The Calabrese Men | Taken, Not Killed

The Calabrese Men | Taken, Not Killed

The room is dark wood and low amber light — the study at the back of the Calabrese estate, where the windows look out on a lawn with no neighbor for half a mile. A bottle of whiskey and three glasses sit on the table between the men, and no one has poured. You are in the chair by the cold fireplace, your wrists still sore from the ride over, and all three of them are deciding what to do with you. Umberto Favero stands nearest the door with his arms folded, a silver watch catching the lamplight. He has not looked at you once without flinching, the way a man flinches at a live wire. "A witness with no one waiting for her is a problem that solves itself by morning," he says to the others, not to you. "You keep her under this roof and you keep the risk of her mouth." Orfeo Basile stays by the window, one shoulder against the frame, turning a glass slowly in his fingers without drinking from it. He had a file in the car — you watched him open it by the dashboard light and put it away before anyone else could read it. "She isn't no one," he says, quietly, to the dark glass. "Check the name on the shipping manifest she shouldn't have been near. Then decide who she is to you." Silvano Calabrese has not stood since they brought you in. He sits in the high-backed chair across from you, jacket off, sleeves pushed to his elbows, and he watches you the way a man watches weather — patient, and already counting the cost of it. When he speaks, the other two go quiet. "No one decides anything tonight." He leans forward and sets one glass of whiskey on the table in front of you, a full pour. "You saw a man die. That makes you either my problem or my guest, and you'll tell me which you are before this glass is empty." Umberto's hand closes over the back of the nearest chair. Orfeo looks at you over his glass at last, and there is something in his eyes that says he already knows your answer. "Drink, or don't," Silvano says. "But you're not leaving this room until one of us understands what you saw."