“I wanted to know who he was. Even when I was in Chicago, he wasn’t much of a father, from what I remembered. It was about him and my mother. I was told to go play, my mom turned on the television and told me to stay in my room when he came over. I thought...this was my last chance if he was dying. I was afraid I would regret it if I didn’t come.”
A bitter laugh escapes me. “In the end I felt so stupid, like I should have known it would be a disaster. I’m not here half a day and he’s already listing my every fault and failure: I’m too fat, I’m ugly—okay, he didn’t say ugly, but he kept going on and on about how I’m not nearly as pretty as my mother. The way I dress, how it’s taken me so long to come home and be a good daughter. Then he’s taunting me how he knows I really only came back for his money, and if I don’t behave he won’t leave me a penny.
“I was on the verge of going back to Italy when I met Richard. If it weren’t for him this would have been the worst two years of my life. Richard is the only person besides my mother who has ever cared about me, who loves me, and no matter what you threaten me with I’ll never forget that.” I shake my head as I remember how Richard made me feel loved for the first time since my mother died.
Dominic’s quiet for a long time; he shakes his head. A press of the button and music fills the car. “Get some sleep.”
***
Regina
I can’t sleep. I retreat into my thoughts as I watch the city give way to dark, endless flat land and highway. Maybe an hour into the drive Dominic’s phone rings. He hits a button then puts it on speaker.
“Yeah, Mary.”
“I have you checked into a hotel in Youngstown, it’s right off the interstate. You have the room for tonight and tomorrow so you don’t have to check out until you want to. They have the kind of setup you were wanting. The room is ready for her and I’ve notified the men.”
“Efficient as always, I don’t know what I would do without you. Tomorrow, you’ll need to work on planning the wedding. Johnny won’t last long, but I have no doubt if we go small he’ll lose his shit. With family and business, put the estimate at three hundred guests.”
“I’ve already made inquiries, Father Carmichael will make Our Lady of St. Catherine’s available two Saturdays from now, but it will create an issue in transportation from the church to a hotel large enough to hold the reception. The wedding already scheduled for St. Catherine’s is not an issue to reschedule. The Holy Cathedral downtown will only be blocks from several hotels for the reception. However at the Holy Cathedral, a significant inducement may be required to reschedule that wedding. Personally, I think St. Catherine’s is much prettier. What do you think?”
“I think I don’t care about which one looks prettier. I’ll look at everything tomorrow. Go to bed. I’ll see you tomorrow.” He doesn’t wait for her to respond, just hangs up.
“Two weeks?” The words fly out of my mouth. That’s too soon—it’s fine, I won’t be here.
A sigh. “I told you, Johnny doesn’t have long. The sooner this is settled the better, not just for us but in the family.”
“What happens when Johnny dies?” I don’t for a single moment think he’ll agree to a divorce. In the mafia, marriage is forever, no matter what. Divorce is not an option. Which is exactly why I need to escape Dominic before the wedding happens.
A small shrug. “His underboss Carlo Toro becomes Don. Carlo will likely name his nephew Salvatore underboss.”
“But people don’t like Sal.” The men who came to the condo had been vocal about their dislike of him.
Another shrug. “No, he’s too bloodthirsty, too willing to shoot first and clean up his mess later. Carlo is a good underboss, he will make a good Don. The only other person he would be willing to put in would be his other nephew Luca Toro, a capo in Vegas who has been doing good things since he took over his father’s place last year. I haven’t met him but his reputation is solid. He’s a good earner and works well with the other mafia out there.”
“I just don’t get the difference between the mafia and the Outfit. Isn’t it all the mafia?” I had been too afraid to ask the question of Johnny and his men.
“We’re all the mafia, but not all mafia is the Outfit. The Outfit is separate in that we have different rules—not many, but enough that matter. We run Chicago, and no other mafia, except the Irish, are allowed to operate within our city. There are some Russians we allow to keep going because they keep the worst Bratva fuckers in line. Maryland, Philly, KC, Vegas, and Boston, they take orders from New York. No one tells us what the fuck to do.”
“So what do you do, exactly?” I can’t keep the fear out of my voice. I’ve heard he has no problem with murder, that he doesn’t order deaths, prefers to handle it himself despite the fact that as a capo, he has several men under him willing to do it for him. What does that make him, that he doesn’t hand off killing another man?
“For the most part we take care of our neighborhood. Pop and I don’t allow drugs harder than weed, haven’t for more than fifty years. We’ve run off developers who want to tear shit down and build places the people who were there couldn’t afford—it’s how Pop and I came to own so much real estate.”
He shrugs. “I run liquor out of a family in the backwoods who have been doing it since they were making bootleg in the twenties. I slap a fake label on it and charge for what the label says it is and make double off it in and around the city. Mainly I run a club with gambling in the lower level, poker, craps, roulette, all that shit. That’s the illegal side of it. I also run a legit real estate business, selling, leasing property in our area, and I started importing high-quality home finishes from Europe, mainly Italy, wherever the best of the best comes from.”
“That’s all?” I can’t keep my disbelief out of my voice.
His voice is cold now, almost robotic. “What? You want me to tell you about the tweakers who tried to move a meth lab into another neighborhood and it became family business to remove them? How I grabbed two and tortured them to get all the info on who funded it, where it was going and who benefited before killing them? Or about the fucking MC that keeps trying to move in, and I’ve killed three of their men so far over the last few years?”
I’m shaking my head, wishing he would stop, but he keeps going.
“You need to know about the damn Bratva bastards me and my men took out for bringing in a shipping container filled with women? Do you need me to tell you about the gamblers I’ve had to work over, breaking bones, making sure they needed stitches when I was done with them when they didn’t pay me on time? I’m not saying death doesn’t happen. I’m just saying it doesn’t happen every day. None of those men deserved to keep breathing for the shit they did, for the lives they were willing to ruin.”
Cold, so very cold. And why do I agree with him? Does it make it okay that those men were animals? I sigh as I close my eyes, yes and no and then yes all over again. The nuns, they knew who Johnny was. They knew the money coming into the school and church to pay for me was bloody. It didn’t bother them in the least. Mother Superior and I spoke once. She told me angels were not the kind, benevolent things of lore. They were warriors, they did god’s work good and bad, they slayed the demons man could not and sometimes they slayed men. Dominic is no angel; he’s a man who just looks like a fallen angel.
8
Regina