Bruno: A Dark Mafia Romance Read online

  Disheveled and unshaven, Bruno and his brother looked up as two plates of breakfast were plonked down in front of them by a young woman on the De Luca family staff.

  Gunz picked up his fork with just enough of a sigh to show he felt as wistful about things as Bruno. Their father was gone. He’d been taken away in an ambulance that night, but there was nothing more anyone could do for him. But Bruno would never forget the face of the monster who took his father away. A great life was taken from the world by none other than the man old dad called his best friend. The media said it was suicide, but that was bullshit. Their father was a deeply religious man. A strict Catholic, he’d never have done a thing like that. The murder was so cruel, it shook the whole family. What kind of person would execute his best friend? It was treachery.

  The work of evil.

  The worst part? Bruno was powerless to do anything about it. Proof was what he didn’t have. Told to leave it alone. It angered him more than anything had or possibly would ever again. He vowed, never again to trust a man who wasn’t his own blood like his father had trusted his best friend.

  Bruno glanced at his brother but Gunz didn’t meet his eyes. He chomped bitterly, uncomfortably, on his scrambled eggs like it had been made with sand or kitty litter.

  They ate in silence by themselves. It had been this way since the shooting.

  Just as Bruno stood to leave, he was stunned to see his mother come through the kitchen door. He was even more shocked to see that she was fully dressed.

  Martina hadn’t shown her face much, hadn’t left the house, hadn’t worn anything but pajamas since their father died. Bruno stared at her for a moment. The first thing he noticed was that her hair was tied back from her face rather than curled to her shoulders. Very rare. And her face wasn’t made up like it usually was and the dark circles under her eyes showed like a fresh punch to both cheeks. But in her glassy eyes, he saw a the-show-must-go-on strength behind her shimmering tears.

  It shouldn’t have surprised him at all. That was mom through and through.

  Bruno looked over at his brother. “Pull out a chair for mom, Gu—Charlie,” he said. Addressing his brother by his street moniker, Gunz was strictly forbidden in the family home. It always seemed rather odd to Bruno… Odd, that his father had no qualms about his sons joining the mafia; had no issue with a life that would be their destruction, but to bring their work home with them in any way ‒ home to women and children...innocents ‒ well, that was the true crime in dad’s eyes.

  When Gunz looked up from his toast to meet his mothers’ eyes, he jumped to his feet and dragged out a chair. “Sit down, mom.”

  Bruno went over to her and looped one arm with hers then escorted her over to the table. Her body felt bony and moved slow and weak. He suspected she hadn’t eaten in the past seven days. When she sat down, Bruno fetched a fresh mug and poured her a black coffee from the pot.

  The two men watched her intently as she took a sip.

  When she placed the mug gently down, she looked them both dead in the eyes. “Your Uncle Gabriel and cousin Marco will be paying us a visit this morning.” She took another sip of her drink. “I gave him my word that we were okay but he wouldn’t take it.”

  Bruno and Charlie glanced at each other, then nodded at their mother. Until now, she hadn’t allowed any visitors since the incident.

  Bruno opened his mouth to ask if this was the only reason their uncle Gabriel was coming around today, but when the housekeeper came into the room with a steaming plate of breakfast for Martina, he closed it.

  Martina ate in silence as her two sons had done.

  When Bruno saw tears streaming down her cheeks as she ate, he wanted to take her hand but he knew she wouldn’t accept it. Neither he nor Charlie said a word, tried to hide their awareness. It simply wasn’t the way in their family.

  Twenty or so torturous minutes later, the doorbell sounded. Both men stood up and waited while the housekeeper led Gabriel and Marco from the front door to the dining area. Marco and his father stepped into the room, looking every bit the Italian gangsters they were.

  Well-dressed, Gabriel wore his suits crisp, his greying hair stylish, slicked-back. He had an air of authority and always acted as smooth as he looked. “What’s for breakfast?” he asked, heading for the chair beside Bruno’s mother.

  A ghost of a smile passed Martina’s lips and she got up to fetch two more coffee cups from the cupboard.

  The four men gathered around the table and waited for Martina.

  Bruno gave his cousin a singular nod in greeting and watched as he twisted his gold ring on his pinkie finger. Marco, at twenty-two was a junior version of his genius father, with dark pitbull circles under his eyes and broad shoulders.

  When Martina sat down, Gabriel smoothly took out a handkerchief from his suit pocket and gave it to her. Getting right down to the point, Gabriel, who waved his hands when he talked, wasted no time in explaining precisely why he was here…..He looked Bruno and Charlie dead in the eyes and narrowed his eyes into an iron glare.

  Bruno glanced at his mother and recognized the look on her face that told him she was hiding something. She knew exactly what was about to go down.

  “First off, I’m deeply sorry for the loss you and your mother are suffering. Second, I know that I must do as my brother would have wished. Don’t think I’m not aware of the way you two have been earning a living….” He shook his head. “Jacking cars with the nonchalance of opening a can of soda. I tolerated it before, but things are different now. You don’t have your father to protect you. That responsibility falls into my hands now, and I’ll do what I need ...to make sure you’re safe.”

  Bruno scoffed. “With all due respect uncle, what makes you think I need anyone’s protection?”

  Gabriel growled. “This ain’t a game, kid. The mob always comes first, that’s the rules. If you don’t’ do as they ask, they’ll retire you…shoot you in the back of the head and leave you where you dropped. If you join the mob, you’d better make peace with the fact you’re going to die. It’s inevitable. You’re going to die, or if you’re lucky, you’re going to jail. Those are the two consistent facts on the streets. Your father was a smart man. That’s why he lived to the age of 63.”

  “The mob is worth more than that, and you know it.” It made Bruno feel he was part of this family where they are all friends, all brothers, and they all helped each other. “It also strikes me as odd that you hold such hostile feelings towards the mafia when they’re responsible for so much of your income,” Bruno said with an inward grin.

  Gabriel’s nostrils flared.

  Bruno glanced over at Marco, but he sat there expressionless, nodding along with his father’s words.

  Gabriel sat quietly for a moment as the four sipped coffee companionably. Then, he reached a hand inside his coat, pulled out a sealed envelope and said, “I want you to take this and put your son through school.”

  Martina looked at the envelope silently, a little surprised, and waited for him to explain. “My son? You mean my sons, surely?”

  Gabriel fixed her with a look.

  Bruno growled grudgingly at his uncle. His chair screeched as he pushed back from the table and left out of the room.

  Charlie followed.

  From the other room, they could hear Gabriel’s voice through the air vent above their heads.

  “Your sons are utter lunatics,” Gabriel said. “Now your son, Charlie, he’s real special. He’s college material.”

  Bruno rolled his eyes. Scholastically, Charlie always performed much better than he did, but Bruno knew he had no fewer brains. He knew he wasn’t stupid.

  “I can’t see what college has to do with getting anywhere in life,” Bruno muttered. “I make more money in one day than most do in three months. How about that for something special,” he sneered.

  Gabriel’s voice sounded again. “I’ve got a friend of a friend in the admissions office at the college. I’ll get him in. Studying will keep hi
m occupied and off the streets. I want your Charlie to make the most of his considerable assets.”

  Martina sighed in defeat. It was no secret she’d always thought her eldest had a calling to be a doctor or a lawyer. “And what about my Bruno? What will he do?” She pleaded.

  “I need to do what is right,” Gabriel replied.

  But I can’t perform miracles, Martina. Do you understand? Your Bruno, he’s a brawn guy. It’ll be worse if I try and get him in. They’d laugh him out of the interview room. Charlie has the brains, not Bruno. It ain’t fair but life rarely is.”

  “Alright,” Martina said finally, “I’ll take the money but I can’t promise he’ll attend. And say nothing to Bruno. It’ll hurt him too badly.”

  Bruno bit down hard on his bottom lip. The woman often lied out of love for Bruno. He didn’t blame her for that. Terms like dyslexia weren’t recognized back then. Not that it would have made any difference. His father would have done anything but admit that the great Michael De Luca’s son had a learning difficulty. As a young kid, Bruno had endured some merciless bullying from other boys. Too proud to ask for help, Bruno told nobody. He didn’t know he was dyslexic at the time, it didn’t have a name back then. The only thing teachers cared about was if you were very bright or very stupid.

  Bruno turned to his brother. “Do you hear this man?”

  “Maybe he’s right, Bruno. I’d be a fool to make the same fatal errors as our father. We haven’t been accepted into his life yet, it’s not too late to get out.” Logically, statistically, the chance that Charlie could avoid meeting the same ugly fate as his father was almost too obscure to contemplate. It was impossible to know who or where or when it would happen again, but one thing was certain: the odds of survival were almost impossible.

  “Tell me you don’t mean what you say, brother?”

  Charlie shrugged. “Gabriel’s right, Bruno.”

  “You don’t mean that. Take it back, Charlie! Accountancy? Life in an office? That’s not who you are.”

  Charlie swore. His anger giving an indication of his fears. “I want nothing to do with the mob. I’ve seen enough and made my decision to get out of it before they got their hands around my jugular as they had around our father. If that life could turn a man against his best friend then what do we really have here? There’s no honor, no respect, no loyalty in that. There’s so much betrayal, so much treachery with everybody. That isn’t a brotherhood, it’s nothing.” He sighed. “This is how it’s gonna be, Bruno.”

  Shaking his head, Bruno left the room. He’d heard enough.

  Enraged, he went into the garage and sat down on a spare tire then sank his head in his hands. When his father passed, a man he’d loved and admired, Bruno had waited for tears to fall, they didn’t. He’d waited for his heart to ache, it didn’t. He only felt anger. It also proved true something his father had always told him.

  The most fatal mistake?

  Trust.

  There are some people you trust, people who you go so far back with. “I don’t care who you think you know, who you think likes you, loves you, cares about you, you can’t trust any of them. Not unless they’re your own flesh and blood. Even then, you can’t trust anybody in this life, only yourself,” he always told his boys.

  Growling, he looked up and the lights flickered in his eyes. He took his pistol and shot out the lights. Spotting a can of gasoline, he grabbed it then poured the liquid all over the floor then threw a lit match and watched until the car exploded into flames. Ash and heat hit his face, but it was annoying more than painful for Bruno. The real pain was in his heart, he knew inside… he would never again work with his brother.

  Just like that, everything changed.

  The fire burned hot and the fire trucks showed up ten minutes later. They contained the fire to the grange that sat at the back of the property.

  Bruno found he couldn’t care about any of it, he had lost his partner, for good. From there on out, Gunz was dead to the mob world.

  Known only as Charlie De Luca….the man who walked away.

  Chapter Three

  Life changes quick...

  * * *

  A few weeks later, the morning dawned cloudy and dark like Bruno’s mood. Everyone around Bruno was dying. Nobody was safe anymore. Not even the bosses. His father, boss of the largest crime family in Italy had just been murdered. And he was sick of not being able to go out of the house because of who could be waiting for him outside the front door. Bruno had to do something and quick.

  He knew at that point he needed to be a man of power, a man people talked about when he walked into a room. Not a fucking walking target. Not a damn pussy nobody feared. The kind of guy nobody dared even look at the wrong way for fear of what might happen. A man like his father should have been. Men like that don’t get whacked. Men like that don’t have to put up with any of the world’s bullshit.

  At that time, Bruno figured either he stayed and he’d last a few more months then they would kill him, or he could take off and go.

  By the time he’d awoken this morning, Charlie and his mother had already left for the accountancy college with Gabriel.

  So that was it, with a William Henry accountancy book under his arm, Charlie would attend accountancy school alongside their cousin Marco. Charlie told Bruno he preferred kicking ass on the streets, wreaking havoc wherever he pleased, but he felt at ease with the campus atmosphere, at home. And he soon found the view from the lofty study rooms in the library was more pleasant than it was down where the air smelled of piss. In truth, that might have been because it was as far away as he could get from the mob without leaving Italy. He’d been straight since leaving the mob. The only thing he had in common with the Mafioso, was the three-piece suits, crisp white shirts, and his Italian surname. He was anonymous, and liked it, only another handsome young man with a ready smile. The mob was nothing to him. His life certainly would be no part of it. And he’d told his brother he felt confident that this great sense of freedom would last forever.

  Bruno, however, had never expected to be so utterly, and completely alone. The house was quiet and empty. His mother could no longer live in the house where they had spent such happy times. ‘I’ll live anywhere but this house’ she said. The memories were too painful. It hurt her too much to even see Michael’s possessions.

  In his room, he counted his money and realized that he would have to conserve it. With all the money he’d made over the past five years, he should have had boxes of it. But as quick as he’d made it, he’d given it up – drink, women, rent, and gifts to his family.

  All the youngsters did this. Not because all of them were stupid. Bruno certainly wasn’t, but because they really didn’t think they were going to be around that long. You-Only-Live-Once, enjoy it while you still got breath in your lungs, were mantras they lived by.

  Checking his drawer for any cash he may have missed; his fingers graced the cool surface of his father’s mob ring, hiding in the back. Bringing it out between his fingers, he studied his father’s gold ring and recollected. Michael had been a difficult man, a cocky son of a bitch with an ego so big he was lucky his head didn’t explode. To his credit, he’d never brought his business home with him. And most importantly, he’d treated his woman right. No real man hurts a woman, he’d always said.

  Outside the house, it was a lot different. There was always a war going on. As a child, Bruno wanted to be a normal kid, but you can’t be normal growing up in that life. He had to live the way his father wanted him to live. Anytime Bruno cried as a young child, his father had hit him with a belt. When Bruno was 12. He told his dad he wanted to play baseball after school, and Michael had threatened to throw him out on his ear. He insisted that one day, Bruno would thank him.

  Yes, Michael De Luca had been an asshole of a dad. A mini Hitler with too many rules. The hours of weapons training were ‘character building.’ Not allowed out of the house to go to school when there was trouble, and not allowed to play sports in sc
hool. This was common for mob guys to treat their kids this way. But his father had been especially brutal. Bruno never understood why his pap had been so fucking hard on him.

  All the doors were double locked and bolts were put on everything. His parents didn’t speak much about relatives who would one day disappear from his life, but mom and pap couldn’t hide a lot. Bruno always knew the family was different. On the TV and radio, he’d hear of people he knew were his relatives, missing and dying. And his father, couldn’t hide the truth – that he was a big-time crime boss, a godfather – from Bruno’s sharp mind and open eyes for very long.

  Michael ran his crime family differently than other bosses. He had been a very sophisticated, business-like boss. He’d wanted both his two sons to be La Cosa Nostra before they’d even grown up. To succeed his reign as a formidable duo…

  Well, so long, farewell to that idea!

  Shaking off his thoughts, Bruno stuffed the money back into his drawer and went downstairs. Then, shrugging on his coat, he disappeared out the front door.

  He went back to the only thing he knew, only thing he was any good at...crime. Specifically, theft. How’d he get into that? Well, the oldies always paid brazen kids who didn’t care to steal cars. It was one way the older guys would take kids off the streets and groom them for a life of crime and violence. And for the oldies, those guys would send the cars to chop shops, sell the parts, and make a pretty penny off of that. The bosses took it to the multimillion-dollar level.

  There wasn’t much choice about what he was doing. Bruno had felt somewhat the same when his father passed, but he couldn’t abandon what his father had started. It was everything the De Luca family was—a bloodline. He did what he had to do to prove himself worthy of that life. His pap had told him he’d have to show the mob he was a stand up person. A man that would perform, a man that wouldn’t back down, a man that wasn’t going to cry when troubles arrived at the door. That shit didn’t hold water in the mob.