“It’s not about that. My whole life is here, and I don’t want to move to fucking Alaska!”
“Hey! You watch your mouth, young lady! Where do you get off talking like that?” my dad barks, but I don’t care. The tears are flowing and I’m too upset. I get up and stomp back up the stairs, leaving my parents and my bowl of cereal behind.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew this day would come. Now that it’s here, it feels worse than I ever imagined it would, and my head is filled with questions I don’t have answers to.
How can I just leave Belleville after all this time? And move to Alaska, of all places! Why now? Why does it have to be so soon? How am I supposed to prepare myself for this? How do I tell my friends?
How do I tell Dominic?
It’s official. The cancer has been diagnosed, and everything’s about to change.
Dominic
“We’ve got a problem.”
My father looks at Frankie Leonetti like he’s definitely not in the mood to hear bad news, but Frankie presses on anyway.
“Sammy and his brother, Alfonse, are here,” Frankie says in my father’s ear. Dad looks over at the security monitors and sees the Cestone brothers standing outside his office with their arms folded, already defensive. This won’t be good.
“Fucking kids don’t learn, do they?” Dad replies as he pulls a cigar from his desk and lights it. “Let them in.”
We’re about to have drama, and that’s a shame because things have been going so well for us. My father finally got the promotion he was looking for, and he’s now a captain in the Giordano Family. He isn’t the guy he was before. He’s calmer now, more controlled. It probably has a lot to do with the fact that he’s in charge of a crew who takes care of most things for him, and now he can sit back and collect money from the casino.
My dad took my idea about taxing casinos and ran with it. It didn’t take long for him to pull strings and move in on the owner of River City. It started out just as a tax, but when the owner kept falling behind on his payments, my dad forced him out and became owner of the casino as a whole, so the money’s just pouring in. Most business is conducted from his office in River City, so the casino is almost like headquarters now, and Dad started making money at the perfect time. It came down to a decision between my dad and Frankie for who was going to be a captain, and the boss, Leo Capizzi, chose my father because he was the better earner. The casino money put him over the top. Now, Frankie works for my dad, and business couldn’t be better.
Everything has been running smooth for a long time now. The Giordano Family is making money all over St. Louis, and I’m developing a little reputation myself as an earner working for my dad. I’m fifteen years old and they’re still calling me Boy Wonder—which I fucking hate—but it’s not the name that matters, it’s the fact that I have a reputation already. Dad fronted me some money and taught me a thing or two about taxing and loan sharking, and even though I have to hide everything from my mother, it’s worth it. This is exactly the person I want to be. I love being a part of this family, and I love making this money. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. The small bit of attention we’ve gotten from the nosy ass FBI is nothing, because they don’t have shit on us. So, fuck the FBI, as my father would say.
The only source of annoyance we have is from the two cock suckers walking into the room right now, Sammy and Alfonse Cestone. These two pricks are older than me, but younger than Frankie and my dad. They’re immature, and they want street cred, and since my dad and his crew are focused on bigger things with the casino now, Sammy and Alfonse have started really stepping up their street activity in our absence. They’re pulling a lot of robberies and taking a lot of trucks, which is fine as long as they don’t hit the one’s we already own, and they don’t touch the trucks that are on routes that belong to my father. They’ve abided by the rules for a couple of years, which is