Memphis. Dom. Creighton and Holly. Enzo. Paulie and Junior. The rest of the family. Everyone we’ve lost and everyone who still needs saving.
Their lives are in my hands, and it’s not a responsibility I take lightly.
32
Memphis
Benny shoos me out of the room the second after he puts the thick leather-bound journal in my hand. The only thing he says is, “The names have been changed, but the story’s there. Don’t tell anyone I gave this to you, especially not Dom. Now leave me the hell alone.”
I stroll away from the library with the book tucked under my arm like contraband, waiting until I close the door to my small apartment to yank it out and flip open the cover. On the first page is a handwritten title.
Tales from the Inside:
A Former Mobster’s Memories
Holy.Fuck.
Is this what I think it is?
I’m half-terrified for Benny, but also half-terrified tohopethat this is a mob memoir that covers the feud between the Cassos and the Rossettis.
Was Benny going to publish this?Maybe as his last offering to the world before he dies?
I don’t know what to think, but that can wait. Right now, I have some major reading to do.
* * *
I get lostin the words and pictures inside the leather journal. I’m almost halfway through the book, and when I look up and blink, the clock has ticked past two hours.
Two hours?Jesus. How is that even possible?
Oh, right. I’ve been engrossed in a hit man’s chronicles of mob history.
As for what I’ve learned about the two families—they were never friends. They were always enemies. According to the handwritten story, Benny thinks the feud began back in the days of Prohibition when both sides were selling bootleg spirits up and down the five boroughs, trying to keep the population of New York well-liquored so the families could rake in as much cash as possible. They lived like kings, with the best of everything, but it was all too often ripped away by the cops who weren’t on their payrolls and judges who despised their autonomy.
Each family did everything they could to throw the other under the bus. At least until the world went to war. Everything changed as men who used to shoot at their own countrymen turned their sights on others. When they came back, nothing was ever the same.
Prohibition was over, and they had to find a new way to make money. Woven in with tales of World War II were the rising and falling tides of the mob and the families that scrambled for power, dodging the law every chance they could get.
It read more like an adventure novel in some parts, filled with glittering highs and devastating lows. And then eventually, a new breed of mobster climbed the ranks. Although the names have been changed as well as the descriptions, I have a sneaking suspicion I’m reading about Dom Casso and his rise to power.
Smart, strategic, and ruthless when necessary, he was unstoppable. His father before him didn’t have nearly the drive, ambition, or vision that Dom had when he took over as the youngest leader of one of the leading mob families.
I stretch my neck from side to side because it has a crick in it from the way I’ve been sitting, and my shoulders ache. I rise to move around and get my blood flowing again, setting the book down for only a moment, and my phone buzzes in my pocket.
My first thought isCannon, and I yank the phone out.
But it’s not him.
Randi:I heard what happened. Oh my God, are you okay??
I stare downat the screen wondering, first, how the hell she found out what happened. Second, I wonder if she really cares or if she’s pumping me for information for GTR Rossetti.
I don’t want to believe the second possibility could be true, because that means they’re trying to find out what’s going on so they can strike at us again.
Us.
I freeze when I realize the word I used. I’ve just silently declared myself a member of the Casso clan, the very crew I vowed I’d see thrown in prison for the rest of their lives.