#Chapter 91 - The end of peace

Aldo The midday sun shone brightly over the bustling city square, casting long shadows over the gathered crowd. A vendor market was perhaps the furthest from standard Marcello family business we’d ever strayed, but for some reason, my heart swelled watching the sellers and shoppers mingle across the bright green lawn. I surveyed it from the top of the wide stone steps leading up to the aged and tiny library behind me. The library’s doors were open wide, and patrons filtered in and out as they wandered over from the open-air market. I’d created this. Me. Aldo Marcello, Mafia don and harbinger of war and chaos. I’d somehow brought together an event where kids folicked with sticks of cotton candy and caramel-covered apples, where folks young and old pointed and smiled, laughed, exclaimed in wonder over various works of art. It felt almost idyllic, bucolic, like an old-timey country market. Or maybe I was poeticizing my creation to bolster my own ego. “Well. This is … something