The morning sun over Palermo, Sicily, warmed the terracotta tiles of Villa Corleone.
Sitting on his shaded marble terrace, Don Salvatore rubbed his swollen, throbbing right big toe.
At sixty-five years old, the feared godfather of the Sicilian underworld suffered from severe gout, chronic lumbar stenosis, and a bad liver from four decades of drinking expensive scotch.
He had twenty million euros in Swiss safe deposit boxes. He had four luxury villas, three private yachts, and fifty heavily armed bodyguards.
None of it could stop the excruciating pain shooting through his foot every time he took a single step.
“Bring me another ice pack, Franco,” Don Salvatore groaned, adjusting his silk bathrobe. “And call that private specialist in Milan again! Tell him I will pay double!”
“The specialist in Milan closed his clinic, Don Salvatore,” his lieutenant Franco replied nervously, holding a sweating silver ice bucket. “He took a job as a chief resident at the new Taichu Sanctuary Hospital in Rome. He said he earns ten times his private salary and gets free longevity pills.”
“Taichu, Taichu, Taichu!” Salvatore growled, slamming his fist on the wrought-iron table. “Every doctor on the continent has run off to that Chinese company! Can’t we just kidnap one and bring him here?!”
