Chapter 1
Michael
The day my father died, everything turned to shit. I didn’t particularly care that he was dead, we were never close. But I was the second son, the one that wasn’t in line to inherit a damn thing. I had planned on being a bum. It was what I trained for. It’s what I practiced being.
My brother Tony, he got left holding the bag. I got to jet around the world spending money and creating embarrassing incidents and he got to stay here and be the man in charge of the store. The Outfit is a large organization with influence ranging from Chicago to New Orleans and all the way to LA. Nothing moves without us saying so. “Us” being The Outfit. For the last seventy years that meant the Marcottis and the D’Angelos. We were partners. Had been since the day Capone died.
Somewhere along the way, some genius had worked up a plan to solidify The Outfit. Everything had come together pretty simple a little over twenty years ago. Everyone knew that Tony would someday become the head of the family on the Marcotti side. When the D’Angelos had only one child, a daughter by the name of Deanna, it was worked out that she was supposed to marry Tony like some princess settling a foreign pact. Not that anyone asked Deanna or even Tony for that matter. Call it rebellion, call it what you will. As it turned out, back in high school Deanna and I used to… date. Heavily. Congratulations, Tony. I figured that I was going to have very awkward family gatherings since I’d slept with my sister-in-law.
Tony didn’t know about that. But there was something bothering him. He went to an Ivy League school, business major, attending all the meetings, was introduced around and went from 190lbs to over 350 in the space of a couple of years. The day of the funeral, he and I were pallbearers and we carried my father’s casket to the site, put it on the straps that lowered it into the hole and stood by while a priest said some things about a man he’d never met who was not getting into heaven.
When the casket started to go down, Tony tumbled forward and draped himself over it. At first, everyone thought he’d been overwhelmed by grief, that he didn’t want to let go of father. I’m the one that figured out first that something was wrong. For starters, that wasn’t the kind of father we’d had. Besides, even if Dad had been Father of the Year, Tony wasn’t the sort to be getting all dramatic in public places. As it turned out, Tony’s heart had exploded, and he had fallen on the casket as dead as a brick.
It would have saved a lot of time and trouble if they had just kept lowering him with the coffin. But the extra weight was too much for the motor and it jammed leaving him halfway into the hole.
The official line was that Tony was overcome by emotion and by the exertion of the exercise in that sweltering heat. It’s bullshit, but I’ll believe it. It’s safe to assume that the stress of taking over the business was a fairly large strain. It’s also safe to say that a man that fat can’t hold up in that heat doing that much activity.
I just want to believe that me telling him I slept with his fiancé wasn’t what tipped the scales. I suppose I shouldn’t have told him on the way over to the cemetery. So sue me, when I saw Deanna D’Angelo leaving the church as the car was pulling away I might have bragged a little. Maybe I wanted to see what was going to happen now that he was the head of the Marcottis.
I believe what I choose.
The day I buried Tony, I went into the shop. I learned to carve wood when I was high school, it’s a way to chill, to escape for a little while. That day I wasn’t really looking to carve till I freed an angel, like Michelangelo once said. That day I took an ax and slammed at a pile of logs until I made kindling. I barely stopped before I pulverized everything to sawdust.
I was breathing hard, my back was on fire and my arms had become numb from the impact of the ax against the wood. I was covered in sharp little splinters that clung to my sweat like a melting porcupine.
That’s when Dominic “Dinky” De’Angelo decides he wanted to see me right away. I’d heard the phone ring but had taken no notice. It was Rico who brought me the message. As I stared him down I know I looked wild. I must have seemed pretty unstable with that ax in my hands.
Rico didn’t even blink.
“He wants you to come to his place,” he said, “right away.”
“I’m not his slave.”
“Maybe that’s why he said ‘please’?”
Rico has always been able to cut through my bullshit. That’s why I can trust him.
That didn’t mean I wanted to see the old man. I knew what he wanted. It was my turn to take up the reins. Like I’d ever wanted any part of the Outfit. I wouldn’t have cared less if they gave it to the next guy.
Except there wasn’t a next guy. There was me.
With a frustrated scream, I turned and threw the ax at the side of the building. It struck, the blade chomping into the siding and sticking where it hit. It was a shot I could have never done if I’d tried and would probably never be able to duplicate ever again. Rico’s eyebrows shot up.
I turned back to him and in a voice that could have frozen helium added. “I’m going to take a shower. Have Robert get the car ready.”
Rico nodded, face impassive, eyes wide and never leaving that ax. “Take your time,” he said, then paused a moment. “We’ll be waiting.”
“’We’?”
Rico smiled. It was the smile of a man who had some secrets of his own. The smile of a man not afraid of an ax in the hands of a screaming maniac.
You don’t ask guys like that to explain themselves. You just get out of the way and let them do their jobs.
I did.