Page 34 of Desperate Desires

Gio and my other guy, Flacco, flanked me as I headed down the alley to the entrance marked private for the D’Angelo family’s social club.

Once associates of my father’s, I would have thought this penny pinching peons would have been happy to see me get out of this racket.

Less competition for them.

But some people had a difficult time with change.

They were stubborn. Stuck in their own mediocrity with limited visions.

Not me. I had my eye on a different future for my family name. Bottarelli World Imports was already established, and we were growing by leaps and bounds.

I didn’t need to bother with this petty shit anymore. I had more money than I could spend in two lifetimes and with that money came power.

But I never forget where I came from, and calling the cops wasn’t for people like me. I dipped my chin and Gio knocked on the door.

“Who’s there?” some big lug asked, opening it a fraction of the way.

Flacco grinned and kicked it hard, sending the door guy flying. The sound of men scrambling to stand and shouting was loud, but I wasn’t distracted.

Stalking into the musty old club, I sneered at the place. It was nothing more than a shitty looking room with unkempt shelves, chipped painting, and dirty linoleum stuck over a cement floor.

Stale cigar smoke and the remnants of somebody’s cheap dinner hung in the air amidst the stink of cologne and sweat. There were a few card tables and folding chairs with a staticky radio playing some fucked up version of the Rat Pack on repeat.

Old black and white photos of Frank Sinatra were hanging on the walls, a couple of old timers, too.

And of course, a Sicilian flag hung beside the American one. The yellow and red represented two cities from the old country, Palermo and Corleone. The lady with the three legs stared out at me from dead center of the flag, and I wondered what she thought of this fucked up place.

But I didn’t have time for philosophical pondering.

And I didn’t want to be there any longer than I had to.

Whatever reason these old mobsters had for existing, the fact was they were irrelevant now.

I didn’t believe in hanging onto things just because.

That was a shit excuse for refusing to evolve.

These guys pretended they were Sicilian, but the people who lived in Sicily didn’t see it that way.

To them, we were all Americans. Fourth and fifth generation Americans at that.

Fucking hell.

These men were about as Italian as frozen pizza. As authentic, too.

My father had dreams for the Bottarelli name, but those dreams died with him.

I didn’t belong to people or places like this. I belonged to the here and now.

My eyes were on the future, not the past.

If these men couldn’t get over it, that was their issue.

Not mine.

But they had fucked with me, and now I had to hit back. Had to make sure they learned their fucking lesson.

Michelle, her name whispered inside my head and anger roiled through me.

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