this and based off the Jinginai Time omake from the anime
“Hi, Sanjino,” Chopperini greets him from the operating table, looking up to give him a small but genuine smile, which is as rare as peace these days. “Have you been well?”
“Yeah, kid,” he says. “Cold in here though, isn’t it?”
“Has to be.” Chopperini gestures to the body he’s in the middle of examining . It’s someone Sanjino recognizes-it always is-a man whose family has been loyal to his since before Sanjino was born. “The bodies go bad otherwise. You know.”
He nods and he tries not to remember the man’s name but he does-it’s Michael. It’s been a while since he’s seen Michael. He played harmonica and liked his coffee black with three sugars. His father, dead in the ground over a decade now, was the one who taught Sanjino how to palm coins. Now Michael too is cold and ghost-white and Sanjino feels hot with anger. There are no visible marks on Michael's body, and it makes Sanjino sick to think of what it must be-poison. He asks, a bit louder than he intends to in this room with the high ceilings, “Was it quick?”
Chopperini pulls off his surgical mask and blinks at him under the bright, fluorescent lights. “No,” he says quietly.
Sanjino drops his cigarette to the floor and grounds it out with his heel. "Fuckers," he hisses. "We have to get rid of everything in the kitchens now. We can't risk it." He thinks of all the food they’ll have to cart away, such waste when the town under their protection is already half-starved. They’ll have to burn it all to prevent desperate families from scavenging.
Chopperini pulls the sheet over Michael's head and says nothing.
One of Michael's hands is dangling over the edge of the table, gold wedding band, calloused knuckles, scar on his pinky. Sanjino takes a deep breath of sterile air, resolve swirling in his lungs. "Kid, I need to ask you something."
"What? Are you all right? Your eye?”
He shakes his head no. He doesn’t know where to start, how to explain the weariness, the heaviness, and that nauseatingly sweet taste in the back of his throat, but he has no use for those words anyway. He pushes all that away and says what he needs to say. “I'm taking over soon. I need you to be my right-hand man.”
The color immediately drains from Chopperini’s face until he’s as pale as Michael’s corpse. “Me?” he whispers, brown eyes wide. “But I’m-”
“The best,” Sanjino finishes for him. “I won’t take no for an answer.” He can't afford to.
"I couldn't." The kid is starting to cry now and Sanjino finds that he feels nothing at all. “I don’t-I don’t want to kill anyone!”
“You won’t,” he promises, in a voice he hopes is soothing despite its roughness. “I’ll take care of that. Gino will take care of that. I asked him and he’s already said yes. You know how he is, there won't be any work left for the rest of us. But I don’t need you to kill people. I need you to fix people if I mess up, and I’m going to mess up a lot, kid. I won’t be able to help it.” It's a daring concession, too honest, but this is the game he has to play.
Chopperini wrings his gloved hands, so small, and he sobs, “What if I can’t?”
“You fixed me,” he points out. “Remember?”
Chopperini glances up at him and then away, shoulders hunched and trembling. ”You're still blind in that eye."
"You fixed me," he insists. “And you’re even better now than you were then.”
“I am.” Chopperini sounds both proud and broken. “I am, but I still don't-”
“You're the best there is."
And what he does next he knows he's not supposed to, not as heir apparent, not as a man who's going to be commanding his own empire as soon as tomorrow, but he needs Chopperini (Gino is too destructive and Michael is dead and no one else even comes close) and this is how to win him-he bows his head and says what he should never say: "Please."
Chopperini inhales sharply but he does not answer right away, and in the silence, Sanjino thinks briefly of Michael's wife and young daughter, who had gasped when Sanjino showed her her grandfather's coin trick. Then he closes his eyes against the glint of Michael's ring and he lights another cigarette, allows a tremor in his hand, calculated and subtle, but he knows Chopperini will catch it. He knows Chopperini is watching and he knows Chopperini's heart breaks easily. He knows he's won when he hears Chopperini taking off his gloves, hears him walking around the table, and when he opens his eyes, Chopperini reaches up to take his hand.
Chopperini whispers, "All right, boss."
Sanjino pretends not to hear the quaver in Chopperini's voice. The kid's so young, the tears still wet on his face, but talent marks you, especially in a world like this, and Sanjino has never had a choice either. He smiles thinly, ruffles the kid's hair. "Time to see old man Zeff, yeah?"
Gino is waiting for them outside, key in the ignition.
+++
“Best friends,” says Luffione, an entire leg of lamb in one hand, the other propping up his chin. “Right?”
There are two things of which he is absolutely certain in this world. The first, that they are indeed the best and truest of friends. The second, that he will never be able to find the words to describe how much he hates this place.
“Right,” he confirms, and Luffione smiles.
“So you’ll say yes.”
He should, but the thought of all the job entails still terrifies him to the core. Sanjino and Zoroscia are in his nightmares more often than he can count, larger than life with elongated limbs and hollow eyes and gaping mouths like dark caverns. His knees feel weak and he needs to sit down, but that would be presumptuous. Luffione hasn’t offered him a seat yet, so he stays standing.
Luffione stares up at him with that grin on his face, and Usotuya wants desperately to run. The wind lifts the corners of the tablecloth laden down with meats and wine, and Luffione’s straw hat threatens to fly off his head. Luffione holds it down and says again, “You’ll say yes.”
The voices from the forest come on the wind, the murmurs building until it’s a rumbling between his ears and his teeth chatter. He's heard them all his life and he should be used to them by now, but it’s so much worse when he’s this close to the edge of the forest with the sun low in the sky. And how could he say no when a hundred dead souls are demanding vengeance and he’s the only one who can hear them.
He’s not brave like his father was, not like Luffione is, but there are things he can’t turn his back on. This is his job and being brave has nothing to do with it.
And he knows already that he would die for Luffione, after everything Luffione’s done for him and for Kaya, and he knows that he is Luffione’s best bet in this protracted, decades-long war.
So he accepts all of it as an inevitability and he says, "Yes," and it feels like the ground’s going to drop out from beneath his feet. He wonders how he’s going to tell Kaya, and would she hear his voice calling if one day too soon he joined the legions haunting the forest?
“I knew it!” Luffione seems oblivious to his fear and the screaming filling his head. He drains the last of the wine and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. He tosses the empty bottle into the air with artless grace, and Usotuya follows its trajectory with a practiced eye.
He puts a bullet through the bottle before gravity reasserts its pull, and the shards catch the dying light as they rain back down on them. Luffione barks a laugh, shakes the shards from the rim of his hat, and punches him on the shoulder.
“You’re so cool!” he chirps. “Sit down and have some meat with me!”
Usotuya swallows hard and all but collapses into the proffered seat. He puts his gun on the table with hands that are steady despite the shaking in his legs and the chaos in his head. He runs his hands down his face. “But Don Shanks… he’s ok with this?"
“Yep! He says there’s no one better! Your dad would be proud.”
He’s about to cry, he can feel it, the familiar burn in his eyes, panic seizing his chest, but a hundred dead souls are counting on him now. Luffione is counting on him and Kaya expects him home for dinner tonight. She's making stew from one of his mother's old recipes. So he musters a soft thanks and holds himself together, though just barely.
“I’m going to be don of this island, Usotuya. Capo di tutti capi!"
“Y-Yeah, I know,” he says.
“Then we’ll have everything to ourselves!”
“Yeah,” he agrees half-heartedly. “And people won’t have to be afraid to leave their houses anymore. Kids can finally play outside again.”
Carota, Cipolla and Pepe huddled inside on resplendent summer days, Kaya trying to coax them down from the attic hours after gunshots had sounded in the streets-and Usotuya thinks maybe this is where he can find the strength to do what he needs to.
“Wouldn't that be great!” Luffione beams at him.
“Great,” he echoes. It’s such a long, long way to go and he might not be alive at the end of it. Luffione hasn’t taken on the mantle yet, but once he does, Usotuya, as his right-hand man, will no longer have the luxury of being in the shadows. He’ll be the first on any hit list because despite his quaking and stuttering and the voices in his head, there will be no doubt at all that no one is getting to Luffione so long as Usotuya is alive. He’ll make sure of that. It doesn't matter if he's a coward; he has steady hands and he would die for Luffione and for all he represents (justice, if not exactly peace), and that is more important than being brave.
“I’m glad we’re friends,” says Luffione, his mouth full and eyes bright.
“Sure, boss,” he croaks, and the new title rolls easily off his tongue. He manages to smile back, somehow. “Friends.”
+++
"You know why you're here," says the don. "Zoroscia."
"Yes," he says from the doorway.
The don smiles and adjusts the glasses on the bridge of his nose, leans back on his desk. "Come in, then."
He does so, steps into the study and into the pool of warm, yellow lamplight. Namimore and Robita are sitting cross-legged on either end of a long, low settee and it's all Zoroscia can do to keep his hand from reaching for his gun. The women are dangerous, quick and cunning, invaluable to the famiglia, but they are outsiders and Zoroscia cannot imagine why they would be here now.
"Have a seat," offers the don, and Zoroscia doesn't know if he's being cruel or magnanimous. But he takes a seat dutifully, between Namimore and Robita, and Namimore gives him a smile, deceptively sweet.
"You are ready for this?" the don asks him, as if there could be any answer other than yes. It is almost an insult to ask. Zoroscia has been waiting for years, ever since the don's daughter fell and broke her neck and the don had shaken him from sleep and said, it's you now. And for the next almost-decade, it had been him, growing to fill in the empty spaces that she had left, even though the don will always wish, darkly, that it had been Zoroscia they found at the bottom of those stairs instead.
But Zoroscia can't help that. The don has no sons and has never wanted a son, not when Kuina was alive and not even now, when she is dead. Zoroscia can't help that, but he's tried and he's trained and he's learned how to be great anyway, in her place.
So Zoroscia nods.
The don heaves a sigh and turns his back on them, and Zoroscia does not allow himself to feel hurt.
"I've chosen Namimore and Robita as your seconds-in-command," the don says, infuriatingly casual. "They'll take care of you. Make sure you don't stray."
Something ugly rises in him at those words and he fights to put it down. Wounded pride and disbelief and betrayal. He had been groomed for this part, he had endured for years under the don's unforgiving eye, and now the don wants to put him in the hands of some war orphan and some landless refugee from a distant country? It's not enough that Namimore has saved them from financial ruin, that Robita has thwarted every attempt on the don's life-they are still only mercenaries while Zoroscia is famiglia in all but blood. Suddenly, he feels Robita's hand on his hand, a comforting gesture if it were from anyone else, and a snarl almost escapes him. He snatches his hand back just as the don turns around again, his expression serene.
"Is that acceptable, Zoroscia?"
"No," he says curtly. Now is the time to be brazen, to show his mettle. "I want Johnny as my second."
He has been cultivating Johnny's loyalty ever since he saved him and his brother from being gunned down in a drive-by. Johnny is unquestioningly dedicated to him, and that's what Zoroscia needs-someone who will follow him and no one else, not even the current don, not even Kuina, if she were still alive. Johnny's life starts and ends with him, Zoroscia has made sure of it.
"Johnny is incompetent," the don dismisses easily and just like that, all of Zoroscia's carefully laid plans crumble to dust. "I'm not giving you a choice," he explains gently, though Zoroscia can hear the edge in his voice, sharp enough to cut.
The don knows what this will bring, knows that the men will revolt once word gets out. He's testing Zoroscia, even now, unrelenting.
Zoroscia stands, too abruptly, and Namimore makes an annoyed sound that he ignores. He walks over to the don, his footsteps muffled by the carpet but his pulse loud and angry in his ears. The don regards him calmly and something in Zoroscia flares and roars to life, bares its teeth.
Fine, he decides, jaw tight. Fine, because he can do this too. Everything will be his soon, this study, this mahogany desk with its drawers full of secrets, this estate, even the mountains in the window-his. He'll raze Don Shanks's forest to the ground, salt the earth, take apart Don Zeff's manor by the sea brick by ancient brick. Luffione and Sanjino will bend their knees and offer up their throats to him. The don will understand, finally, that Zoroscia will never be her, but he can be better. He can be the best, and then the don will have to let go, will have to let her memory rest, let her find the peace that was never here on this island.
If this means he has to prove that he can hold his own before Namimore and Robita, that he can put down a mutiny across the ranks, then he will. There has never been much love for him, but there has always been fear, and he will not lose. All he has to do, now, is this-
He bows to kiss the don's ring. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Robita's smile, small and vicious, and he hears Namimore laugh, soft and low and pleased.