he’d made a move against the Bondaruks. He’d wanted to show his enemy his strength, his lack of regard for their threat, and many innocent lives had been lost because of it.
Nick made mistakes rarely and never twice.
Now the Bondaruks were dead. Every last one of them.
And now, the Pagano Brothers met in a private room above West Egg. On this night, Nick had paid Billy to keep the nightclub closed. Their business was war tonight. It was too sensitive, and the people congregating too many, to risk a crowd of innocents beneath them.
So tonight, when the dons and advisors of five families across seven states would come together to discuss war strategy, he wanted West Egg silent beneath him and only those of Billy’s employees present who were necessary to serve the table and prepare their meal.
The dons never met at table without breaking bread first. It was a long tradition with a strong foundation: to begin all serious talk of trade or war with the reminder that they were all family together.
Of course, this war was a civil war, the American Mafia against their Sicilian fathers, so family was already in dispute.
All this because Nick wanted the right to make his own family as he saw fit—and Giada Sacco wanted the right to claim her place in her family at all. Truly, the war was tradition against progress. The world their grandfathers had made against the world they meant to leave for their heirs.
Tonight’s meeting would test and hopefully solidify the allegiance on the side of progress. Nick, Giada, and Vio Marconi were tightly bound, through friendship and financial benefit both. That alliance had absorbed the holdings of the Contis and Abbatontuonos—the other two families that had once made up the New England Council of Five, both of which had collapsed into chaos upon the deaths of their last dons. New England was now secure again, if stretched a bit thin.
Nick and Giada had attempted to bring all of the New York Council into an alliance and had been only partially successful. The Romanos were with them—Sal Romano had been a background ally in Nick’s fight with the Bondaruk bratva, and the partnership Nick had helped arrange between the Romanos and the Zelenkos in the cause of that fight had been especially fruitful for the Romanos. There was a thread of familial connection as well; Arianna, Donnie’s wife, had an uncle who was made in the Romanos.
Moreover, there was some ancient bad blood between the Romanos and the Cuccias, the head family of all La Cosa Nostra. Ettore Cuccia was Il Padrino: The Godfather. The feud went back generations and had cooled to sullen distrust over time, but when a fight arose, Sal Romano hadn’t blinked before he chose the side opposed to the Cuccias.
Giada had brought the Barzetti Family into the fold as well, offering Frank Savona, their don, a partnership in a major real estate development deal. The kind that worked both aboveboard and underground and made everybody buckets of cash.
But the other New York families had opted to sit on the sidelines. New Jersey had held back to watch as well. Which was fine. The alliance was strong as they were, so long as the rest of the American Families remained on the sidelines.
Nick would, of course, remember the families who had not fought with him.
For months, the war had been fought in their ledgers, with metaphorical bombs lobbed back and forth at their bottom lines and minor outbreaks of violence on the edges of their work. But Nick had intel that the Sicilians were now prepared to make a major move. Tonight, the American allies would break bread together and then build a plan for real war.
~oOo~
Tony, Donnie, and Trey were already at the club when Nick arrived. They leaned at the bar in the quiet nightclub, with their guards sprawled comfortably but alertly in seats nearby. By the time all the guests had arrived, there would likely be more guards in and around the building than people at the table above.
Billy was there, too, leaning against the bar, talking with Tony, Donnie, and Trey. They all stood straight and turned to greet Nick as he approached.
“Don Pagano,” Billy said and held out her hand first. If he brought Tony to his left side, she would have to begin calling him by his first name, but for now, Nick didn’t correct her. He hadn’t decided about Tony yet.