A debt has been incurred. And they've come to collect.
Vanessa Cruz is a young black woman, simply trying to survive in a world set up to conspire against her prosperity. Grinding Monday to Friday, and working Friday to Sunday left her no room to h...
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"I'm not a Businessman, I'm a Business, man. Let me handle my business, damn" - JAY Z
I'm not a man that expected to be questioned. I had worked hard over the years to reduce the number of people I answered to a group under five members. Yet my consigliere Guido, who was not a member of said group, sat opposite me, preparing to open his sizeable mouth to do just that.
"Are you sure you want to pull back all of your investments like this Leo? I understand we've taken a loss with the merger, but I think moving so hastily will create uncertainty in the market, y'know. Might make people lose trust in the business?"
His accent is was what you would expect from a 3rd generation Italian-American man residing on the east coast. His vowel emphasis, contraction of the words "you" and "know" and the way he stressed the every fourth word, might have transported you to a time where the men in my line of work wore oversize, three-piece, pinstripe suits with a matching hat. It's a way of speaking that was dying out. My generation didn't speak with that accent, at least not a version this heavy.
Similar to the accent, the old ways of conducting business were firmly outdated. A lot of the guys who paved the way never got to see the fruits of their labour because once they found a thing that worked, they didn't change much. They weren't lifelong students of their craft, accepting the title of master too soon. Instead of diversifying their portfolios, spreading their roots shallow and far reaching from the tree trunk, they dug deep in one spot. And when the inevitable storm came, the tree fell immediately, and all of their misgivings where exposed simultaneously. A lot of guys said Rudy Giuliani and his introduction of the RICO bill is what killed our business. I begged to differ. I worked under one of the guys that survived it and from what I've seen of his work, the crackdown is what finally drove innovation. Gone were the days that security or even the wives' of these guys were having to start the car of the Capo to avoid the him getting blown to smithereens. My phone could now tell me if there were any bugs in the room I was occupying, meaning coded language was no longer a necessity. Cops were getting duller and greedier so the only heat was really coming from a federal level. That threat was one that was easy to manage, especially when some firm handshakes had been made with the people at the top of that particular organisation.
Cosa Nostra; Our Thing.
Our thing it was indeed. There wasn't much the sun touched that wasn't ours. I took a quick glance at the signet ring on the first digit on my left hand, decorated with a simple emblem denoting my position within this organisation. I'm the outsider, the result of a son of a made man and a black woman's love affair. I wasn't supposed to be here, it wasn't what anyone, including my parents wanted. My dad had grown up in the mix of it all, and never crossed the threshold of associate during his lifetime. He stayed close to the organisation though, because, although it was not a monarchy, it was a family business after all.
My mom was an unknowing participant of an adulterous relationship until it was too late. She didn't even live on the east coast at the time they first met, courted and fell in love, which I suppose lent itself to my dad's motives. His marriage of convenience to my step-mother, the heir of an ally syndicate was never where he truly wanted to be. It didn't help that the woman was only ever able to bare him one son, whereas my mom, the "love of his life" gave him three in as many years.
