The Viper and the Consigliere

Midnight arrived in Central Park with a cold, ghostly fog that drifted through the barren branches of ancient oaks and weeping willows near the Bethesda Terrace. The park was deserted, the stone balustrades glistening with damp frost beneath the pale amber glare of cast-iron lampposts. Walking slowly along the lower terrace, flanked by two armed Santoro bodyguards who maintained a discreet thirty-meter perimeter, was Don Marco Santoro. He wore a…