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Amadeo
The sun has turned the sky a deep, fiery orange as it sets, the blue ocean swallowing it whole. It’s so beautiful here. I don’t know how my parents could have left it. Although beauty is a thing enjoyed by the wealthy. Men like my father wouldn’t have lived where I live now, and life is very different depending on how deep your pockets are. My mother’s reason for leaving is a different story.
I bought this house a few months ago. Only a handful of people know about this location. For all intents and purposes, I live in the Naples house of my family. My mother’s family, that is. Nora Del Campo was once Nora Maria Caballero, eldest daughter of Humberto Caballero, the leading mafia family in Naples, Italy. My mother’s secret marriage to my father, an American-born nobody who served as a foot soldier for my grandfather, caused him to disown her. Even when the trouble with Russo came about, my grandfather wouldn’t have anything to do with it or her. He’d washed his hands of his daughter.
It was when my father began his final decline into an alcoholic stupor he would never recover from that I sought out my grandfather, and my brother and I swore fealty to him.
He took Bastian and me in, but we were punished for our mother’s transgression. We worked as the lowest of the low within the family for years. But I was the same age as Angelo, his beloved grandson, and Angelo and I became best friends. Angelo would have done well following in his grandfather’s footsteps. He was brave and fair. As good as anyone in this business can be. But he died. We were twenty-five when he and I were ambushed. I took a bullet to save him, but in the end, I didn’t save him at all. I survived. He did not. I may have the scar to show for it, but that hardly matters.
Although it did for Humberto.
Humberto had two children. My mother and her younger brother, Sonny. I gathered quickly upon my return that Sonny was a disappointment. His son, Angelo, however, was not. Angelo would be the one to rule once Humberto stepped down. Angelo would displace his own father.
I’m not sure how much love there can be, truly, in a mafia family, when fathers can disown daughters and set sons aside, but my grandfather was not an easy man.
After Angelo’s death and much to Sonny Caballero’s dislike, I became the beloved grandson, the golden boy who was not only born into the family but had proven himself by taking a bullet for Angelo. I took Angelo’s place as Humberto’s successor. I even took my grandfather’s last name, adding it to my father’s. It was important to be accepted by the family. I became Amadeo Del Campo Caballero. Bastian did the same.
Not to say I came with the best of intentions because I have had one goal in mind for as long as I can remember.
Vengeance.
Make the Russo family pay.
And I knew the way to do that was through my grandfather, even if it meant becoming the man my mother did not want me to be.
But Sonny had support within the family, and my brother and I were American-born usurpers. When Humberto named me his successor, Sonny was not happy. He still isn’t. Although, that’s his problem as far as I’m concerned.
As the driver comes to a stop at the front entrance of the villa, I see it again. The glances I sometimes get. I don’t care. Let any one of them stand against me if they dare. I have made examples of people, and I will again. My hands are bloody, as are Bastian’s.
I glance over to Bastian as we step out of the SUV and climb the wide stone stairs toward the 18th-century door. It was taken from a church in Pescara Del Tronto, an ancient village devastated by an earthquake. I brush my fingers over the wood, thinking about all the men and women who have passed through it over the years. All those forgotten souls.
“Where is our mother?” Bastian asks one of the soldiers as we walk into the house.
“In the kitchen, sir.”
“The girl?”
“Upstairs in the room you had prepared.”
“Good.”
Bastian and I head toward the kitchen. “The Russo business is weaker now that Daddy is gone. It’s time to bring him to his knees,” Bastian says. “We don’t need the girl to do what we need to do.”
“We made a plan, Bastian. We’re sticking to it. Why are you second-guessing it now?”
He stops, and we face each other. “She’s going to make trouble. I feel it.”
“I have no doubt. But it’s nothing we can’t handle.”
He studies me. “I saw how you looked at her, Amadeo.”
“Brother—”
“She’s a fucking Russo. There’s only one place she belongs, and that’s with her father in the ground.”
“Patience, Bastian. Trust me.” I continue toward the kitchen.
“Fine. Gift her to the men,” Bastian says casually, too casually, as we near the door. “It would go a long way to gain their favor.” Since our grandfather’s death, our uncle has managed to split the family in two. My brother and I need to present a united front at all times. But fuck if I’m giving anyone a gift to gain favor.
