in one gulp. Normally, I’d savor good whiskey. It was a travesty to swallow it down without giving your taste buds the opportunity to appreciate the rich, smoky flavor—
“Aw, fuck.”
Good whiskey, my ass.
More like cat piss. Or goddamn sewer water.
I’d been in this godforsaken country for less than two days, and I had yet to locate a decent glass of whiskey. Vodka? Sure. The Russians were the vodka gods. But whiskey and bourbon were the pinnacles of life itself. Society didn’t exist without them, pure and simple. During the Prohibition years, did you see pictures of the police dumping out—and catastrophically wasting—barrels upon barrels of vodka? Hell, no. That was all beer, bourbon, and glorious whiskey.
The lack of decent liquor only served to blacken my already dark mood. And this watered-down crime against humanity in my glass sure as shit wasn’t going to do anything to work out the tension in my neck.
Married. I was fucking married.
Despite the fact that it was my own doing, I knew this was karma coming back to bite me in the ass in the most sadistic of ways. I had no idea how in the hell I was going to explain this to my family. But the time to bite the bullet was now, because I had to get on a conference call with them in precisely twenty seconds.
Ten minutes later, I sat in the stiff leather armchair near the fireplace, scowling into the crackling fire. My cell phone sat on the armrest on speakerphone, my father’s voice drifting through the bleak atmosphere of the room. I polished my favorite bollock dagger against my pants, scraping the blade against the material as I did so. I had a pretty decent dagger collection and a pension for practicing my aim at empty whiskey barrels back home. I carried at least one with me everywhere I went.
I couldn’t always tune in during family meetings while I was traveling abroad for business, but this conversation was particularly important to be involved in. My father, Enzo Rossetti, was detailing the new leadership hierarchy in the Sicilian mafia syndicate, since Santi and Dominic Gabbiano—the Sicilian boss and his nephew—had recently started sporting orange jumpsuits. All at the hands of my four brothers, our father, and myself.
You see, we were the “sixth” family of the New York five crime families.
The family that had voluntarily exiled themselves in the early twentieth century because my ancestors hadn’t wanted any part of the other five’s corrupt, greedy agendas. The Rossettis hadn’t been willing to kill for personal gain, not to mention kill innocent people. The Rossettis also hadn’t been willing to cheat, lie, or steal to make a name for themselves in America. And when they’d seen their Italian cohorts run headlong down that path toward evil, they’d packed their shit, drove across the bridge, and settled in Brooklyn.
Ever since then, my father and grandfathers before him had lived a life and raised their families based on honest, hard work and helping out their fellow man. We wanted nothing to do with the ways of the original five families in Hell’s Kitchen, made up of the Esposito, Mancini, Ferraro, Rinaldi, and D’Angelo families. Although, we tended to step in whenever their power became too great or too far-reaching.
That was the Rossetti credo: protect innocent people from the anarchy of the families.
The older generations of Rossettis had felt responsible for the malicious deeds of their former brothers. So, they’d taken it upon themselves to interfere when the families’ influence stretched well beyond their territory. And each generation of Rossettis had been taking up those shields ever since.
Which was the exact reason for the current shit storm in which we’d found ourselves.
There was a major structure shift going on among the original five. Vinnie D’Angelo, former head of the D’Angelo family, had completely removed his name from, and all involvement with, the New York syndicate. He was done, out of the mafia. His only daughter was dating my youngest brother, Ace. Their relationship was what had inevitably led to the incarceration of the highest-ranking members of the Sicilian syndicate, Santi and Dominic Gabbiano.
And it wasn’t the first time we’d gotten in the middle of the five families’ business as of late.
My other brother Cris had been responsible for getting Raphael Esposito, head boss of the entire New York organization, locked away earlier in the year. A few months after Raphael’s arrest, Cris had personally killed Stefano Esposito, Raphael’s only son and heir, after Stefano had