Page 4 of Mafia Kings: Valentino

Besides, I already knew they wouldn’t give me a cent. They’d say that if they gave me money, they’d be supporting my ‘loose lifestyle.’

The reality was they didn’t have any money to spare, anyway.

So I worked crappy jobs making 2000 gallons of spaghetti a day and tried to save my money to go to a culinary institute.

Unfortunately, I was as good at saving as I’d been at school.

I tried – I really did! It’s just that what little money I had left over every month magically disappeared.

For the first three years in Florence, life was great… until it wasn’t anymore.

I felt trapped in my horrible job.

I had fun with boys, but I never fell in love.

I began to get depressed…

And then one random bit of information changed my life forever.

I was visiting my parents for Christmas (always a fun time as they nagged and criticized me endlessly) when Aunt Giovanna came over for a drink.

Giovanna wasn’t my real aunt but my mom’s best friend. I’d known her all my life, and she treated me like her own daughter. And she wasn’t nearly as critical as my own mother.

Plus she had a bawdy sense of humor, which I loved.

As she was sitting there at our kitchen table, she bit into one of the pastries I’d made. That was what I did when I came home: I did all the cooking and baking for my family. I enjoyed it, and it (usually) kept my parents off my back.

“Mmf,” she moaned, her eyes rolling back into her head. “Caterina, your cooking is better than sex.”

I laughed.

Momma cried out indignantly, “Giovanna!”

“Well, itis.At least better than sex with Federico.” Federico was her husband of 30 years; they quarreled all the time. “WhenI can even get it, it’s over in three minutes – but I could eat your pastries all night.”

I laughed even harder. Momma scolded Giovanna some more.

“Tell me,piccolina,”Giovanna said, using the nickname she’d called me since I was a baby. It meantvery small one.“Are you conquering the restaurant business in Florence?”

I snorted. “Hardly. I have a crappy job at a tourist joint that pays me minimum wage.”

“Well, if it’s money you want, my sister told me she heard the Rosolinis are hiring for their kitchen.”

Everyone in town knew about the Rosolinis. They were the richest family in Tuscany and lived about 30 minutes away from my town.

The Rosolinis lived in a palace – or so said the handful of men lucky enough to have done odd jobs on the property. The men would gossip about it over glasses ofgrappain the town square, insisting that the mansion rivaled the Vatican in its splendor.

It had to be an exaggeration… but I was always curious about howbigan exaggeration.

However, it was widely known that the Rosolinis weremafiosos.

There wasn’t any proof, exactly. They didn’t extort money from local businesses, which is what you would expect out of the mafia.

But the patriarch of the family was known asil Mostro– ‘the monster’ – because of stories about how he’d had some people killed 20 years ago.

Why, nobody knew for sure. But everybody would nod their heads knowingly and say,Mafia.

Several years ago, it was in all the newspapers that the oldest son went to jail for bribing judges in Florence.

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