What scared me was that I’d had such poor judgment that I’d spent the night alone with a killer. What kind of journalistic instinct was that? Maybe I wasn’t ready to report “real news” if I was going to put myself in that kind of position. I would definitely need to take a good look at myself. But for now, I was going to sit down at my desk when I reached it this morning and the first thing I was going to do was delete all of the emails he’d sent me and block his address. I know that wouldn’t stop him if he wanted to reach me, but it was a step towards putting Friday night behind me.
I stepped into the lobby of the building the paper was in feeling better than I had all weekend and I suddenly heard,
“Hi Alana.” I cringed at the sound of his voice, turning over my shoulder to see Nate Hunter standing there. He was one of the papers elite investigative journalists. He’d been all over the world on the paper’s dime and reported on just about every major event that had happened in the past five years. He was also my ex-boyfriend and an egotistical, self-absorbed, smug son of a bitch.
“Good morning, Nate,” I said and then turning back, I continued walking towards the bank of elevators.
“Alana, wait,” he called after me.
“I’m running late. I’ll have to catch up with you later,” I told him as I stepped into the open elevator. I thought I’d lost him as the doors began to slide closed but then I saw the sleeve of his expensive gray suit wave up and down between them and the offending doors re-opened and allowed him to step on.
“Wow, you are in a hurry,” he said.
“Yeah, I told you I was. What’s so urgent, Nate?”
“It’s just the funniest thing,” he said. “I have a source that brought me some information over the weekend that I’m really confused about.”
Sighing heavily, so that he knew I could barely tolerate him I said,
“What does it have to do with me, Nate?”
“Everything, apparently,” he said, handing me a manila folder.
“What is this?”
“Open it,” he said.
I rolled my eyes and opened the folder. I was staring at an 8 x 10 glossy of myself and Sammie Romo on the dance floor at 230 Fifth. I looked up at him; he had his signature smirk on his face as he said,
“Keep looking sweetheart, there’s more.”
I wanted to punch him for calling me sweetheart. What was with all of these suddenly over-familiar men? I picked up the photo and underneath it was another…it was one of Sammie and I walking arm in arm into the Glass Towers. It was stamped with Friday night’s date. The elevator Nate and I were riding in stopped and the doors slid open on my floor. I felt like my heels were glued down and I couldn’t move. To my horror, Nate had to take me by the arm and lead me out of the elevator. I think I was in some kind of mini-shock state. I found myself standing in the hallway, still gaping at the photos in my hand. Feeling sick to my stomach, I picked up the next photo and the last one was the best. It was a photo of me in Friday night’s clothes and a flagrant case of bed-head, getting into the back seat of Sammie’s limousine. The photo was clearly stamped with Saturday morning’s date.
“What—Where---Why are you having Sammie followed?” I finally spit out.
“Are you serious, Alana? Do you know who he is?”
I flipped the folder closed and said, “Obviously I do,” as I placed them back in his hand.
“Alana, what are you doing with this guy?”
“I don’t believe that’s your business, Nate.”
“Uh, have you considered that maybe I’m concerned for you?”
“Don’t be. I’m a big girl,” I told him as I walked on shaky legs towards my cubicle.
“Alana, please talk to me. Is this about a story? Is that it?” he asked as he followed me around the corner and into my cubicle where I almost walked into the largest bouquet of roses I had ever seen. Nate looked at the roses and then back at me. The tone of his voice changed as he said, “I was worried this was about a story. I know how you’ve always wanted to do more interesting things than your features. But now I’m even more worried. Please, Alana, tell me you’re not really personally involved with this guy.”
My mind was reeling. I was staring at the roses, and Nate was staring at me. The part of me that despised the fact that all of the investigative journalists with the paper were men – and that they all had the same kind of egotistical attitude that Nate did – made me suddenly feel like I had to be the one to get the story Sammie Romo had to tell. I had to redeem myself and prove if only to me that I can do this because of my journalistic abilities, and not because of my feminine wiles. I’d made a mistake, but I could correct it and move on…in the direction of furthering my career.
I opened my mouth, and before I even realized what I was doing I was speaking.
“He’s my fiancé.”
“Excuse me?” Nate said, looking like he was going to choke.
“He proposed last night… and I accepted.”
“Oh, Jesus, Alana. What the hell are you thinking?”
“What I think and who I choose to be with is not your business, Nate.”
“Alana…”
“I’m finished with this conversation. Please leave so I can get to work.”
“If you’re doing this to get a story….”
“Go!” I snapped.
He finally left and I dropped down into my chair and let out the breath I’d been holding. I hoped I knew what the hell I was doing. I looked over at the giant flower bouquet again and reached for the card. I slipped it open and read Sammie’s note. It actually sounded like he was remorseful and I found myself feeling guilty about that. I’d just told Nate that I was a “big girl.” Supposedly I could take care of myself. Sammie hadn’t forced me back to his room. He didn’t force me to have sex with him. I had been drunk, yes, but he hadn’t forced the drinks down my throat either. The simple truth of the matter was that he was incredibly good-looking and I hadn’t been with a man since I broke up with my last boyfriend five months ago. I was incredibly horny. It had been a volatile situation all the way around. I’d got that out of my system now though and I was ready to start over. In public, I would be Sammie Romo’s girl, but in private it would be strictly professional and if it took me five years, I was going to write the most informative, alarming, exciting story about the Mob that anyone had ever seen.
CHAPTER SIX: SAMMIE
I walked into Tony “Fat boy” Fattore’s dining room and found myself amongst Mafioso royalty. There were representatives from three different Borgata’s…or families in the city. There should be four, one was conspicuously absent.
“There he is,” Tony said, pushing his failing body up out of his chair. I would have told him to stay there, but it wouldn’t have done any good. He came to me and kissed both sides of my face and then embraced me. Then with a pat of his hand on my cheek, he said, “Ahh…Sammie boy.”
“Tony, it’s so good to see you, as always.”
Another man came towards me then,
“Sammie,” he said, kissing and embracing me the way that Tony had, but without the emotion behind it.
“Salvatore, it’s good to see you,” I lied.
Tony was the Underboss of the family, my father’s right hand man for almost forty years. Every decision that affected any kind of change in the family had gone through first my father and then Tony for four decades. Salvatore “Savage” Salvaticci was the Consigliere which meant he was to be consulted on every decision the boss and his underboss made. Normally it was a position equal to or even more important than the Underboss. Things changed after the men came to America.
Back in Sicily when the three men were young they made all of their decisions together. My Papa and Tony had grown up in the same tenement and were best friends since they were in diapers. Salvatore came into their life later on, he married my Aunt Theresa. Family was everything to Guido Romo and Theresa was Papa’s favorite sister. His position as her husband cemented him a
place in the hierarchy for life.
The three men and their new families came to the States together and they worked hard together to achieve their positions in this family. They came over in the sixties when the mafia was still in its “Golden Ages.” The family had a hand in everything in the city and it was an organization built on trust and respect. The seventies began to change all that. The street gangs came into play and wars began to erupt. The government started passing the RICO laws that made the arrest and prosecution of members of the mafia easier. It also made breaking the code of silence more appealing and the family saw an era of more members of the family turning State’s evidence than ever before. The U.S. Marshall’s were working overtime trying to keep the “rats” safe, but not many of them made it to their new homes and identities. They ended up in a cheap urn on the wall of the county morgue. Not even their blood relations would have dared to pick them up. The government had evolved with new ways to get information like anonymous tips on the internet and new ways to track and monitor people and even exacting revenge on a rat had become next to impossible. Only the best soldiers would be enlisted for a job like that.
Unfortunately for my Uncle Sal, he didn’t roll well with change. He wanted decisions to be made the way they used to be and Papa and Tony were smart enough to know that would never work. Salvatore fought them at every turn, but my father was a strong leader and Sal eventually faded into the background and became no more than a figure head. His spot was cemented until he died, but it was nothing more than a title.
Sal tolerated it because he had to. His only choice would have been to leave and be shunned, or worse. I think he also thought that someday he’d be made underboss to Tony’s boss and from there, when Tony died he would eventually be King. He was the youngest of the three men and with over ten years on them, I think he was sure he’d outlive them both. When Papa died and Tony announced that I was being groomed to succeed him Sal was shocked and angry. Since being angry with Tony might be dangerous for him and being angry with Papa now that he was dead was pointless, he’d turned his anger towards me.
The representatives there from the other two families were both Capo’s like me. Donatello “Donny” Martello ran a crew on the east side and Nico Gallo, ran a crew on the West. They both said hello and Donny told me how sorry he was for my loss. I wasn’t sure if he was talking about my father or Lucio but I accepted his condolences.
“So you’ve heard the grave news?” Tony asked me.
“Yes, poor Lucio. He wasn’t just part of my crew, he was a friend. He was a good friend.”
“I agree,” Tony told me. “Did Marco tell you where he was shot?”
“No, he said it was a message job though.”
“They shot him in both eyes,” Sal said.
I raised an eyebrow, but I didn’t respond. Sal seemed happy to be the one to tell me. He was a passive-aggressive son of a bitch.
Shooting someone in the eyes meant, “I’m watching you,” in our world. I honestly had no idea who it could be that wanted to send me a message so desperately that they would kill my best friend to do it.
“Sit down, Sammie.” Tony told me. I took a seat at the table with the others and Tony said,
“Does anyone know of any beefs against us?”
Everyone looked around the table and when no one said anything I asked, “Why are the Gambino’s absent?”
“Carmine is still put off by the fact I won’t consider that fat fuck Christopher for boss. He sent word that he couldn’t make it, made up some stupid fucking excuse so I couldn’t accuse him of disrespect, but we all know why he’s not here,” Tony said. Tony’s voice was getting raspier and he seemed like he had a lot harder time breathing every time I saw him. He was dying of throat cancer….but only he and I knew that.
The Christopher he spoke so disdainfully of was the son of Carmine Gambino. Carmine had been a Capo as long as my Pop had been the boss. He had also come over from Sicily the same year as the three reigning leaders of the family. Because of his father’s status, Christopher was made young, like me. He was like a machine as a soldier. He had no emotion and no regrets about anything he did. He spent a few years in prison because he had taken the rap for something that went down in the family. In Carmine’s defense here, Christopher had saved a lot of people in the family from going down at that time. He was what we referred to as a “stand-up guy.” That was someone who risked personal harm or misfortune rather than rat on the family. It was a big deal, and if it had been anyone but Christopher he probably would have been considered for the promotion ahead of me. The problem was that aside from doing whatever he was told to do and being willing to do time, Christopher was basically a moron. He ran a lot of drugs when he was a kid and he sampled a lot of product. That led to burnt brain cells and impulse control issues. None of that was conducive to being the boss.
“So do you think Carmine is angry enough to have taken it as far as killing Lucio?”
“No, Carmine is hot-headed but he’s not an idiot,” Tony said.
“What about Christopher?” I asked. “He is an idiot.”
Tony let out a raspy laugh and then had a coughing fit. I think I almost saw Sal lick his lips like the cat that waited for the canary to die. When he finished coughing he said,
“True, but Christopher only does what he’s told. He’s not smart enough to do otherwise. If Carmine didn’t tell him to do it, he wouldn’t have.”
“I will have to talk to my crew. We have a meet tomorrow. As far as I know there haven’t been any problems. I doubt they would have kept it from me if there were.” My crew worked the north side. We did all the collections, ran three legitimate businesses, and made sure that no one was trying to muscle in on our territory. Unless one of my guys was holding out on me…and I doubted it, things had been running smoothly. “What about the cops? What are they saying?”
“The Zebra’s figured out who Lucio was and turned it over to the First Bunch of Idiots. I doubt we’ll get much feedback from them.” Tony spat out his derogatory terms for uniformed officers and the FBI. The only thing he hated more than a cop was a rat. I loved Tony, almost as much as I had loved my papa, but I did hope he reached the end of his life before I did what I had to do. He was the one person left alive that I truly cared what he thought.
We talked some more about family business and who was going to be made soon and who would probably only stay an associate for life. Some guys just didn’t have what it took to be soldiers, but they were useful for other reasons. We batted around a few ideas about who might be pissed enough at me to send a warning, but nothing concrete came out of it. As we wrapped up the meeting Tony said,
“I’ll reach out to Paulie.” He still got that sad look in his eyes when he said Paulie’s name. Paulie was Tony’s son, Paul. Paul’s first sin against his father had been dropping Tony’s last name and taking his mother’s maiden name: Labruzzo. He’d done that so that he could pursue his second sin without being recognized by his name. He wanted to be a police officer. He’d graduated the academy twelve years earlier and worked a beat in Queens for eleven. He’d just made detective this past year and was now working vice in the Bronx. The only reason Tony would even consider reaching out to him was because right after he got his gold shield, Paulie had come to his father and warned him about a sting operation that would have ended with Tony and several other higher ups, probably my Papa as well, in a private cell out on Riker’s Island. Paulie swore to his father that would be the one and only time he helped him…or us in any way. He wanted out of the family and he looked at the NYPD as his way out. As Tony was about to prove by “reaching out” to him, that was much easier said than done.
“You’ll let me know what he says?” I asked.
Tony stood up and came over to me. He took my hands and said,
“Of course,” then he kissed my cheeks again and whispered, “I wish you were my son.”
I smiled at him, but I was imagining that if he knew what I intended
to do…or that I was even thinking about it, he’d appreciate his son the cop.
******
When I left Tony’s I had Jon drive me to Camilla’s apartment. I was dreading this, although I believed that Lucio wasn’t breaking his wedding vows by sleeping with her, I suspected they were very much in love.
As we drove up, I saw two of my soldier’s posted across the street. I’d had them watching her since I found out about Lucio. I would hate for sweet Camilla to get caught in the middle of my war. It was the wars like this one, when you didn’t know who you were fighting and the lives of innocents were at stake that I hated so badly.
I told Jon I would call him when I was ready. I didn’t know if she’d be okay to leave alone tonight. Once in front of her door I took a deep breath and knocked. She pulled open the door with a smile. The smile faltered when she saw it was me, but was replaced almost as quickly.
“Sammie! It’s so good to see you, please come in.” I followed her in and looked around. She had taken the crummy little apartment and in the short time she’d lived there, she had turned it into a home. Her decorations swung towards the flower-child era. Camilla always told Lucio and me that she was born too late. She should have been born during the era of “free love.” She wore her blonde hair straight and long. It hung to the tops of her thighs in back and was parted down the middle. I’d never seen her in anything except jeans and t-shirts with political sayings on them. It was just who she was, and her ability to remain true to herself even with all the adversity she’d faced in her life was one of the things I admired most about her.
I took the seat she offered me, but declined the tea. I did my best to steady my voice as I said,
“Camilla, I’m so sorry to tell you this…” Her face registered sheer terror and for a second I thought she knew what I was going to tell her. Then she said,
“Is it Michael? Did he find me?”
FAMILY TIES: A Mafia Love Story (Erotic Mafia Romance) Page 3
