The entire household was made to remember how vulgar and base life had been when I was in charge.
The compound was renovated from top to bottom.
Oil paintings and leather-bound volumes lined every wall and corridor. Marble replaced linoleum. A courtyard fountain appeared where the loading dock had been.
The place looked like something out of an architectural magazine.
You could smell the fresh-cut flowers from halfway down the block.
Visitors marveled: "Emilio Ferraro truly is remarkable. Look how refined he's made the Castellano estate."
Even Don Vittorio heard about it and brought Katarina for a personal tour.
But nobody seemed to realize
that all this elegance
had been bought with the fortune I'd built for the Castellano operation.
It wasn't long before the operation ground to a halt.
A crowd gathered at the compound gates.
They were demanding their back pay.
Emilio had burned through nearly every cent in the treasury on his little vanity project.
And even if there had been money left, it wouldn't have mattered. Emilio had already decreed: one copper coin per person, per month.
Enough to kill any illusion that work here would ever pay.
The household guards didn't truly try to stop the crowd.