Page 1 of Brando

1

BRANDO

Men in our world are all about the women. The money. The fame and the glory. Me? I’m about keeping the streets clean. When I was ten, I lost my twin brother to a speeding hoodlum who lost control of his car while Christiano rode his bike down the street.

While my mother conducted her affair with her lover in a seedy apartment upstairs.

I get that we weren’t all born to royalty, but there has to be a moral compass somewhere, and it has to be pointing in the right direction. I know I’m no saint, but I’m no sinner either. Not unless the occasion calls for it.

Like killing my mother, for instance. My mother was the biggest sinner of all. Any woman who plots to kill her sons for power should be put down, nice and simple. The moment that Scar drove that knife through her chest, I felt years of anxiety slip away from me, as though I were shedding my skin.

For the longest time, I was worried about Scar wearing that burden alone. He struggled silently trying to keep us afloat after our father passed away as every piranha reared its head, looking for a slice of our pie. He fought off every single one ofthe enemies that came at us, then he had to fight off his own flesh and blood. It may have been understandable if it were us brothers squabbling over leadership, but no, it had to be our own fucking mother.

I don’t even think about her that much anymore. She destroyed what was left of me more than fifteen years ago when her neglect resulted in Christiano’s death, and then she came back to finish me off. She came back to destroy what was left of her family. So we took her out with the trash that was the Scarfones and the Lucianis conspiring against us. I like to think of this one deed as one of our better ones. It’s one of the best things we’ve ever done as a family, and it’s brought us one step closer to keeping the streets of our city clean.

People will tell you that mafia is all about bloodshed and violence. They’ll tell you we’re ruthless and cut-throat. We lie, we cheat, we steal. We kill. It’s true. Some of it, anyway.

We lie to get to the truth of a matter.

We cheat because we’re always taking short cuts.

We steal…only what’s on offer.

And we kill to protect our own.

I’ve dedicated my life to protecting the rest of my family. I’ve already lost one brother, and I’m not willing to lose another. To ensure safety, security, I need control. And I have that in spades. My brothers and I rule over the jungle that is our city with a measured control that cannot be swayed, cannot be infiltrated unless we allow it. Which we won’t. No drugs, no human trafficking, no organ harvesting. We want a safe place for our future kids to ride their bikes without the threat of the dangers currently rampant in other cities. Any whiff of anyone doing any of that crap in our city, and we will burn the Goddamn city down to find the damn fucker who dares to lace our streets with their poison. No exceptions.

There’s a valid reason why I don’t want my family getting involved in the mess that Tommy Corsica left behind. For one, things are going to get ugly. Well, they already are. Secondly, Allegra’s going to give birth any minute now, and I don’t want her stressing about anything other than the final stages of her labor. I don’t want Scar getting dragged into another war when his wife needs him. And I don’t want my brothers getting all heated up over something I can handle myself. We’ve already been through enough lately, and I know my family is standing on that precious precipice where we’re just starting to rebuild our lives after the devastation our so-called mother left behind. We don’t need more shit right now.

Tommy Corsica was ripe for the picking. According to the Maltese, anyway. He spent many years working in organized crime as a hitman. A Mr. Fixit, if you will. Then he helped himself to something that wasn’t his, skimming off the top from some higher ups he had no business messing with. That’s what I’m told, anyway. So, he found himself on the wrong side of a gun, then on the lower level of an underground bunker. Aka a plot.

Me, personally, I find it hard to believe that a man of his standing would so such a thing, but I don’t know him all that well to dispute the story either way. I am curious, though, so I go to see Mason Ironside – not his real name – on my own, when he calls me out of desperation, asking for my help. His long-time best friend Tommy Corsica, it seems, didn’t just leave a mess behind. He left a whole lot of drama, too. Namely in the form of three daughters.

Mason Ironside's place is an inconspicuous building tucked away in the older, grimier part of town where the bright neon signs do little to illuminate the filth on the ancient streets. The kind of place where secrets are both kept and spilled like cheap liquor. Under any other circumstances, I’d be skeptical ofa man that keeps company with a dirtbag like Tommy Corsica, but Mason Ironside did us a solid with some much-needed information during the recent Scarfone-Luciani war, so we owe him.

As I walk into his office, a cloud of smoke from his cigar engulfs me, blurring my vision momentarily as my eyes adjust to the dimly lit room. Everything about this man is shady, down to his location, but I hear he’s a real paranoid fuck who moves around a lot, and I can’t imagine there’d be many vacant places left in the city for him to hole up in when he needs to.

The big man is sitting behind a massive oak desk that looks like it belongs in a museum rather than a dingy office, papers and dusty old folders scattered on its surface. I say nothing as my eyes scan the walls lined with bookshelves that are filled not just with books but various trinkets and artifacts from his years in the underbelly of the city's crime network. I’m told he’s a collector of all things magnificent, and although I can’t remember exactly who it was who relayed this information, I can see they weren’t far off the mark. The office looks more like the sort of place a private detective would keep, and I notice the dust on the shelves is inches thick, which tells me this is not an office that he uses often. Paranoid as fuck, I tell you.

“Brando,” he greets me, his voice gravelly, betraying his years of tobacco abuse. “I appreciate you coming on such short notice.”

I wouldn’t have, but like I said, we owe Mason Ironside a favor. He’s the one that tipped us off when we were looking for the Scarfones when that whole mess with my mother went down. He saved a few lives; I have to admit. So we owe him. And we always pay our dues.

He rises from behind his desk and extends his hand, grasping mine tight.

“What’s so important it couldn’t wait a few days?” I ask, pulling up a chair opposite him. I straddle it and lean my arms on the backrest. I don’t know the man all too well, only minor interactions and business dealings here and there, but I’ve done my homework; there’s nothing about the man that concerns me except that he was friends with a now dead man. And yet, I feel comfort encasing me as I take a seat opposite him. The one thing you should know about me is my gut is never, if ever, wrong about a person.

He sighs, rubbing his temples as his eyes land on the tattoos on my hands. On one hand, I have each of my brother’s names tattooed on a digit. On the back of my hand, Christiano’s name is tattooed in bold cursive. There’s a soaring eagle in flight on the back of my other hand, the digits bare, in contemplation of future artwork. Maybe the name of my girl one day. Maybe my kids, if I’m ever lucky enough to have any.

“Yeah. Sorry about that. But I have a serious problem with the Maltese. Tommy Corsica owed them some big bucks.”

He’s not telling me anything I don’t already know. Everyone knows what Corsica did. I shake my head, as if to ask him why I would care.

“Tommy’s dead; how is this a problem?”

Killing Tommy Corsica was a stupid move from the Maltese. Everyone knows that dead men can’t pay debts.

“Now he’s gone - God rest his tortured soul - they’re turning their sights on his daughters.”

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