“It’s my pleasure, certainly. And we’re at your service. Amir has prepared the meal you requested, and I have my three best servers ready.”
Nick smiled. He’d hosted twice here before and had been impressed with Billy’s style and the quality of her food and service. But this was the biggest event to date, with the most significant consequences.
He still missed Dominic’s. That table had been his for so very long, and Dom had known the Pagano Brothers. From the beginning—not just their culinary preferences but their world and its ways. He’d understood. Billy was a highly cultured WASP from an old-money Boston family. She understood tradition, too, but it was different. There was a difference between presenting a good meal nicely and understanding the importance of the meal at a Council of Families.
She took direction well, however.
Too damn much was changing. An ironic thought to have while he was endeavoring to uproot some of the most fundamental traditions of La Cosa Nostra, but Nick had it nearly daily. He wanted their world to change. Their world needed to change. To grow. But change hurt. He’d lost much of what he held dear, and more loss loomed ahead.
Releasing Billy’s hand, Nick turned to Trey. Earlier this year, he’d given Trey—his cousin, honorary nephew, and intended heir—the vows. That act was one of the catalysts for the war—the fuse—because Trey was only half-Italian.
In the old ways, only full-blood Italian men could be made. Over the years, a few exceptions had occurred, but none of those exceptions had been allowed to rise above soldier. Nick wanted Trey to be don someday. This was known. Though he himself had not stated his intention until Trey’s making, he’d allowed the rumors to proliferate.
But Trey had earned his bones—and Nick’s plans for him as well. He was young and green, still needed to grow and learn before he’d be ready to lead this family, but Nick knew in his marrow that Trey was the man who should sit in his chair when he no longer did. He would not have gone to the mattresses for him unless he had been absolutely sure.
His Anglo birth mother was immaterial. Trey was blood. He was Pagano. He was worthy.
“Nephew,” Nick said and opened his arms. They’d seen each other only the day before, but today, tonight, was important for Trey. His first seat at a Council meeting.
“Uncle,” Trey said with a smile and stepped into Nick’s embrace.
“Are you ready?”
“I am.”
“Excellent. Let’s go up. Billy, you’ll see that our guests are escorted up as they arrive?”
“Of course, don,” she answered with a nod and a smile.
“Then let’s go up.”
Tony kissed his wife as the men fell in with Nick to climb to their council room.
~oOo~
The Marconis arrived first, then the Saccos. That was by design—with the Paganos, those two families made the heart of the resistance.
If Nick’s decision to make Trey was the fuse for this war, Giada’s claim for the head of her family was the spark. In all their history, across the globe, Giada was the first woman to claim the title of don. Though she was full-blooded Sicilian, her move went against tradition as much as, if not more than, Trey’s rise. Theirs had never been a world of women. Women were helpmeets. Innocents in need of protection. Not vanguards at the head of their business.
Except, of course, that was not true, and had not been for many years. Though Giada was the first woman to head an Italian family, La Cosa Nostra worked with female bosses daily. Women ran powerful underworld crews, from Russian bratvas to branches of The Triad. They were CEOs. They were senators and heads of state.
La Cosa Nostra worked routinely with women as equals in the heart of their darkest business. To prevent them from leading the families of their own blood was more than outdated. It was bad business, and hopelessly naïve.
Giada had taken over her family with every bit as much ruthless will as any don would, and had won their loyalty. She was smart and already powerful in the daylight world. Her stomach and heart were as strong as her will. She had been the power in her family since the death of her father, working in the background because her older brother had been a hapless, arrogant toad unworthy of the seat he’d inherited.
She had claimed her seat by force and now demanded that the American Families and all the