It was Noel.
He’d killed my mother, and to make matters worse, he’d convinced my brother, Alexander, that Tore was to blame and that I had deserted them to take over his mafia outfit.
In one way, he was right.
From the day Chiara disappeared, I started to work for Amadeo Salvatore and reinvented myself as Dante Salvatore.
Because I had realized something vital, a life lesson that could only have been imparted to me by Death itself.
If I wanted to defeat my demons, I had to become the ultimate monster.
So many years later, I was still ruled by the essential lessons I’d learned from her death.
Trust no one, attack first, and, above all, protect those who cannot protect themselves.
I was kicking myself a few days after my attempted murder because I had failed to follow the first two mandates.
“The Irish scum,” Adriano said before spitting over the edge of the balcony as if the taste of the word in his mouth was venom. “Tore should have let us end them.”
“No,” I disagreed from where I stood at the balustrade, remembering a decade ago when I’d looked over one very much like it to see if my mother lay broken below me. “We have to be smarter than them, Adriano.”
“They’re fucking cowards to try to poison you,” Marco sneered as he cleaned his gun at the table. “No Italiano would lower himself to that.”
I cocked an eyebrow but secretly wondered if an Italian hadn’t been behind the Irish attack. The truth was, my trial made the entire Commission nervous as hell. I was an outsider, a sconosciuto. I could speak Italian like a native, adhere to every antiquated custom and cultural norm, but the truth was, Italians were decidedly purist, even Italian-Americans, and they did not like that I’d been born and raised a Brit.
Until me, there had never been a boss whose father wasn’t Italian, and even though my mother was Italian, it wasn’t the same thing for the Old World bosses in NYC.
They’d never liked me, preferring instead to do business with Tore, and the fact that I was being investigated and tried under the RICO Act might have been as good an opportunity for them to rid themselves of me before I had the chance to roll over on them.
I was no rat, but I had to admit, I was glad the head of the di Carlo family was dead and I’d fucking love the opportunity to make the Dons of the other four families––Lupi, Belcante, Accardi, and Maglione––follow him to an early grave.
Not one of them was younger than seventy, and while I didn’t consider myself ageist, there was no denying the old mafia Dons had fossilized at the table.
In my opinion, new blood was needed, and I’d been pushing for change for years only to be rejected at every turn.
“You think one of the other Families is behind this?” Adriano asked, cracking his scarred knuckles. Even taller and broader than me, with arms like bags of rocks and shoulders so thick with muscle they made his neck look freakishly short, Addie was the biggest man in our immediate circle.
I shrugged one shoulder, but I wasn’t ready to talk about my theory. My men were loyal, but they stayed loyal because I was careful not to point out a problem until I had a solution.
“The Irish are small potatoes,” Marco joked with a snigger. “Wouldn’t put it past them to be working with someone else to get cut in on something. What do they got for their own anyway?”
“Shylocking,” Chen piped up, always ready with information. The man was like a human encyclopedia. He got a lot of shit from capos outside the family for being Japanese, but he’d saved my life three times, and the moment I’d met him in a back-alley gambling den counting cards like a fucking pro, I’d known he needed to be on my team. “Some low-level drug muling. Nothing much.”
“First the Basante deal and now this,” I mused, scrubbing a hand over my stubbled jaw. I hadn’t shaved since the day of San Gennaro, and my beard was coming in thick. “Tore was right to hold you back from a massacre when I’m already in the fucking hot seat with the feds, but we do have to strike back.”
Marco, Chen, Adriano, Jaco, and Frankie were quiet as I thought on it, used to giving me my head. None of them, save Jaco and Frankie, had the knack or lust for leadership. Jaco was too hotheaded to be boss, and Frankie hated people too much to deal with them regularly. They were happy to defer to my leadership.
But I took a second to scan their faces, aware as ever that Mason Matlock, still hanging like dried meat in my airplane hangar, had told me there was a mole in my operation.