2. Tony
Tony
So much is happening right now. Mostly good. All good, eventually.
Of course, I’ll miss the old man when he’s gone. But it’s my time now. Time for a changing of the guard—out with the old and in with the new.
I have ideas. Big ideas.
The Moretti name is an honorable one. We’ve been operating in Brooklyn since my grandfather came here in the thirties.
Italians by the thousands—steelworkers, dockhands, drivers, cooks.
And my grandfather, Giuseppe Moretti. His thing was gambling.
A numbers racket run out of the family bakery, back when gambling was frowned upon and the money was easy.
When my father took over in the sixties, times had changed. Protection. Small-time lending. The usual.
And now? I smile.
There’s real money in financial fraud. Safe. Clean. White-collar. No more knocking on doors, no more threats, no more bodies in rivers. Just numbers, screens, systems. Much better. Much more comfortable. And far more lucrative.
And as soon as the old fool is dead and buried, that’s exactly where we’ll be going.
In the meantime… well, in the meantime, he’s done something I haven’t managed in five years of trying. He’s won me Maria Contarini.
The belle of our school.
Even though she was four years older, I’d wanted her from the moment I first saw her. Long black hair. Hazel eyes that flashed at me with scorn. That smooth olive skin—real Italian beauty. And not just beauty. Blood.
A Contarini.
Her father can trace his line all the way back to Venice. Drives my father wild. We’re southern stock—nothing special, not like them. He’s always wanted this. Always wanted the Moretti line tied to something older, something noble.
Eight Venetian doges in her ancestry. One of the founding families of the Republic.
I laugh out loud.
She’d rejected me at every turn. Worse, she’d humiliated me. Spurned my advances. Looked at me as if I was nothing but dirt on her shoe. My lust for her might not have changed, but my love for her had long since grown into something else. Something a lot closer to hatred.
My son though… my son will carry that blood. A Venetian nobleman and head of the Moretti family.
Yes. On this, at least, the old man was right.
All it had taken was one conversation with her drunken fool of a father. Years of debt, carefully allowed to grow, called in at just the right moment. Pressure applied where it counts. And suddenly—just like that—she’s mine.
I shake my head, amused. It’s almost poetic. A pauper turned princess. A street operator turned noble lord. Romeo and Juliet? Please. The Montagues and the Capulets have nothing on the Morettis and the Contarinis.
“History in the making,” I say aloud, the words echoing faintly around the empty room.
The guests are gone. My mother is upstairs, tending to her dying husband.
I drain the last of my glass of Amarone, savoring the richness as it slides down my throat, and reach for my phone.
Camila.
My secret little Brazilian girlfriend. My soon-to-be mistress, in fact.
Not even my father knows about her. And he knows everything. My mother would lose her mind if she ever found out—but she wouldn’t understand. Women never do.
Maria will be my wife. The mother of my children. Together the Morettis and the Contarinis will build something powerful. Something lasting.
But a man like me? A man like me is entitled to a little indulgence.
And Camila… Camila is indulgence.
Firm brown skin. Dark, laughing eyes. That wild hair. The way she moves, the way she smiles… the sway of her hips as she walks, the way she touches me.
“I am completely naked right now,” she’d texted. “Covered in oil. Lying on my balcony, getting a suntan, with no one here to keep me company. Won’t you come to me, my handsome Tony? I am sure we can think of some games to play.”
I can see her. Feel the heat of the sun on her skin. Smell her. Taste her. I shift slightly, feeling the familiar tightening low in my body.
“Very soon, my little angel,” I murmur to the empty room. Another glass of Amarone for inspiration… and then I’ll send her something that will make her smile just as much as her text did for me.
But at that moment the door opens and Mamma comes in.
She looks tired. Sad. These past few months have taken their toll on her.
Ever since the diagnosis. Oh, we tried everything—second opinions, the latest treatments, quack remedies…
even prayer. But nothing worked. The cancer is deep in him now, eating him away from the inside out.
A lifetime of smoke-filled rooms and expensive Nostrano del Brenta cigars has finally presented its bill, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.
Except wait.
“How is he?”
“Tired.” She sighs, looking exhausted herself. She’s barely eaten these past few weeks.
“Mamma, you should eat something. Get some rest. You’ll be no good to anyone if you don’t look after yourself.”
She sighs again and looks at me sadly. “I know, dear. He’s asked to see you… will you go up? He says…” Her voice quivers. “He says it’s important. That he may not have much more time.”
I nod. “Of course, Mamma. Of course I will.”
Upstairs, I tap once on the massive, intricately carved, oak bedroom door, then turn the handle and step inside.
The room is dark, airless, despite its size. The man lying on the bed is barely recognizable as the tall, sun-tanned, firm-jawed figure I remember from my youth. Don Salvatore Moretti. My father.
I walk to the bed, aware of his rasping breath. His chest barely rises and falls beneath the silk and brocade covers. The lines on his sunken face tell their own story, as do the parchment dryness and deathly pallor of his skin.
“Come closer, my son.” He shifts, trying to lift himself up, failing.
I step forward and help him, lifting him gently, adjusting the pillows behind him, easing him back down.
Christ, he weighs nothing.
“You wanted to see me, Papa.”
“My son,” he repeats. “My only child. Come here. Hold my hand.”
I sit on the edge of the bed, taking his hand in mine. It feels cold, fragile.
“I’m here, Papa.”
“Tony… my son. This… this is the end.” His gaze, though weak, is steady. I’ve never been able to hold it for long. I don’t now. I look away first, nodding.
“But it is also the beginning. Everything comes full circle.”
I nod again, waiting. Letting him speak in his own time.
“It feels like only yesterday I was sitting where you are now, listening to old Giuseppe—your grandfather—take his last breath.” He coughs, a dry, rattling sound, then dabs at his mouth with a handkerchief.
“I know you, Tony,” he continues. “Perhaps better than you know yourself.”
“Yes, Papa.”
He smiles faintly. “You think you know everything. I did too, at your age.” His eyes mist for a moment. “But there are lessons you have yet to learn. And no more time left to teach them. I wanted a few years more… but the Lord has not granted me that.”
“I will do my best, Papa. I promise.”
“I know.” He releases my hand and slowly slides the Moretti signet ring from his pinky finger—the heavy gold band, set with deep red stones around the black crest—and places it into my palm.
It sits there, solid. Heavy with history. With power.
Mine.
Even now, I feel it—a flicker of excitement beneath the surface.
This is really happening.
I am the don.
“Tomorrow, we gather the heads of the family,” he says. “You will receive my blessing before them. There must be no… dispute.”
I nod.
“But tonight… tonight I give it to you in private. Just the two of us.”
“Papa, I promise?—”
He raises a trembling hand. “Do not rush to make promises you may not keep, Tony. You do not yet know what I will say.”
I close my mouth. Let him have his moment.
“You are strong,” he says. “Strong as an ox. Strong as twenty oxen.” I allow myself a small smile. “But you also have the mind of one.”
My smile disappears.
“You must learn patience. You must learn the long game. Not everything can be taken the moment you desire it.”
I shift slightly on the bed. I’ve heard this before. Many times.
“You must learn to smile and agree—even when you do not. To bend… just enough. And only when it suits you.”
I nod.
“Take Maria. You tried to take her directly. You failed. But I worked quietly, for years. And now… she is yours. Do you see?”
“Yes, Papa.”
And he’s right. His way worked where mine didn’t.
Still… that was women. Business is different.
“Go now,” he says. “With my blessing. You are the future. I am the past. Build something greater. Make the Moretti name stronger still. And now with the addition of the Contarini bloodline… higher than ever before.”
His voice rises, then breaks into a violent fit of coughing.
Footsteps sound in the corridor—Mamma rushing back.
I squeeze his hand once more, then stand and move toward the door.
I head back downstairs, the family ring weighing heavily in my pocket. After my conversation with Papa, I need that final glass of Amarone. Then I’ll send a reply to little Camila…