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***
Lucius
Seven years ago...
"Motherfucker!" Giuseppe exploded, throwing back his chair. I didn't blame him. He'd just lost thirty-thousand dollars to me in three games of poker.
As the rest of the table grumbled about their losses in a less volatile way, the pretty blonde dealer used her arm to move my chips closer to me. "Congratulations, birthday boy." She slid her hand over my shoulder and leaned in. "I've got a present just for you. See me later to get it in person."
She walked around my chair to strut to the private bar in the room to pour us all drinks. I looked down at the panties she'd placed in my hand and quickly pressed them against my thigh with my palm before anyone else saw it.
Leone, my older brother, who was sitting beside me at the table, grinned at me, like he'd noticed my entire interaction with the poker dealer. "Make a new friend, uomo dei soldi?" Money man.
My head turned toward the poker dealer. She happened to be bending over to grab something from the cabinet at the bar, baring everything to me as her dress rode up, and my mouth went dry. All the blood instantly rushed to my dick. She looked back at me over her shoulder and winked, before straightening.
Looking at Leone, I failed to suppress my excited grin. "This place fucking rocks," I said.
Leone chuckled, exhaling cigar smoke from his mouth. "For a night out, sure. But promise me you won't make it a habit coming here. You're better off meeting a nice girl at school."
He even added a waggled finger at me while he lectured me, like Papà did when he was telling us a life lesson. I had to laugh. Despite how cool it was that I'd won at poker against some of the famiglia, Leone knew I wasn't the type to hangout in these sorts of places. I could get high or drunk on campus easily, but college girls weren't as wild as I thought they would be at NYU. Or at least, none of them had ever given me a polaroid of their tits, that's for sure...
I took one of the poker chips off my pile and flipped it in my hand. "You tell Mom or Dad about this big outing?"
"Hell no." Leone finished off his drink. We both already knew the reaction they would have had. Dad wouldn't have gave two shits. Mom would have had a fit.
Truth be told, I didn't really know why Leone had even invited me tonight, and I could tell his boys felt the same way. Leone knew this wasn't my kind of hangout with other mafiosi. But I didn't want to sound like a loser and decline going out with some of the famiglia for my twenty-first birthday.
It had always felt a little shameful making the decision I had made with going to college, and I'd always had a hunch the famiglia disapproved of it just as much as my father did. The dead giveaway had been how none of them interacted with me or even looked in my direction until tonight.
I looked up at Giuseppe, who was still having a minor mental breakdown over his poker losses and pacing back and forth across the room like a panther. "Your brother cheated," Giuseppe said, pointing an accusatory finger at me. The guy was high as fuck already when we'd arrived, but now he was practically belligerent, his eyes all wide and paranoid-like. "I don't know how he did it, but he did it..."
"Never underestimate a La Notte," Leone said, winking at me. "Especially Lucius. He's smart."
In my eyes, Leone was the more intelligent one. He could have made something of his life and extended his schooling like I did, but being the eldest of the family, my father swooped him right under his wing.
"Smart?" Giuseppe scoffed over Lucius' description of me and ran his hand back and forth over his buzzcut. "He's a goddamn poker prodigy."
I coughed into my hand to conceal my laughter. Leone failed to mention to the table that I'd started playing poker with my grandfather when I was just six years old. And that I had a knack for bluffing.
"Don't mind him, he's just salty he lost his pussy money for the evening," Angelo said to me with a cackling laugh. "You know it'll be a dry night when G's out of money and has to woo the ladies with his personality."
Angelo had some iron clad balls to talk about Giuseppe like that. Giuseppe was nuts. Like, belonged in an asylum, nuts. Had a silly nickname that only a man with a death wish would say to his face. The Phantom, cause' he had a nasty scar with this weird moon shape to it that curved from his eyebrow to his lip and twisted the one side of his mouth like a one-sided evil joker smirk. Apparently, the first and last guy to call him Phantom to his face evaporated from la famiglia like a magic trick. Leone's told me plenty of other stories about him, and how everyone tended to walk on eggshells around G, but I wasn't afraid. I don't know what that made me.
Angelo was the oldest at the table. He served in the marines for ten years, until he epically failed a basic drug test. Not the brightest lightbulb if you asked me, but he was a people person and helped make the right connections, so our family could port in drugs on supply ships in-plain sight.
On the other side of me is Niccolò. Speaking of nuts, Niccolò put a guy's dick in a blender for looking at him funny. Then made him drink it like a smoothie with a quirky straw. You never would know after having a conversation with him.
Next to Niccolò was Ugo. Ugo had a body of a bulldozer and didn't speak. Some kind of vow of silence. I tried not to laugh when I first heard Giuseppe call him Jason Vorhees but always failed miserably.
"What are you gonna' do with all that prize money?" Angelo asked me, quirking a brow. "Buy yourself something nice for the big one-two?"
Leone nudged my arm. "Got any lady-friends you could take to a nice dinner?"
"He got over thirty-thousand in that pile," Angelo chuckled. "You could buy her a whole damn car if you wanted to."
"Fuck that," Giuseppe chimed in. "Listen to the G, Lucy. Treat a chick like dirt if you want her stick around for seconds."
Ugo grunted.
"See, Jason agrees," Giuseppe said. "Either that, or he's got a tickle in his throat."
"I don't treat Milana like dirt and she's sticking around?" Leone offered as an argument, outstretching his hand to show off his new wedding band. Everyone in my family loved Milana, it was impossible not to.
"Yeah, but you're like...you," Niccolò said to Leone. "And she's...you know. Her."
The whole table looked at Niccolò like he just dropped from planet Mars.
Leone frowned. "The hell are you talking about?"
"Listen, you want a chick to walk all over your nads, Lucius?" Giuseppe asked, grabbing my attention again. "Buy a girl a damn car like Angelo Einstein over here suggested. But I bet if you put a black light to those seats a few weeks after she has it, it'll look like a murder scene of some other guy's sperm."
"Thank you for that visual," Leone said, relighting his cigar.
"Soon as women get what they want, they don't want it anymore," Giuseppe continued. "That's why you go for the lovely hoes that don't mind a little fun. She won't sink her evil nagging hooks into your cock. Less' you're into that sort of thing..." He winked at the blonde poker dealer as she handed him a glass of alcohol, but she didn't seem all that interested. Wonder why.
"I think I might just pay back my college loans," I said.
The whole table chuckled at my answer.
"You gotta do something about Pee Wee Jr. over here, Leone," Giuseppe said. "Kid's acting like a real dweeb. We have a rep at this club."
I fucking hated this guy.
"You're only four years older than me, dickhead," I told Giuseppe. "Isn't it about time to stop calling me "kid"?"
Giuseppe leaned on the poker table with a smug expression. "I'll stop calling you kid when you stop having softer hands than an old lady. Don't act like you got any cognlione (balls), schoolboy. You don't."
Leone took a ship of his scotch. "Easy, G," he warned. "Lucius has got a good going for him in college. We respect that. Don't we, boys?" He looked pointedly at Giuseppe when he said it, and I would not fuck with Leone when he gave somebody that look.
Niccolò seemed to loosely agree, and Angelo ran a hand over his jaw. Giuseppe rubbed the back of his neck, appearing to decide
"I know where my respect lies and it's sure as hell not with your brother," Giuseppe said. "The blood rite to the La Notte famiglia should be a blessing for all the sons of Lazzaro. And Lucius, you rejected this for what? To take some art classes at some fancy Americano school? Then you bring him here, and we're supposed to act like he's not weak little sheep? Does he even care what you've sacrificed for him? Schifo totale." Totally disgusting.
Giuseppe even had the bravado to look me in the eyes at the end. And to my utter disbelief, Leone said nothing to defend me. It was enough for me to finally realize the truth. Leone, like my father, agreed that I was weak for the decision I'd made. He just didn't want to right me off like my father had. It pissed me off more than if he'd told me the truth, and suddenly I was standing from my chair with the whole room's eyes on me.
"I just kicked your ass at a game you play every day, peppino," I reminded Giuseppe, the little demeaning nickname of his name making his eye twitch. "Maybe you should get off my ass and focus on your gambling issue, or all those lap dances you get from scared women who hate your fucking ugly face."
Leone stood up from his chair, but Giuseppe was already lunging for me.
That night, my hands got a little less soft. I managed to hold my own for a while, until Giuseppe knocked me on my ass, swinging his fists into my face with a madness in his eyes. Niccolò and Leone had to wrench him me off me. I never proved myself anything more than the preppy college boy.
My father saw the aftermath of the fight and had the unsurprising reaction of disappointment. "Non c'è debolezza in questa famiglia," he'd said, as I remained kneeling down in front of him for forgiveness. There is no weakness in this family.
I squeezed my eyes shut, anticipating a lashing of his belt that never happened. My father walked past me like I wasn't worthy of his time, and I'd never felt so ashamed.
Despite breaking my nose, Giuseppe of course had been let off with just a warning. And I had a feeling, despite the way Leone had stepped aside and let that fight happen, that he had been only reason my father let me off without a beating. Papà was always harder on me than he was with Leone, and I was always envious of their relationship.
Nobody anticipated Leone's funeral would be just three months later. It was raining in the cemetery, a real miserable day, like the world was trying all it could to break me. He wasn't even thirty years old; his whole life had been ahead of him. I felt robbed.
As they lowered Leone's casket into the ground, Milana, Leone's new bride, dropped to her knees on the grass like she wanted to go down with him. Half her face was covered in bloody bandages that shouldn't have been touching the rain. She'd been involved in the accident, and the hospital was still doing treatments on her skin and advised her not to come, but she couldn't miss Leone being put to rest. Carmine fell beside her on the ground, keeping her close under her umbrella. The two of them held each other like grieving sisters begging my brother to come back from the dead.
I couldn't even look in the direction of my parents. I could hear the shrill muffled cries of my mother muffled into my father's suit. My father was crushed, no doubt, but he had to stay strong for my mother. For all of us. I felt that same obligation now to my brothers, too. Even though we'd grown apart since I left home, Leone was still my best friend. It took everything in me not to cry.
An unexpected face made an appearance as Giuseppe stepped up beside me with an umbrella to shield me from the rain. He watched Milana and Carmine crying, tears welling in his eyes that I didn't know he was capable of.
Giuseppe clasped me on the shoulder, discreetly slipping something into my palm with his other hand. "You're all he ever talked about, kid."
I looked at him incredulously, my fingers grasping a folded note and shielding it from the rain under the umbrella. Unfolding the paper slowly, a twisted chill grating down my spine. The truth printed on the paper seemed to crush the last sliver of humanity in my heart to a pulp.
Leone's death was no accident.
I finally looked over at my father, to find him soothing my mother with his hand rubbing her back. His face didn't look so cold and distant like I'd always known. For the first time in my life, my father looked vulnerable. And it was a worrisome sight.
"I know we have had our differences," Giuseppe said, his words hesitant, and a little awkward, like they were difficult for him to say. "But I felt you should know the truth. We were concerned your father would not take this information as...calmly."
My father was a strong leader. But he quickly lost his temper, and when he did, everyone knew to stay clear from Lazarro La Notte. Leone was his firstborn, his closest confider, the golden boy of the family. Even I was worried what my father would do with the information in my hand.
When I turned toward Giuseppe, I noticed how he looked a little uneased. Because it was what he hadn't asked me that was the biggest risk he'd taken.
"You're asking me to go behind my father's back," I whispered. "If I make a mistake with anything connected to Leone, my father will never speak to me again. I've disappointed him enough just by being an outsider."
Giuseppe stared unflinchingly into my eyes. "I understand."
But he didn't understand. This wasn't just about my father. Going down this route meant conceding to a life I didn't want.
The rain beat harder against the umbrella over our heads. I stared at Leone's grave, the change in me so quick it was almost frightening. All that I'd worked for at college, any silly dream I had outside of this life seemed so trivial. The rest of my life was already what I never imagined it would be. My brother was dead. Murdered. My family was broken and would never be the same again. Which made us vulnerable.
The fingers off my left hand closed into a tight fist around the paper until my whole hand violently shook. "Tell la famiglia I'll handle it," I said, making Giuseppe lift his head up in quiet disbelief. "Leone will be avenged."
***
AHHHHHHHHHHH.
Thoughts? Predictions??? What do we think will happen next????
Twenty-one year old Lucius seven years ago, hm????? This would make current Lucius.... *VICIOUSLY DOES CALCULATIONS ON CALCULATOR* A WHOLE ZADDI.
Scream "GIMMIE GIMMIE MORE" and follow my on my socials IF YOU WANT MORE LUCIUS NOTTE!!!!
Or don't. But I'll HATE you.
Respectfully.
Love,
Kat