Legal Returns

Chapter 1

Legal Returns

Lasalle

Am I a man who has been memorable to you? What’s my name? Who am I?

These are all questions I want my sons to be able to ask and receive the right answers to. I want them to know who they are from within. If they know who they are, they will tell the world the same and no one can take that from them.

There will be no doubting any of them. Sammy, Elijah, Paulie, and Sunny have big shoes to fill. In order for them to fill my shoes, everyone needs to know who they are from the start.

Each of my sons is starting with a challenge. Be it color, cognitive uniqueness, or just the fact that they are Locatellis with targets on their backs. I have to prepare them to stand before the world as who they are without allowing the world to label them as anything other.

When I hear the name Sam Mairettie these days, I can’t help but laugh. The name doesn’t even make sense to my ears. Going to war will do that to a man.

It changes the things he values, makes him see the things around him for what they truly are. I don’t have time to cower behind the things I’m trying not to be. The throne requires I sit with my head high and my focus sharp.

Four years, it took four years for it all to climax. Now another two years have passed, and we have loose ends that need tying. Loose ends that are becoming like live wires.

Live wires that need to be cut off before they get a chance to spark some shit that will cost us all. We have paid enough. Some of us more than others.

We have lost, we have loved, we have learned, but most of all, we have become a family. However, family means nothing without trust. Our thing amounts to nothing if we can’t stand on our name—The Alliance.

The last nine years have defined the men and women around me. Like the inner workings of a clock, we have all moved into our places.

Yet we are still refining the gears that make us work. Meanwhile, new gears are being created to fit into some of our slots. What happens when you replace an old cog?

You replace it with a cog that’s greater than the last. One that’s able to sustain the weight of the former as well as take on a greater load. However, to craft a greater gear than the last, you must be able to understand the fullness of the former and the limits of the replacements.

There is one thing I know for sure. Love is a dangerous four-letter word in my world. It will make or break an individual and bleed out into the world around them. Love has driven us, and love has been the source of our enemy’s destruction.

However, love has also been used to test us to our core. There are days when it feels like I have nothing left. I’ve run out of bullets, used up every strategy, called in every favor. Yet, love remains the constant I can count on and replenish from.

If I give my sons nothing else. It is my job to show them how love made me not just a man but the vicious savage who built them a world of their own.

Many of us have taken our place within the structure we’ve created. We also made assumptions about how this would end. We were wrong.

There is only one among us who has the answers, and he is still learning how to navigate his path. As a father, I will be here to support his every step even when that means I need to step back.

I, LaSalle Samuel Locatelli, answer to no one. I’ve given my blood, sweat, and tears for my sons to say the same. Now I will teach my oldest son how to say it with his chest.

The question is: will my marriage be able to sustain a front-row seat to the making of another me? Or will our relationship be a casualty of war? Love and war—that’s our portion.

I have made promises. All promises I intend to keep. The one I will honor above all others.

I. Will. Not. Lose.