That’s vanity, he’d say. And vanity is a form of pride and therefore a mortal sin. So he would punish me for it.
What the hell am I thinking?
I don’t need those memories. Never want to remember them again. Hopefully, bringing Gael to justice will finally let me forget.
The meeting concludes and I’m the first out the door, because pity is still in everyone’s eyes and I’m sure they’ll feel theneed to wish me good luck, and tell me everything will work out, and all those other kind, but useless things.
I don’t need their pity. Or their kindness. Although I appreciate both.
But that’s not what will chase away my nightmares. That’s not what will correct the biggest mistake I’ve ever made.
The only thing that will do all that is for me to face Father Gael, call him out and win.
Then me and all the other girls he has destroyed will finally be free.
2
Nico
Los Angeles is actually very pleasant in January—and all through winter at that—no matter what the locals are saying. Everyone I talk to keeps complaining about the wind and the chill, as though the temperatures weren’t in that pleasant fifties to seventies range. Back home in New York it’s still freezing right now. Living there you’d be so sick of the winter by late January that you’d give anything for this type of weather. And still the winter would persist. It used to just go on and on and on.
But I try not to think too much about back home in New York.
I betrayed my entire family to help newcomer Angelo Ferro become theCapo dei tutti capi,the ruler of the New York Mob, there. I watched people I’ve known my whole life die bloody deaths in that rise to power. I still see them in my dreams and hear my father’s angry and disappointed voice telling me I’m no son of his anymore. Disappointed mostly. Which is worse than angry. I could handle his anger. Been doing it my whole life.
But I made my choices, I made my bed. Helped Ferro rise to power so I could have some of my own too. As the fourth andyoungest son in my family, there was nothing for me to do. They didn’t even care who or if I married. And they certainly didn’t give me anything important to do.
But now I am an important man. The advisor-consigliere-to the top Mafia boss here in LA. He’s also my cousin, Matteo Rovina, and he’s rebuilding his empire here with lightning speed.
My all-knowing father didn’t make consigliere until he was well into his forties. So take that.
It’s not much of a consolation.
I don’t regret helping Matteo win his empire back here in LA. But I do regret losing the rest of my family. Not that they were ever very good to me. But family is family. In our world, it’s the most important thing.
But there’s no going back. No changing anything. No fixing things.
And most days, I can accept that as the hard truth it is and not wallow in my regrets.
With the amount of booze, coke and pretty girls to choose from to drown and wash away any amount of regret, I should be doing just fine.
Trouble is, I don’t want to just drown my unhappiness in drugs and sex anymore. I’ve done that for most of my life and it hasn’t helped any yet. It’s only led to more regrets, more bad choices, a deeper, blacker hole that I now have to dig myself out of.
These swirling black thoughts that plague me every day now, despite the pleasantly warm days, the soft breeze, the clear scent of the ocean, and my new respectable post in life… they have to go, if I’m to have any chance of ever staying sober and enjoying my life.
But that’s not the only reason I need them gone.
That’s down to a woman… of all things.
Ever since I’ve realized how good sex was, which was half my life ago now, I’ve done it all and with all sorts of women.
But I’ve never met one like her before.
Alice, she calls herself. But her real name is Bianca.
She’s Italian American like me, but you wouldn’t know it from her platinum blonde hair and fair skin.
You would know it from the luscious curves she keeps well hidden under all that motorcycle riding gear she wears. Not that all that leather doesn’t have its own appeal.
