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“His piggy bank is already bigger than mine. He just inherited an empire and I’m one of eight kids. The useless one.”
“What?”
“We all know it, Grazia. Father is just trying to fight it, like my failure is his or something.”
“That’s not…”
“We were talking about Fiori, not me. Salvatore is putting his money to work to make more and that power-plant? That’s a damn goldmine. He’s going to move money so damn easy in and out. Everyone wants a piece of that new Mafia order your old boyfriend is building.”
My heart skipped beats, many of them. Salvatore will shake the underworld with his power, I always knew that, and now we were about to see it. Hearing the admiration in Garon’s voice, sprinkled with that faded hint on envy, made my heart swell with misplaced pride.
“Salvatore is a force.” I said, keeping it vague.
Garon’s grin covered half his face. “Giovani will have to work his butt off to catch up. They should be working shoulder to shoulder now, if it wasn’t for that fight.” Yeah, they should have. “It’s so weird to think about it. You would have been married.”
“I… yes.”
My twentieth birthday. Salvatore declared that would be our wedding day years ago. He’d told me that he wanted me to have some time to enjoy life, but twenty years was a wait long enough. He used to sneak into my bedroom at night and describe to me in great detail how he was going to make me a bride. It was one of my favorite things.
But my twentieth birthday came and went and now we were here. And Salvatore couldn’t even look me in the eyes anymore.
“Garon, we were talking about Father’s business, remember?”
“Well, father’s business is shrinking. Vivere wants to jump in the boat with Fiori and take dad’s advantage with him. The old man is going to throw a fit when he hears it.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Can’t he… I mean, did you ask why not do business with both sides. He’s not affiliated right?”
“Nofamiglia, just some acolytes, but he won’t risk Salvatore’s wrath to work with dad.”
He looked at me like there was more to be said about that, but he didn’t know how to get around it.
“Garon what is it? You can talk to me.”
“What Vivere said made me curious, so I made a few calls. Also, I made Giorgio and Guido make a few calls too. It’s not good.”
“What’s not good?”
“Now that Adrian is gone, people are starting to pick sides, and our father? He is a respected man, but he’s part of the old guard. Most of the family leaders that he built relationships with are stepping down and even if the name Fabiano Caputo still strikes fear in his enemies and admiration in our world, he might not be the popular guy he used to be anymore.”
“Because of Salvatore.”
All Garon was saying made sense. Our Father and Adrian were a duo, ruling all Sicily together and when that alliance was broken, people still looked at them as equals, but now? Adrian was not there anymore and everything was changing.
We always knew Salvatore would be great, we all did. Adrian,Babbo, Giovani, the entire Italian mafia knew that one day he would rise to be remarkable. In Rome, there was a chief inspector, Mario Fabrini, who we knew was watching Salvatore from the dark for years because even thecarabienieriknew he will lead his family like no one did before. It was why when I was born, it took my father less than a year to suggest an arranged marriage. Sure, he wrapped his proposal in nice words about family and brotherhood, and how Salvatore marrying me would make our families one, but truth was my dad saw something in him and he had one bargaining chip.Me. He bothered telling me that much when he broke my engagement.
“No, because of Dad.” Garon corrected me. “He wants all of us, his kids, to step up and take over – God knows he’s been on my ass for years – but he doesn’t really want to let Giovani take charge. He’s too scared to let go of the man he used to be and that is dragging all of us down.”
“Giovani is his heir.” It was the only response I could think of.
I liked to think that I wasn’t just a spoiled, oblivious mafia princess. That I knew the world we were living in and I knew what happened in my family, but maybe I was wrong, because in the past five minutes I’ve heard the most confident man I know call himself useless and watched him talk pretty harshly aboutBabbo. It made me wonder if it was just Garon I didn’t pay attention to, or was I so caught up in my secret affair with Salvatore that I missed things about everyone else.
We were raised to respect our father and take his words to hear, beyond God, or anything else. The fit I threw when we talked about Adrian was not only out of the ordinary, it was outrageous in our household, or so I thought, but now I was sitting face to face with my brother and watching the disgust on his face. When I fought with my father, instead of yelling and putting me in my place, Giovani talked me down and took me to breakfast. Was there tension between them too? Were they fighting? Was my family, once united and harmonious, breaking into pieces?
“Garon, how bad is it?”
