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1
ANTONY
“It’s a question of respect,” Sal protests.
I look across the desk at him and cock a brow. “You think I don’t command respect?”
“That’s not what I’m saying.” Salvatore spreads his arms wide. “You know that. But you’re gonna be the D’Agostino capo soon enough.”
“I’m aware,” I say drily.
“Look at me,” Sal counters, pointing to his face. “You wanna know why I never rose to capo or underboss? No family. No progeny.”
Next to him, Marco snorts. “That’s not why you never rose.”
I side-eye my perpetually wise-cracking brother. “Watch it, Marco.” Even though Salvatore isn’t any higher up the chain in the Cleveland crime family than Marco is, Sal is basically family. He’s been a surrogate father to all of us brothers. He’s sacrificed a lot for us. Plus, he’s sixty-two years old. He deserves respect.
Matteo, Marco’s twin, leans back in his chair, crossing his feet at the ankles. “Is this really why we’re all here, Sal?” he frowns. “To talk about Antony taking a wife? ‘Cause you two can do that on your own. Marco and me, we got shit to do.”
“No, that’s not why we’re here,” I reply, cutting off that line of conversation. “We’re here to talk about what happens when Uncle Michael passes.”
My uncle Michael D’Agostino, the current D’Agostino capo, is bedridden and on the verge of death after a series of strokes. I’ve been acting capo while we work to keep Michael out of sight. Until he’s actually dead, no one can know he’s out of commission.
“That’s exactly what I am talking about,” Salvatore grumbles, and I shoot him a look. “What happens when Michael passes. Antony will take over as capo. He’ll be the head of the D’Agostino family, and with that comes certain responsibilities.” He squints at me, pointing a finger-gun. “You know what that means, whether you pretend to or not. It’s time to get serious. A capo needs a wife, Antony. And kids, soon. The Young Lion needs a pride.”
“That’s bullshit,” I scoff. But even though I hate to admit it, his words hit home.
The Young Lion.That’s my nickname on the streets. People have been calling me The Young Lion since around the time I got my button at eighteen.
My youth was obvious, of course. But even then, so was my ruthlessness. Hence the moniker. My reputation preceded me: fast and aggressive, protecting what’s mine with whatever it takes.
I was born to be in the mob. I was born to lead. That I’ll take over as capo isn’t a question. But being the youngest capo in the Cleveland crime family will mean that there are people who will question my power, unless I secure it quickly and without question. For Salvatore, that means I need to get to work and start repopulating the family for the generations to come — preferably, with a princess from one of the other high-up families of the mob. Maybe one of the families of the Chicago Outfit. Or hell, even one of the Five Families in New York.
I chafe at the idea of being railroaded into a decision like that. Nobody tells Antony D’Agostino what to do, not even Sal. But even if I disagree with him about it, I know why he’s saying it. I know he’s only thinking of my future, and the future of the D’Agostino family.
Salvatore Giordano has been with our family since my father was alive. He’s known all of us boys since we were born. He’s best friends with my uncle Michael, the current D’Agostino capo and my father’s older brother. Sal also knew my Ma, Stephanie Licari D’Agostino, from way back when they were kids. Sal has always been around, for as long as I can remember. He was the one person I always knew I could count on, even in a world where the unofficial motto is “trust no one.”
When me and my four younger brothers were kids, Sal was the guy who’d dress up like Santa Claus for us at Christmas. As the oldest, I figured out it was him pretty early on, but he and I had kind of an unspoken agreement that I’d never let on to my brothers that Santa was a fake. Salvatore would come over on Christmas Eve with a bag on his back, stomping into our living room to hand out presents for all of us. He’d tell my brothers that our house was his very first stop, before he got on with the work of bringing toys to all the other kids around the world. He’d pull out a bottle of Cutty Sark for my pop, and some sort of little bauble for my ma. Each of us kids would get a pop gun or something like that, and my mom would shake her head and frown, but she wouldn’t say anything about it. We’d run around like knuckleheads and play cops and robbers while Mom, Pop, and Santa sat around having a drink, before Santa had to get on his way.
After my pop got killed in a hit attempt on the boss of the Cleveland family, those days were over. Ma decided she’d hadenough of mob life. She moved us kids away from Cleveland, down south to a small, nothing town named Ironwood, Ohio. Sal kept in touch through the years. He’d send us money for our birthdays, Christmas presents every year — no longer from Santa anymore. When Ma would take us up to Cleveland to visit family in the summers, Sal was always there, slipping us twenties and fifties when she wasn’t looking.
Years later, when I was about to graduate high school, Sal got in touch and offered me a job up in Cleveland. The job, which he was vague about, even included a place to stay. I jumped at the chance, of course — much to Ma’s chagrin. I wasn’t ever gonna be college material, and something was pulling me back to the place I’d always considered home. Once I got up to Cleveland, I found out that my new digs were a luxury apartment downtown, complete with a private garage space and a brand-new Porsche Boxster.
“Courtesy of your Uncle Michael,” Salvatore told me expansively. Uncle Michael: the capo of the D’Agostino Crew.
I was hooked in an instant. Whatever business made Uncle Michael enough money to give an eighteen-year-old squirt like me this kind of life, I wanted in. It was only later that I learned the real reason Sal brought me back to Cleveland: to help my Uncle Michael rebuild the legacy and the power of the D’Agostino crew.
The Cleveland Crime Family has been around since the 1920s. It used to be one of the biggest crime families in the United States. The family almost got wiped out in the 1990s, when the Feds cracked down on us hard, and internal power struggles did the rest. By 2000, there were only a few made men left in Cleveland. But since then, the few remaining men to survive the cleanout have been working to build back stronger than ever. It’ll be a long road, but it’ll happen.
Uncle Michael and Aunt Maria never had any sons. So, for the D’Agostino family to continue, Michael was gonna need to groom someone to take over as capo when he was gone. He and Sal saw something in me back then. They knew I’d be good at the job. So for the next decade, under Sal’s tutelage, and to a lesser extent under Uncle Michael’s, I watched and learned. I made a success of myself, growing a business opportunity that arose with the 2008 financial crisis into a commercial real estate empire, which I named Phoenix Real Estate. Four years after I came up to Cleveland, I convinced Marco and Matteo to join me. Now, the three of us work together. My two youngest brothers, Dante and Dominic… well, that’s another story, for another day.
Sal has been banging the drum ever since my uncle’s first stroke that I need to choose a wife. “You need sons,” he keeps insisting. “Lots of sons.” He wants me to build a strategic alliance between the D’Agostinos and one of the other mafia families, to strengthen my power. Our family’s power. And the power of the Cleveland Mafia.
I know he’s right. But Christ, I don’t have time for that nonsense right now. I’m fucking busy, too busy to be playing happy families with some mafia princess I don’t even know or care to know. My future wife is likely to fall into one of two categories: a shallow shopaholic who spends all my money on clothes and spa treatments; or a prim and proper Catholic schoolgirl type who’ll bore the living shit out of me and turn into a baby-making machine with about as much sex appeal as a floor mop. It’ll be boring. Fucking boring. And except for the silver lining of my kids, my married life will make me miss my bachelor days more and more with each passing year.
In our world, men marry for power, to end wars, or to cement alliances. Not for love. And the women have no say in the matter. No power, and no choice. Whenever I think about getting married, I think about my own ma. How she had to watch herboys lose their father, and how she had to worry that she’d eventually lose us, too, if she didn’t get us the hell away from here. She managed to get us out, but the mob sucked most of us back in. It even killed my youngest brother, Dominic. Thank God that Ma had already passed away by then, and never had to know it.
“Earth to Antony.”
