A surprising hallway. The torture chair. Bad moustache. The importance of gnocchi. When families crack. Locked in purple.

Sal carefully climbed down the ladder holding the flickering candle. It wasn’t easy. At the bottom, he expected a muddy tunnel, but he got a dusty one, with plaster on the walls and a cut stone floor sank into cement. It was far nicer than it should’ve been, even nicer than the basement itself.

He walked down the surprising hallway with a bad feeling in his belly. He reached a room that had, of all things, bright red and gold wallpaper, wooden wainscotting, and a thick carpet on the ground. Maybe a bit too thick? Dust grayed everything. A big brass candelabra stood next to the door.

Then there was the chair with the spikes, and the straps, and the obvious bloodstains, which were a different color from the chair’s rusty iron. The torture chair sat in front of a desk, and that’s where the little gray-faced man sat, with his white-hair receding into a shiny scalp. A little broom brush moustache covered his upper lip. When had that kind of moustache been in fashion?

It made Sal glad he’d spent the last thousand years in the Abyssmuck being tortured. Hot pincers probably weren’t as bad as that particular piece of facial fashion. The little man had a little belly pooching out his lime-green shirt, the collar undone to show a chest of white hair. He was sitting on a cushion, which elevated him enough that his belly could be seen above the desk.

He had dark brown eyes, almost black. He could’ve passed for Theovanni’s grandfather, which meant he was definitely a Scallia Capran.

The dragon landed on the desk and let out a belch of flames, right in the man’s face.

The man didn’t notice.

Of course he didn’t. He was a ghost.

Sparky turned, eyes blinking, giving Sal a long look. Was he looking for praise? Well, that would take more than that. Darn thing had burned his umbrella and threatened to eat his best friend. The little dragon had a long road of repentance ahead of him.

And he wasn’t the only one.

Betty spoke up unexpectedly. “Hey! I betcha I know who this guy is. Betcha a million gold pieces he’s Tony Belly. Hey, guy. Miss the pasta?”

The ghost laughed, black eyes twinkling. “Hey, yourself, Mrs. Gwynar. What you doing hanging out with this mook?” His voice came out with a definite accent, a bit of whisper, and he bushed his finger up his cheek.

“I am many things, Mr. Belly, but I am not a mook.” Sal walked into the room. He thought about calling down Fabrizio, though it might take Yeshu himself to get the Ponti into the torture chamber. Though in its defense, it was the nicest torture chamber Sal had ever been in. As a Dark Lord, he’d been in a few. Kenny liked them. Sal saw them as more of an unfortunate decorating choice.

The little man shook his head. “Oh, you, Mr. Dark Lord, you’re a mook all right. I’ve seen my fair share of them over the years. You think you’re going to reopen my restaurant without asking my permission? You think you can disrespect me like that?”

“We did not realize we were disrespecting you,” Sal said.

Betty echoed him. “Yeah, we didn’t know, Tony. And hey, chief, you aren’t that big. I expected to see someone with a much bigger belly. And someone taller, like, a lot taller.”

“Such disrespect.” The ghost coughed, sending out a wave of stench that made Sal’s stomach doing a flip-flop. Puking on the floor wouldn’t help his cause any.

It was time to get diplomatic. “Mr. Belly, we were not aware of your presence. Verily, our friend the banshee said that while they were many ghosts in this café, that they mostly kept to their own counsel. You have my deepest apologies.”

Betty squeaked in agreement. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I wanna know about the name. Tell us about the name!”

The ghost belched, adding more stink, and patted his belly. “My cousin Joey was the big gentleman, and he liked the pasta more than I did. It was all in jest, my name, ‘cause Joey had the huge gut, and I only have my little belly. Be that as it may, people learned to respect me. They didn’t ask me to explain myself. You did. Because you don’t know your place.”

Betty laughed. “I’m a pocket mouse, pal. My place is in Sal’s shirt pocket. Which shows you my place in the world. How ‘bout we get to the part where you tell us what you want?”

Sparky breathed fire out of his nostrils. Like he was agreeing with them all.

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Tony Belly held up a finger. It was transparent. “First, you can call me Tony, Secondly, no short jokes. And no fat jokes, they’re stale, like last week’s seven-layer pasta pie. Next, you ask for my permission. It’s still my place, no matter what that fancy pants governor says.”

Sal put his hands on his hips. “Can we re-open your restaurant, Tony?”

“Depends. Is the food gonna be any good?”

“I can confirm our orange juice is very good. And we get our fried dough rings from a very reliable source. They are delicious, praise-worthy even. And Shivaun’s breads are unexpectedly a source of pride. We shall do your place justice. You were aware of our activities, and so you saw the pleasure on the faces of those people who ate at our diner, did you not?”

Tony Belly shifted around on his elevated cushion. “Yeah, I saw them. It was good to have living people back in the place. Brought some warmth. I think I heard you say you were dealing with Otto Ovum. That was my daughter Oliva’s grandson. She married some Krasnaya imbecile, but sons-in-law are like gnocchi, hard to find a good one that isn’t too soft. You get eggs from Otto?”

“Yes, sir,” Sal said.

The place was already smelling better. It seemed that Anton was feeling better about their arrangement.

“Another one of my daughters, that would be Kathy, married a freakin’ Yanir musician, and he did the twinkle, twinkle song all the time. Twinkle, twinkle, little star, shining over all the cows. Something like that. He got the idea of idea of picking a last name for them both. It was dumb, but the guy was dumb. Trying to make your living off of any kind of art takes more stupidity than courage, if you ask me.”

Sal kept quiet. It was clear the mob boss liked to hear himself talk.

“Now there’s the five families in Tower City,” Tony Belly said softly. “I used to run the whole island, from this little restaurant, my own little palace. I helped people, kept people safe, back when the Yanir thought they could kill people on Torment Island, like they wanted it to live up to its name. Now, they don’t care much about it. As long as the Climbers pay their fees and taxes. That’s all the fancy pants governor cares about. Not the people.”

Tony Belly’s eyes had grown distant, and his skin went from a dusky gray to a transparent white, like he was slowly fading away into memory.

Funny, Tony hadn’t commented on the dragon at all. It was like the fire-breathing scaly pigeon didn’t matter a bit.

Then, the mobster, the original Braggadorio, stared hard at Sal. “I am not one for history, friend, but I know about you, some fancy pants Dark Lord, thinking he could conquer the world. Yes, I know who you really are. All us ghosts do.”

Sal felt the shame hit. The irony wasn’t lost on him. Here was a crime lord, sitting in front of his torture chair, seeing Sal as the bigger evil in the room. There was judgement there, and Sal could feel every bit of it. He knew that no matter how long he lived, the guilt would be there. Not for Hearthhome, no, but for everything else.

Betty piped up. “Hey, Tony, any of the ghosts you know like peaches? There’s a peach ghost around here. We’re dying to know who it is.”

The gangster ghost shrugged. “I keep to myself, mostly, like the girl told you. I get lost in memory, which is what us spooks do most of the time, unless something gets our attention. For a long time, I knew you were around, but didn’t know what you were doing. Then, when you got serious about opening my restaurant, well, that got my attention. Now, I wanna make a deal with you. If I keep the stink down for you, then you gotta do something for me.”

“And what would that be?”

“You put gnocchi on the menu, for lunch, a good gnocchi in a cream sauce, with lots and lots of cheese. Like grandma used to make.”

Sal had no idea what gnocchi was. And he hated the idea of expanding his menu, at all, because it would mean more work. It was a slippery slope. Adding gnocchi might lead to a full-on pasta bar, and that was an expense he didn’t want to consider. It was the classic mistake most restaurants made. Too big of a menu, open too many hours, and suddenly running your business felt like being tortured.

The former Dark Lord sighed. “Yes, I will make gnocchi. If you keep the smell down.”

Tony Belly grinned for the first time. “Thank you, friend. It warns my cold, cold heart. And maybe come and talk to me, every now again, about my relatives, my no-good great-grandchildren that lost all respect for what I wanted. I wanted this place, my restaurant, always open for the people. But the greed and the hate and the suspicion, it all killed my café like it killed Champion Plaza. Hate’s bad, but greed is worse. It was the money that destroyed the family, and when a family cracks, those cracks can kill. Ha. Greed. Money. Like them Tower Climbers, risking their lives for what? For money.”

The gangster ghost shook his head at the state of world. Then he nodded at the dragon. “Back in my day, the dragons were bigger, better. This little guy isn’t even a dragon. It’s a frickin’ pigeon. Pardon my language.”

Sparky’s head dropped and his fail went flat on the desk.

Sal hurried forward and scooped him up, and set him on his shoulder. “Sparky will grow. I will make the gnocchi. You will keep the smells down to a minimum.”

The short ghost scowled. “And you’ll visit me. Tell me about the families. My descendants, such as they are. Otto Ovum, the dancer, it’s like a bad joke, if ya ask me.”

Sal wasn’t. In the end, though, they had a deal.

The stink subsided.

Now, all he had to figure out was what gnocchi was. And how to cook it.

He was climbing up out of the basement, when the message hit him.

<<<>>>

Do you smell that? It’s the stench of hope in the air! Karmic Gauge increased by 10%. Dealing with Tony Belly was one thing, but there’s a family that found shelter because of you and Fabrizio. Edna Gomee and her kids have a place to live! The Ponti just got the news!

Current Karmic Gauge: Locked at 99% (Can’t Increase the Purple. Can’t get to 100%. Looks like you’re stuck.)

<<<>>>

Locked. So, all of his good deeds didn’t mean much, as far as his personal power went.

Why wasn’t he surprised? Was his mysterious benefactor toying with him? For a second, he felt the rage eating away at him. He wanted to give into his anger and rant.

He couldn’t. In the end, as long as he wasn’t back in the red, his Karmic Gauge didn’t matter. He had more important things to worry about than the possibility of having magic again.

He had gnocchi to consider.