“You’ve always been so determined about it, I’ll give you that,” chuckled my sister.
My ma said that a woman in the Mafia world having ambition was akin to opening Pandora’s box: it would lead to conflict, destruction, and ruin. If you asked me, I thought Ma was being overdramatic. Anyway, many people seemed to miss the hidden potential in what Pandora had done. She’d been forbidden by Zeus from looking inside the gilded box; when her curiosity, however, meant that she’d opened it and unleashed a tyranny of unforeseen problems upon mankind, she had also revealed everlasting hope. Hope could be seen as good or evil. Personally, I liked to look on the bright side.
And so, for me, ambition and my college degree were a ticket not to problems, but to hope—and my hope was to use my talent for math and put it to good use.
“I’m sure,” I carried on, “that I’ll eventually manage to persuade Papà to let me help in the business on the paperwork side.”
“Ma will hate that idea as well.”
“All done,” I said, as I put a tie around the second completed braid and checked my reflection in the dining room mirror. “What do you think?”
“Cute,” grinned Fee, as she walked out of the room and headed for the kitchen.
I headed up to my bedroom to put my costume on for the online Cat Club meet. It was cheesy, but we always dressed up to resemble our pets. We had done it once for a giggle, and it had been so much fun that we’d carried on doing it.
I pulled on my fluffy white cat costume, which had a huge cat head with blue eyes and a cute pink nose. To complete my look, I wound a long piece of pink ribbon around my neck and tied it into a bow. There, now I looked like Wilbur.
I wandered back downstairs and into the backyard, where I found that someone hadn’t tidied up after their shooting practice, instead leaving out empty beer bottles and a revolver. This would do to pass the few minutes until the online meet started. I mean, what harm could it possibly do?
LORENZO
I was in a car with my cousin, Marco Marchiano—he was Capo of the Fratellanza in Chicago, and I was one of his Underbosses.
Together with Marco’s brothers, we were known as the Kings of Chicago, running the city with a brutality and ruthlessness that had propelled the Fratellanza to being one of the most powerful Mafia families in the United States.
We’d come to Staten Island today for a meeting with our new ally, Napoleone Veneti, Capo of the Imperiosi in New York.
I was exhausted and tried to distract myself from my tiredness by taking in my surroundings. “This is my first time in New York in years,” I remarked, watching out of the window. Marco had set up this new alliance only a month ago, so the relationship was still in its early stages.
As we drove toward the Veneti mansion in the Todt Hill area, I saw a large glossy sign announcing that we’d arrived in Venetiville. “I thought this was Staten Island?” I said, a frown of confusion tugging at my brow.
“Yeah, it is,” replied Marco. “But this little corner of Staten Island has been renamed by Napoleone Veneti.”
“Renamed—what, after himself? What a self-obsessed moron.” I wasn’t in the best of moods today. I was thirty years old and a single dad. Being a single parent, with two young children who woke every night, was far from an easy job.
I was tired and irritable, and I didn’t see that improving anytime soon. And the way things were going, I didn’t see my four-year-old daughter, Clara, ever getting over the death of her mom. At least my son was younger and barely remembered his mother.
Marco looked across at me. “Napoleone might be a self-obsessed moron, but he’sourself-obsessed moron now. This alliance between our families will increase our overall power and help get the Bratva off our backs. They’ve gained too much power and territory recently, and this is our best way of fighting back.”
After clearing a security checkpoint, we entered the gated community.
I stared around myself. ‘Gated community’ was an understatement. Venetiville was surrounded by an electrified perimeter, barbed wire, and look-out towers complete with machine-gun-toting soldiers.
As we drove up to the Veneti mansion, however, the whole ambience changed, and it was like I was in a holiday resort. I saw tennis courts, a huge outdoor pool, lush green lawns, and magnificent homes which any Made Man would be proud of.
“What’s that place?” I pointed to a large building next to the tennis courts. It was white stucco, with white shutters around the windows and pillars on either side of the doors.
“It’s the clubhouse.”
“The clubhouse? For what?”
“The Venetiville Country Club.”
I looked at Marco in disbelief. “The Imperiosi Mafia have theirown country club?”
“Yeah. Fucking hilarious, isn’t it?”
“Hilarious is one word for it,” I muttered.