Page 23 of A Beautiful Crime

I take a puff of my Cuban cigar, a gift from my business associate, Alvaro, who imports the purest cocaine known to man from Cuba to New York. The cocaine business has earned me enough money to never have to work for the rest of my life and the next. But I’m a greedy bastard. Not only do I want to own the East Coast with the purest drugs I also want to own it in every way possible. My fingers are dipped in multiple pies, each one beneficial to me. And if I ever should arise to a problem I have the finest Judge of New York right inside my pocket.

My papa used to tell me everyone can be bought for the right price.

It’s utterly pathetic of the human race to prove it true.

Money means power.

And I have an abundance of it.

I raise my brow coolly at Rico, who stands before me in a three piece pressed black suit and a stoic expression upon his face.

For as long as I have known Rico he’s never shown a semblance of emotion. I never thought much of it. Living in this world of ours everyone has their quirks.

Rico lives with what is known as alexithymia, the inability to identify and express or describe one’s emotions.

To put it simply, for those who are incompetent Rico has problems with feeling emotions, or rather feeling none at all.

Although I imagine that must put a damper on his personal life it makes him the perfect man for the position he has.

Rico is the only person who I confide with due to his lack of empathy and his blunt approach to the world. Whereas the rest of the world sees black, white and grey, Rico sees nothing. He bases everything off of fact and strategy.

Which is exactly why he is warning me of the etiquette between the meeting of Famiglia’s. Not particularly because he cares about Savio Fiore or Italian traditions but because it will cause a rift between us if I don’t.

I, however, could give a fuck less.

Savio Fiore, who has been waiting amongst the sidelines like the rest of the gangs and Famiglia’s for my demise means nothing more to me than the dirt underneath the soles of my custom made Versace shoes.

But The Fiore Famiglia is the only Famiglia who is worthy enough to even be considered a rival.

The only business they have where I don’t thrive is in arms trafficking. After the death of my papa, Savio wasted no time in trying to gain as much power as he possibly could. And with the little time that he possessed he managed to arrange a meeting with the arms trafficker that had dealt with us.

There is a deeper history, one I’m sure he has never dared breathe. And it’s because of our history that our famiglia ’s have always been enemies.

But there is a history that everyone of both Famiglia’s are aware of. The one we were told since we could understand what words meant. The one where it forged a hatred to reside in our black hearts for each other.

Savio Fiore was a man born in Sicily, Italy who has stuck to the traditions of Mafia Crime since its origins.

My famiglia, however, has gone against such traditions, as we are related to the one and only mobster who had gunned down the Sicilian Mafia Syndicate to create a new world of Mafia Crime.

It was a massacre.

A bloodbath of grand affair that would make even the most desensitized human being screw their eyes shut and scream with terror.

In the end it brought an end to the reign of the Sicilian Mafia. And with its end was the end of The Fiore Famiglia reign. They no longer sat upon the throne as kings, they became peasants like the rest of them.

This is why Savio offered me his precious daughter’s hand in marriage, because it’s his only way of ever coming close to reclaiming the throne.

If my papa were alive he would have declined the offer without second thought.

Any person with Fiore blood is a sworn enemy, and a truce would only be admitting defeat on the Donati name. The ultimate sin.

But there is a sin worse than admitting defeat.

A sin my papa would punish me for and make me pray for forgiveness until I was blue in the face.

After all, how many cities have fallen because a man was simply beguiled by a woman.

Or rather enraptured, as the media so lightly put it.

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