Page 135 of Powerful Deception

She nods in agreement. “Okay, I’ll tell you why I left yesterday, if you tell me something in return.”

“What do you want to know?”

“How did you know my father and how the hell did he get involved with the mafia?”

39

“I met Joseph when I was teenager. I was eighteen and he had just been promoted to detective if I remember correctly.” Dante starts off.

After I told him what I wanted to know, he agreed. So now we’re sitting on the ground both with our backs to the headstone that faces my parents’.

He pauses for a moment, as if he expects me to speak, but I don’t.

I won’t speak until I know the whole story, then I will tell him mine.

A few seconds later, Dante starts talking again.

“At the time, I wasn’t the head of the mafia. Hell I didn’t even want anything to do with the mafia or the famiglia. The only reason I was even involved was because the boss, Alberto Falcone was my uncle. My mother’s brother. Alberto never had a wife, so everyone that worked under him treated her like their queen. My father was a capo, so it was evident that I would be involved too. I mostly took care of little things. Never really having a seat at the table.” He says as if he has drifted off and is in the past.

“I met Joseph one night as I was finishing up a job for Falcone. Delivering a ‘package’ to a city council member. A tongue. I thought he was going to arrest me when he pulled up next to me, but no. He just rolled down his window and asked if I knew a good place for some Italian lemonade. So I pointed him to one in Little Italy.”

Dante showed my dad that place? I thought he just found it one day.

I try to think back to when the first time was my dad took me there but I can’t remember. That place has been a staple in my life for so long that I don’t even remember when I went there for the first time.

With the story Dante is telling me, I had to be around five.

“He loved Italian lemonade. He would always take me and then when I moved out, once a month we would make a trip into Little Italy just to grab some. It was our monthly date.”

I say the words, and instantly regret that I didn’t keep up with that. Yes, I didn’t have him with me anymore, but it could be something I do for myself.

Keep his memory alive, in a way.

Dante gives me a nod. “I haven't been there for a few years, but I know it’s still open.”

“It was still open last august.” I say to him, giving him a small smile.

He gives me one back before continuing his story.

“He offered me some that night, that he would pay. I tried to blow him off, I knew he was a cop from the second he pulled up, but he continued to follow me and nagged at me until I finally agreed. The second I got in the car, I saw his badge and we went off to get Italian lemonade. He didn’t try to get me to talk. The whole way to the place he stayed silent, just talking when he needed directions. When we got to the place, I was going to book it and he knew it so he said the one thing that would hold me back.”

Dante pauses as if he remembers that day like it was yesterday and not nearly twenty years ago.

“What did he say?” I ask, curiosity taking over.

“‘Falcone is threatened by you, Dante.’” He lets out.

“What does that even mean?” Was my dad keeping a close eye on Dante? Why?

“It meant a lot of things.” Dante tells me before pausing and continuing. “Falcone, like I said, didn’t have a wife. He thought that having a woman would take too much time away from the famiglia, and not make him as rich and powerful as he wanted to be. So he stayed single, and because of that, he didn’t have any kids. And since his sister was the closest thing he had to a queen, I was treated as if I was the heir to the throne. Essentially, I was since I was his only male nephew. So the crown would fall to me when he met his demise, but I wanted nothing to do with it. Sure, I did jobs for the family here there but I always had one foot out the door and Falcone hated it. He thought that I was going to get cocky one day and take it all away from him. That continued for years. Everyone knew he hated me, his men, my parents, even your dad. So that night after he told me that, he asked me to work with him to take Falcone down and put him behind bars.”

“Did you?” I turn my body to face him fully, but he keeps his eyes on my parents’ grave.

Dante shakes his head. “As much as I wanted to, as much as I hated the man, I couldn’t do that to my mother and your dad understood that. But just because I said no, doesn’t mean that I didn’t tell him when shit was going to go down. Drug deals, murders, when a body was going to pop up somewhere, whatever I knew I would tell your dad. We would meet every once and a while and I would tell him everything. All over Italian lemonade.”

“How long did that go for?” I ask, intrigued by all of this.

Dante finally turns to look over at me. His eyes filled with sympathy. “Until his death.”

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