Roses & Ruin

Chapter 31 (Anthony)

        The Velvet Lounge is the nightclub that the De Luca crime family owns and operates. It's also a hot spot for business meetings of this variety. It's an expensive club where rich assholes go to party, but we don't mingle amongst the general area, the VIP section will be entirely reserved for us.

Meetings are never just meetings when it comes to the mob. We entertain our guests with booze, drugs, and women. Serious discussions will still be had, but all under the guise of pleasantries, when really anyone could whip out their gun and murder anyone else at any point in time.

It's all a contest for who is more dangerous, more savvy, more vicious, more powerful. Everybody's an enemy in the eyes of a wise enough mobster. Anyone can flip, betray, backstab at any time. We act accordingly.

       The VIP section of the lounge is elevated from the main floor space. The walls are in fact velvet which leaves a cool feel to the place. The lights bounce off the velvet of the walls in interesting ways, almost like a sheen, like how light can refract off the surface of water. But here it's all darker.

The room is filled with Italian mobsters, Russian bratva, and willing women. Friends of the mob will mingle with them too. But this back section with the round table and separate sectional sofa is for the big Made Men only.

Basically the Rizzo's, De Luca's, and the Petrov men.

       There were three of them. The Petrov men. They were all pale haired and mean glaring. Even when they pretended to show a greeting face they still held that coldness behind it in a way that we don't. Maybe Domani. He's got that stone expression that shows the darkness inside him. That's how the Petrovs were. Vitaly, Dmitriy, and Andrei.

        When they got here they shook hands with all of us of importance and ignored the rest. They sat down and fisted their drinks while they eyed all of us up and down to sort us out. They wore designer suits and expensive cologne. They were clean shaven, except Andrei who seemed to be the troublemaker of the bunch. He had light stubble and many visible tattoos.

Not that it's uncommon for mobsters too, but he carried himself in a way I recognized as being the 'loose canon' of the men. One to watch out for.

He's the one who waved down the coke vile, cutting a line.

        I've heard Vitaly and his eldest son Dmitriy are very business-first type men. They put their all into it, which is why we need to be diligent in our negotiations. One thing I hate about certain foreign mobsters is their willingness to use women as props, payments, and peace treaties.

Italian mobsters, at least the ones here in New York, don't usually run things that way. But ignoring their offer of a Petrov daughter would be stupid of us. They'd be offended and we'd end up in a war with them.

They've only mentioned the girl in passing. No physical description other than them calling her a Russian beauty.

        There is a long story behind the start of all this. Back when Domani decided he wanted to take on the Russian's offer of expansion. Vitaly offered his daughter to Domani as like a peace treaty incarnate, so no one could fuck over the other.

It's a weird form of bridging families together. It actually happens in real life too. Not just badly made movies.

        The offer was made last year for Domani, as head of the Italian mob, to marry the Petrov daughter. From what I've been told Dom and his father got into some big fight about this when his father came to visit from the West coast where he mainly lives now.

Mr. De Luca wanted Domani to take the offer if he really wanted to work with the Russian's. Dom said no, because of Mia, though none of us knew that at the time.