“I bet you do. Things will be fine, you don’t have to worry, but understand that I amnottheir favorite don, and they’re not all happy about what we’re doing.”
I want to ask him what he means bywhat we’re doingbecause I honestly don’t know anymore, but he leads me down a hall and into a massive kitchen. I’m surprised to see a bunch of men standing around eating wings and pizza, drinking beer, dressed in decent clothes but still casual, some of them sitting in front of the TV watching football, some of them sitting at the expansive kitchen table. It’s the least formal meeting I’ve ever seen in my life and it has the feeling of a close family party, except there are all men, and there are exactly eight of them—eleven people total counting me, Angelo, and Carmine. The murmuring, the talking and laughter, it slowly dies down as Carmine stands there surveying his men, and I awkwardly linger behind him, feeling like every eye is on me and judging me and finding me decidedly not enough.
“Boys,” Carmine says and a sly smile presses across his lips. “I leave for a few weeks and the whole fucking family falls apart. What is it with you dumb motherfuckers?”
There’s some scattered laughter. I clench my hands behind my back and I know he said we’re safe, but a jolt of fear runs into my stomach. Is it really a good idea to talk to them like that? Carmine doesn’t seem bothered though. His head is held high and he’s smirking at the assembled mafia capos like he owns them.
“Fucking look at this,” a heavy-set older man says. He’s sitting at the table with three other men, all of them in their sixties. “The boy king deigns to show his fucking face again.” The little coterie of older Italian gentlemen laugh like he said something hilarious. Carmine’s smile doesn’t slip, but the tension in the room thickens.
“Watch your fucking mouth, you fat old piece of shit,” Angelo snaps and there’s a murmur in the crowd.
“Easy, Angelo,” Carmine says and brushes his second away. “Go get yourself a drink and cool off.” He turns back to the group of older men. Their leader doesn’t seem bothered. “I’m glad to see you haven’t changed in the few weeks I’ve been busily making you richer, Christopher.”
“Me, richer? Didn’t fucking know I got a big cash deposit into my account. Anyone get that cash? Anyone hear about this money?” Christopher looks around and nobody speaks. “That’s what I thought. Nobody’s richer except for maybe you, but even that I kind of doubt.”
Carmine turns away from the old guys and addresses the room. “I understand you all are unhappy that I’ve been busy in Texas. Gentlemen, meet my future wife, Brice Rowe, daughter of the Rowe family. You all know who they are, and if you don’t then you don’t belong in this room. My marriage is going to bring stability to the family and it’s going to produce heirs that will one day grow up to lead us into the future. This is how the family grows and consolidates its power. But in the short-term, I’ve invested heavily into their company, Rowe Oil, and the proceeds of that investment will make us all fucking filthy rich one day in the near future. For now, I need you all to keep on doing what you’ve been doing and trust that I have the family’s best interests at heart, and that my strategy extends deeper into the future than any of you thick-headed South Philly idiots can comprehend.” He gets more laughter at that last remark.
“Trust you.” Christopher shoves his chair back and stands. The laughter disappears. “That’s all you’ve got to say? Just trust you?”
“Trust me the way you trusted me to handle the Ball Breaker Motorcycle Club, or the way you trusted me to handle the Sixty-Nine Boys, or the way I handled the Homicide Crew, and the Shotgun Shills, and a dozen other little gangs and nuisances and fucking problems. Trust that my hands are drenched in blood for each and every one of you, and I’m not about to turn my back on that sacrifice, even if you don’t understand what it is that I’m doing. Tell me something,Christopher, when was the last time you strapped on a Kevlar vest, loaded up your piece, and took a bullet for your brothers? Because half the guys in here can name a time I did it for them in the past few years.”
The old man’s jaw works. “Nobody ever fucking questioned my loyalty. I’m not the one that fucked off to Texas to marry some oil princess.”
“I’m not questioning anything, only wondering when the last time you put yourself in danger was? You sit there with your old men and you talk shit and you second-guess, but you’re all too busy getting rich off my hard work. Sit down, old man, and let me talk to the capos that matter.”
Christopher’s jaw works but Carmine stands there, staring him down, until slowly the older man sits. “Prick,” he mutters and grins. “Someone should get you a drink. Let’s celebrate you bagging that cute piece of ass over there, even if I don’t agree with this future nonsense. Brice is her name? Welcome to the fucking family, Brice. We’re a bunch of pussycats, I promise.”
And it’s like the tension snaps as suddenly as it appeared, and I’m being passed around the room, shaking hands and meeting a bunch of very dangerous, very intense men, and all the while Carmine’s showing me off like he’s actually proud of me or something. I do my best to smile and act polite and show the proper respect, but I don’t know what the heck I’m doing though Carmine doesn’t leave my side for a single second.
I keep thinking about that first interaction, and all through the evening, as the men drink and discuss business and laugh and joke around, I keep feeling an undercurrent of that initial conversation. I sense an undercurrent of doubt, a river of disrespect running underneath everything. Carmine can paper the problems over with threats and bullying but nothing’s changed—these men are discontent and don’t understand Carmine’s direction, and that’s dangerous as hell.
At the end of a long night, the capos all leave for some nearby strip club and Carmine takes me upstairs. “Angelo will see to security,” he says, “but you don’t have to worry. The Panagos don’t have much of a presence in Philly. I wouldn’t let them. This is my goddamn territory.”
His personal room is at the back of the house. It’s bigger than I expected, almost the entire second floor. King-sized bed, huge closet, attached bathroom, even a little sitting area and a small workspace in the far corner. It’s the only room that feels like Carmine and there are little touches of him all over the place: signed baseball memorabilia, his favorite movies in the cabinet under the TV, pictures of him with his family when he was little, the kind of abstract paintings he really likes.
“Is it always like this? Being back here, I mean. All that pressure.” I lounge on the couch near the TV and watch him get undressed. I try to contain my racing heart but looking at him always feels like I’m on the edge of coming apart.
“Yes and no.” He hangs his jacket and slowly unbuttons his shirt. A big bandage covers a wound on his side from the glass when our car got attacked two days ago. Every time I see it, I keep thinking about him throwing himself on top of me and covering me like a shield, ready to die if it means keeping me safe. We’re both lucky he didn’t take a bullet, and the only reason we’re still alive is the quick thinking of his guards up front—if they hadn’t returned fire so fast, we’d all be finished.
“You can give more than three-word answers, you know.”
He smiles slightly and sighs as he rolls his neck. “I grew up in this shit and I guess I’m used to it.”
“It felt like there was some kind of… threat down there.”
“From Christopher? He’s mostly talk. Actually, it’s better when he’s talking like that, it means things haven’t gotten so bad that they’re going to stop complaining and start trying to get rid of me. He says what everyone’s thinking and I appreciate that about him, it keeps me honest, and I can figure out a way to respond.”
“God, I can’t imagine that. You’re constantly just trying to survive, aren’t you?”
He walks over and sits slowly in an armchair across from me. The light’s dim and he’s staring at me with dark, brooding eyes, wearing only a pair of joggers. His chest muscles flex and I stare at his body, at his abs and the tattoos on his skin and the bandage over the wound and all the little cuts and nicks and scars, and I wonder if I traced all those marks, all those whorls of knotty scar tissue and all those ancient wounds, if I’d find a map to his heart through layers of tragedy.
He speaks as though wreathed in smoke. “My life’s always been this way, even when I was little. My father never once let me forget that the capos aren’t my friends, and no matter how much I like them, their lives are ours to spend in the name of the family. They’re my employees, and if I can’t keep them happy or at least under control then they’ll turn on me. He always said, you can rule with fear or you can rule with love, but you can’t rule with both. I’ve always tried to split the difference, but maybe my old man was right.”
“You want the capos to love you?”
“I want them to respect me. That’s a kind of love. I want them to see that I’m dragging this family kicking and screaming into the future. Some get it, some don’t, and Christopher is one of those that don’t. Until they can all understand what I’m trying to do, my life will always be in danger no matter where I am. Here, Texas, doesn’t matter. There’s only ever been one constant in my life, and that’s the pressure to survive.”
I sit back and try to imagine going through a world where everything is kill or be killed, like growing up in the middle of the jungle where even your family is composed of hungry jackals waiting for you to screw up so they can rip out your throat. My family wasn’t easy and they had high expectations, but I was always safe. I never wondered if the next day would be my last.