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The man that Luca knows is called gatto sazio, the cat that’s full. He’s a chess player who enjoys a long, intricate battle of minds, who sits back with one leg crossed over the other and a glass of wine in his hand. With cold eyes and an amused quirk to his lips, he’ll watch his opponents entangle themselves in carefully laid plans, bugs caught in a spider’s web they never saw. Then, when the moment calls for it, his relaxed posture will uncoil into brutal efficiency as he strikes with the grace of one of the great cats, setting his teeth to the throat of his prey and ending their sinful lives.
Luca knows the exact moment when Vincenzo decides to end the game. As his personal driver and assistant, he has stood behind his consigliere at countless meetings with people who don’t yet understand why they’re losing. He is intimately familiar with the way Vincenzo leans back comfortably in his seat, head slightly tilted, a satisfied smile on his lips and his black eyes unblinking, a cat enjoying the last struggles of its prey - and Luca, holding Vincenzo’s briefcase with a gun, is always ready for when his consigliere will tire of the game.
After years of working for him, no words are needed between them. Be it the subtle tension in those deceptively narrow shoulders, the slight shift in his stance or the incremental change in his posture; Luca knows them all. Then, his consigliere will wield the reaper’s scythe himself, unflinching in the face of the death he brings as blood paints his hands red and splatter onto his perfectly calm face. As Vincenzo has lamented the stains on his Boolaroo jacket, Luca has kissed those hands and washed them clean. In all the years Luca has worked for him, those hands have never trembled.
He knows, of course, that Vincenzo has not always been powerful. He knows that Vincenzo was too small and too thin when he joined their family, his face too foreign and too pretty for anyone in the mafia to take him seriously. Luca knows, because he was there when Vincenzo killed the last man who dared disrespect him in such a way, stood behind him when the man kneeled by Vincenzo’s feet and begged for his life. He will never forget the way Vincenzo shook his head and sighed as if disappointed, then shot the man in the head. The memory sang through his blood when he fell willingly to his knees by his consigliere’s feet with Vincenzo’s hand in his hair, fingers tugging at his locks mere hours after those same fingers squeezed the trigger. Now, a whisper of gatto sazio is all it takes for the men to lower their heads in deference, the name a reminder that for those who may be fooled by his slim build and placid smile, painless death would be a generosity.
What they don’t know about are the nights of pent up frustration and barely controlled violence. They don’t know that underneath the fine suit jackets and waistcoats that hug his slim waist, Vincenzo’s skin is smooth and unscarred. They don’t know how his voice, always calm and collected, escapes him in shaky sighs and turns raspy and dark when he says Luca’s name. They don’t know how Vincenzo’s abs stutter when Luca spills red wine down his torso and chases the rivulets with his tongue. They don’t know, but Luca does.
When Vincenzo breaks someone’s neck or strangles the last breath out of them, Luca knows what those hands feel like around his own neck, pressing down over his rapid pulse. When Vincenzo smiles and clips someone’s fingers, Luca knows how those lips wrap around his own fingers and suck. When Vincenzo stands back with his hands in his pockets and watches a factory explode and go up in flames, Luca knows the heat of Vincenzo’s skin and the hot trails his hands leave down Luca’s back.
Luca knows, and the knowledge burns through him when he sees Vincenzo click the lighter open and throw it over his shoulder. It burns along with the flames that spread rapidly across the fields as his consigliere unhurriedly walks up to the car. When Luca glances back at him through the rearview mirror that familiar smile of grim, cold satisfaction makes Luca burn hotter than the fiery inferno raging on both sides of the car as they drive away.
Of course, he also knows that things are not going to end well. The old boss is dead and Paolo is too jealous and resentful of his adopted brother. Still, when Vincenzo calls him up to the penthouse late one night, he doesn’t expect to find his consigliere standing in his silk pyjamas with his bare feet on the white carpet turned red with blood, the gun still in his hand and three bodies on the floor. He knows then, even before Vincenzo tells him to take him to the airport, that he will never again get to see the gatto sazio stretch like a languid cat among the sheets. Never again will Vincenzo tilt his head just so and smile like the cat that both ate the rat and lapped up the milk, while the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore stands framed by the windows, lit up against the dark backdrop of Florence at night.
When he follows Vincenzo’s back with his eyes as the consigliere disappears into the airport that same night, Luca wishes that he could go with him but knows he can’t. Even with Paolo as boss, he cannot leave the family behind. He knows, and yet he wishes…
Months later, when Dario and Sebastian have been killed by the Luciano family and Paolo is about to leave the family behind to save his own skin, it is almost a relief to leave Italy and follow Vincenzo to Korea. The people he has surrounded himself with seem like silly fools but they carry themselves with purpose and move together as a team, almost like a family. They look to Vincenzo as a leader, a boss of this strange collection that makes up a found family, but some seem to see him as more than that. There is the man who speaks surprisingly good Italian and follows Vincenzo’s every word worshipfully, and the woman who seems to be working directly with the consigliere and gets a spark of challenge in her eyes when Luca and his consigliere embrace. Her smile, warm and welcoming, turns tense for a moment, but Luca knows better than to worry.
With his shirt sleeves rolled up, the gatto sazio hugs him tightly and pats his back. Though the others standing behind Vincenzo can’t see it, Luca feels how one hand dips low to the small of his back while the other moves up, fingers stroking his neck just above the collar of his suit. When he pulls back, Vincenzo smiles at him like a cat that isn’t full, but hungry, and has just found a bowl of cream.
There is a promise in that smile, one that he unfortunately doesn’t get to enjoy until much later on a small island outside of Malta, but the message is clear.
Luca knows, and he is the only one who ever will.
