“Ha! Her parents had no chance against him.”
“No, I doubt they did.”
“Your poor great grandparents.”
“They learned to love him, after a while. He loved them too.” His voice turned soft, almost reflective.
“Continue on about what I should expect.” I needed to turn the conversation, or he was going to quit talking and start brooding. I knew my parents meant a great deal to him, and him to them, and not just because of me. Elliott had begun the history. I carried it on.
After a few minutes of silence, I squeezed his hand hard enough to get his attention.
“Brando?”
“Yeah, baby.”
“I love you.”
A languorous grin spread on his face, like a slow-catching wick. Then, knowing I had caught a sliver of his attention, I continued on. “Specifiche,” I reminded him. I neededspecifics.
In fact, I had shied away from doing any research on Brando’s family and their history until then. It was better to be on a need-to-know basis. As curious as I was, even I had limits after knowing the basics of who they were. And I usually found information in a simpler way, through Aunt Lola. I preferred not to dwell on the business, instead attempting to get to know the human side of things.
From the small snippets I gathered here and there, they could be a ruthless, no,savagebunch. Perhaps it was the faint hope that I didn’t need to know, because we were somehow going to escape the clutches of it.
Since we were going in deep, I decided that knowledge was power.
Violet had a stash of articles and other tidbits she had collected on the family, and she had attempted to tempt me into reading about them before, but I had refrained. Except for one time—I allowed her to tell me what Marzio’s nickname had been—Marzio “il bel leone”Fausti. Translated,the Beautiful Lion.
It was no surprise that Luca’s cognomen was along the same lines—il leone feroce. That was clear and simple enough,the Ferocious Lion.
The remaining power was tucked into my tote bag for later reading.
Brando glanced at me, turned forward, blinked a few times and then cleared his throat. “Yeah. Specifics.”
There were seven powerful “organizations” in Italy, and the heads and theircoscas(clans) were not limited tofamiglia. Unlike the Faustifamiglia,whose leaders were all related—and a hefty amount of the men as well—the other organizations were more like cells that belonged to one area, and they were territorial about their ground.
This included numerous people who were not always related through blood, though nepotism was not unheard of. One leader would give, for example, his son or cousin a specific area to extort thepizzo, a neighborhood that was better than another.
Though most of the affiliations had to do with drugs and sex trafficking, along with extortion, the Faustifamigliasolely dealt in extortion, as far as crime went. They were clever enough to take the blood money and invest it.
Brando had once called his family as a whole an octopus, arms everywhere, touching all. Ettore, a tentacle himself, had wanted to reach out and dabble in the exclusive clubs Nemours had offered him, which hosted numerous high-class dancers.
So we were back to me, and the reason we were on our way to Sicily, to Bagheria to stay before the meeting was set to take place in—
“What’s the name of the town?” I asked, bending down to retrieve a banana from my bag.
Brando opened his mouth, wanting a bite. I obliged, and he bit off a chunk, chewed for a moment, and then swallowed.
“Corleone,” he said, and then took a deep drink of his water.
Just about to lick a sticky finger, the digit stilled in midair, right before my mouth. I turned the pointer on him. “Ha ha! Hilarious, Brando. Just hilarious.”
“Tell me if this is my joking face.” He turned to me, stone cold serious.
I took the finger down. “You’re being serious.”
“As a heart attack.”
“The city fromThe Godfather—that’s where we’re going?”
