disconnected from his name. The building is in the name of a guy Leo extorted over a decade ago, someone unrelated and unknown, so the Feds have no clue. Leo made sure The Family would have a safe place to meet up. We come in through the back and Leo has the place swept for bugs every single day—a welcome inconvenience—and the lights are bright so everything and everybody can be seen. There’s guys standing in every corner of the room for the sole purpose of watching all movement. No cell phones are allowed inside, and you don’t want to be the idiot who forgets to check his at the door. Leo Capizzi is not the guy you want to piss off, and it doesn’t matter how old he is.
I’m the first one in. I take a seat in the red leather chair and cross one leg over the other, my pant leg raises and exposes the red sock that matches the pinstripes on my suit. The large table in front of me is made entirely of glass, even the legs. It looks great, but it also keeps things from being hidden under the table, and it can’t be drilled into, which means no recording devices can be planted inside of it. Leo covers all his bases. The guys in the corners of the room eyeball me, but not out of disrespect, they’re just watching. It’s their job. They’re not dumb enough to disrespect any of the men who are about to enter this room. Not many people are that stupid.
The boss called on every captain in The Family, which makes me wonder what this meeting is going to be about. It’s not often we get together in a group like this, it’s bad for business. More than likely, something big is about to go down.
Our family has undergone a change over the years. This isn’t my father’s family anymore. We’ve had to keep everything completely quiet over the years because the Feds have a hard-on for us, and anything that even looks a little like organized crime makes the fucking pigs blow their load all over the streets of St. Louis, which is how we ended up with so many young guys becoming made members. Back in the day, you could be a made guy in your twenties, but you’d probably be in your thirties or forties before you were upped to capo, and probably would never become boss unless a lot of people died and the position basically fell to you. That was then.
Now, after all the shit that has gone down over the past decade, capos in this family range from twenty-five to thirty-five. Well, there’s only one capo who’s actually twenty-five years old.
Me.
I wasn’t handed this position, contrary to what some of the old heads might think. I wasn’t upped because I’m Donnie Collazo’s son. After the FBI started using RICO cases against our acting bosses while Leo was in hiding, and our other capos got killed in the Cestone war a few years back, I was upped because of what I bring to the table. For one, I’m the best earner. My casino, River City, is the best money maker The Family has, not to mention the other rackets I’ve had going since my father showed me the ropes when I was a kid. I own River City one hundred percent, the business is ninety percent legit and legal, so it’s damn-near untouchable, and I’m part-owner of two more casinos, and working on another. It was me who planted the seed in my father’s head about taxing casinos in the city, so I know this business better than the rest, and because I know how to keep my casinos clean, St. Louis PD can’t fuck with me. I’m a legit business man, so the feds can suck my dick. Nothing earns stripes in Our Thing like being an earner, and that’s part of the reason I am where I am. The amount of money I kick up to Leo trumps everyone else in The Family, but I earn it through smarts as well as hustle.
Being an earner is only part of it, though. The other part is almost just as important. I’ve been a part of La Cosa Nostra since I was in elementary school. I live it. I breathe it. I take it seriously because it’s my life. My father died in this game, and he was my biggest role model, so I proudly