Prologue
Luca
THE STORY OF my life started in a church.
The sickening moments repeated so often that I couldn’t forget my beginning.
Breath rattled through my lungs, wheezing in and out and drowning in the sanctimonious chime of the chapel bell—the same sound that had muffled the footsteps of a mother abandoning her injured infant just inside the hallowed halls.
A wound marked me as the unwanted. An abomination.
I was taken from that sacred temple by a man who needed a son, then raised by a woman who believed she could beat me into purity. Teach me with pain. But each stroke of her stick, every lash of her pious belt, wouldn’t save my soul. It was corrupted at conception.
Anna’s lessons persisted as time moved on. Cancer didn’t diminish her preaching, nor did death—her voice echoed in my ears long after she was gone.
For years, I dutifully attended mass at the Cathedral of Saint Michael the Archangel, walking over the same tiles where I was discarded and where I wanted to spit my hatred at a world that detested me.
I was the altar boy, and Father Bernardi was my only friend.
I gave him my truth without needing a confession.
I accepted my sins and said them loudly, unafraid of his penance or a side-eye glance from a lingering parishioner.
Wrinkles creased his brow, and his skin worn so thin blue veins mapped a trek over sagging jowls to a wobbly neck.
But his watery irises were kind, and he was the only person I spoke with freely.
Even when it was about the trouble I was in.
“Ha tirato il primo pugno (He threw the first punch),” I said, snuffing out a candle with the same vehemence cutting into my tone.
A tuft of black smoke rose from the charred wick, and I quickly moved on to the next.
The sooner the chore was done, the sooner I’d get outside where the air was crisp, and I could breathe without cloying incense stinging my nose.
“And tell me, Luca,” he replied, as always in Italian, because though we were in upstate New York, this was Ravenna.
A little Italy, filled with descendants of Cefalù who sought to escape the harsh rule of the mafia.
Only the crime lords followed, and they were never free.
“What did your retaliation solve? Did your fist win his admiration?”
“No.” I turned to him and his gentle smile, the same caring gesture as the hand he laid on my forearm. I pushed it off. “Dick Assposito can go straight to—”
“Now, son, his name is Richard Esposito.”
“His name is spite, and if he comes at me again, I’ll split his lip a second time and crack that ugly, damn beak of his. It’s like I’m doing him a favor or something by making that face right. ”
Father chuckled. “One day you’ll learn to resolve conflict without your hands or a weapon.”
I shook my head, disbelieving everything taught in church. “Fighting seems to solve problems better than words. He won’t mess with me again, and if he does…” I clenched my fingers into a fist, matching the tight twist of my lips, so Father knew I was serious.
War consumed my existence, and I was tired of the struggle in Ravenna. Acceptance in this town would never come. The calendar said I wasn’t yet a man, but my size did, and I needed something. Anything other than what I had here. I was ready to escape into a different battle.
“I’ve been thinking about the Navy. Maybe trying out for the SEALs after I join.”
He nodded. “The structure will do you some good, the benefits too.”
“I don’t care about the money. The truth is in the fight. You either live or die, and I’m not swayed by either option.” I shrugged. “I figure I can give them everything I’ve got, you know? Who will care if I come back in a body bag?”
Grin fading, his brow compressed into a pile of deep lines as he studied me and my retreat down the stairs. “Death is but a passage to a new life with God, but there is work to be done with you here. I believe that. Your lessons are not yet complete.”
“Lessons? There is only brutality in this world, but no God. Not for me at least,” I confessed.
“Luca,” he hissed, signing the cross.
Before he voiced a rebuttal, I charged on.
“What has He ever given to me? A family? Not that, because I am alone. Parents? Roman, who looked in the opposite direction while Anna whipped me into submission. Is that what a God-fearing mother does to her son? Cancer that eats away a body slowly, like a form of torture. Unanswered prayers from a man for his wife? This—” I waived to the stained glass and empty pews, and the large crucifix hanging from the rafters.
“—this is all a lie. That’s what we have.
Deceit. If He exists, that’s what He’s given to me.
Or maybe it’s this poison eating me from the inside out. ”
My eyes painted an empty picture—void of life—but a beast existed within my flesh. Anna had seen the monster. Father Bernardi tried to tame it, and the neighborhood kids incensed my rage for fun. They aimed their weapons, and I made a promise.
No one would own me again. Not Anna. Not the Church. No one.
Taking a step backward, and then another down the aisle, I tugged at the knotted tie around my neck.
I needed to get out of here. I needed freedom from Roman and this town moored in a culture that was part of a dark age, not the twenty-first century.
Bad things happened in Ravenna. And I may have been the worst.
I turned from him, picking up my pace to meet the narthex—the place where I was abandoned—before stopping to stare at the tiled floor. What would’ve happened to me if I was wanted?
The answer was as painful as Anna’s whip. I wasn’t the chosen one. Not by my family, nor by a compassionate deity. I was the lost soldier.
I spun from the gaping wound of knowledge to find Father in front of the altar—a small man drowning in the greatest story ever told.
“The truth is, God abandoned me when my mother did sixteen years ago.”
A beat passed as he studied me and I him. The sky grew dark, then the sun broke free, casting a beam of light through the stained glass to decorate his wrinkled face in a myriad of colors. I gave him my fury, and he offered compassion in a sad smile.
“That’s not true,” he finally said, his voice as steady as a promise. “And one day, Luca, you will pray to Him, and He will answer.”
I scoffed and saluted a final goodbye, leaving my faith with Father Bernardi that morning.
Shortly after, I left Ravenna, swearing to never return.
Nor would I ever beg God or believe in the unknown.
I trusted myself and no one else. That lesson turned into my only blessing.
Time passed, and I learned my beginning was built from cardinal sins.
Then I worked to right the wrong my birth set into motion—an opportunity to free myself from the demon beating against my ribcage.
The remedy started with the SEALs, who trained me to shoot.
Through the harsh training, I didn’t pray.
I didn’t pray the first time I was deployed.
The second or third. Or when my team was ambushed, and death knocked on my door.
I didn’t pray when my friend, who was more like a brother, died on the battlefield.
After the military bred a first-rate killer, I returned to New York. I stayed in the city, far away from Ravenna, but still embroiled in the underworld. The job was an opportunity to fight for the Cosa Nostra and the revered house of Cabello. To fight for the greatest king of all time.
And for the love of a woman who saw through all of my lies.
I fought for her. I fought for us. In the end, when there was nothing left but pain and betrayal, I fell to my knees. In the very church where I was forsaken, I looked into the familiar rafters and begged a God who had never answered before.
Dear Lord in heaven...
This is the story of the life—and the death—of Luca Mancini.