Princes of the Lower East Side: A 1920s Mafia Thriller (A Scalisi Family Novel) Read online

  Princes of the Lower East Side

  A Scalisi Family Novel Book 2

  Meredith Allison

  Persnickety Publishing

  Princes of the Lower East Side: A Scalisi Family Novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination, or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 Meredith Allison

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval systems, without express written permission from the author/publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Editor: Michelle Morgan of FictionEdit.com

  Cover Design: Les of GermanCreative

  For my best friend, Sade, the first fan I ever had.

  Gray Squirrel to Woodchuck, over and out until next time!

  Contents

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Part II

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Part III

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  To Be Continued

  Join Meredith Allison’s Mailing List

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Blood Comes First: A Scalisi Family Short Story Collection

  Also by Meredith Allison

  Written as Wynter S.K.

  Part I

  Chapter One

  Catania, Sicily

  March, 1926

  On her last night in paradise, Mia Angela Scalisi stood on the crumbling, modest balcony outside the bedroom of her cousin Carlo’s small villa, overlooking the beach and the Mediterranean Sea. The sharp, angular waves, capped with foamy peaks, crashed against the craggy rocks of the shore in an orchestral roar.

  The villa was a hundred years old and badly in need of repair in some places, but the view it offered—the imposing Mount Etna puffing away over the crystal sea—more than made up for it. A doting host, Carlo had offered her the bedroom he shared with his wife, the largest room in his home, but she’d turned it down for a different one. She didn’t want to put them out, and she didn’t need that much space. The room was cramped, but it had the balcony and the view, and she’d enjoyed it immensely every day for the last thirteen months. But now, it was finally time to say goodbye.

  Mia should have returned late last summer per her contract with Hyman Goldberg, but—to her fortune—she’d received a telegram from Mr. Goldberg in August telling her the construction of the new, exclusive nightclub where she was to perform had been delayed to a spring opening, and that she should stay and enjoy an extended visit with her family, if she wished.

  She did wish. She was in no hurry to run back to New York to fulfill her obligation as Hyman’s new, shiny commodity. Moreover, the delay had also given her time to gather information on what was happening back at home, since she knew Hyman would never tell her the truth in letters. When the cat’s away…

  And it seemed there had been quite a few playful mice back home.

  The salty breeze off the sea mingled with the luscious scent of blood orange from the villa’s grove nearby wafted toward her in the darkening sky. Mia closed her eyes, letting the aroma seep up her nostrils where she prayed it would embed itself in her memory forever. She might never come back, so every one of these last moments in Catania was precious.

  She thought of New York often—what was happening there, of the life she’d put on hold, the people she’d left behind. She’d left abruptly, and had moments of genuine regret about that. She should have put her affairs in better order, but the promise of a family she’d never known existed was too urgent to deny. Nothing mattered as much as they did, these people she’d never met when she boarded the ship that carried her to the other side of the world.

  The uncertainty of what she would return to kept her up at night until the heavy, sweet red wine she drank before bed took hold of her and lulled her to sleep.

  It was the only thing that kept her from the nightmares.

  If she did not imbibe rather heavily before bed, she would see them in her dreams—the men she’d ordered dead on her rampage of revenge for her brother. She would see Kiddo Grainger, with his bloody, broken mouth as he screamed at her for mercy. She’d see Vinnie Fiore, a bloody hole in his forehead she’d put there herself, pointing accusingly at her and running toward her.

  And she’d see him, the man responsible for it all. The man she’d had murdered outside the Chicago courthouse where he’d just won a legal victory that would keep him out of prison. Salvatore Bellomo had earned his freedom from jail, but she’d made sure he never left the courthouse alive. That was the most vivid dream of all, and the worst. But there was no ghostly haunting. She simply relived that freezing winter day as she’d turned her back and stared at the heavy gray sky, the icy wind biting her cheeks as she waited for the sound—the booming echoes of three gunshots from a pistol wielded by one of Johnny Torrio’s most reliable button men, and the soft, agonized groan that followed. And then the silence in the aftermath, before she’d walked away, leaving him there to stiffen in the chill.

  She’d had a sense of buoyancy that day as she’d hurried from the crime scene to her waiting car. How free she’d felt, but how fleeting that feeling had been. It had quickly given way to a heaviness she’d never experienced before, an internal weight so great she sometimes needed to sit down abruptly, because her legs could not bear the pressure.

  And there was also grief, finally.

  Away from the oppression of the city and all its burdens, in a space where she’d been warm and welcomed and loved, the full brunt of the grief for Nick had hit her, because she’d finally allowed it to. Together with his widow, his daughter, and the family he’d never known he’d had, Mia mourned her brother intensely. The first few months had been sheer agony, but now, the pain lessened into a dull ache she instinctively knew would never leave her. And she welcomed it, because it was a delicate, gossamer tie that would keep her connected to him until she, too, died.

  The breeze gusted again, and her cheeks were suddenly cold. Mia swiped her fingers over them, realizing they were cold from tears she hadn’t known she’d shed.

  “Mia?”

  She turned from the balcony toward the voice. Her sister-in-law Gloria stepped into the small bedroom, her hand still on the knob. Sicily had done wonders for her, too. Her skin had lost its haggard, drawn appearance, and her brown eyes were soft with lingering sadness instead of haunted with anguish as they’d been before she’d left New York. Her parents still lived, so together with her family and her in-laws, she’d been as safe and c
ared for as Mia had been.

  Gloria tilted her head. “Are you all right?”

  Mia nodded. “Is Emilia packed?”

  “She is. She’s with her zia.”

  Carlo’s younger sister, Raquel, was actually some degree of cousin to Emilia and not truly her aunt, but the little girl had begun calling her that and no one had seen fit to correct her. Raquel had taken to her immediately, and Emilia, now nearly four, loved nothing more than to follow the young woman around the beach as they collected shells, and to the orange grove where Emilia loved to snack on the sweet, succulent fruits. At twenty, with no prospects of a husband in Sicily, Raquel would be journeying to America soon to live with Mia and Gloria, nannying for Emilia and working in the shop if she liked. She reminded Mia of herself, how she’d been before Nick had died. Vivacious, witty, with a sharp sense of humor and intelligence.

  Gloria leaned on the doorframe, one hand on her hip. “Don Catalano is waiting for you in the grove with that mute bulldog of a man, Paolo. He sent me to tell you.”

  Mia frowned at the slight to her godfather Don Catalano’s most trusted enforcer. “Don’t speak of him that way. He’s more loyal than blood.” She stepped away from the window. On her way to the door, she started when Gloria reached out and snatched her arm. She met her sister-in-law’s alert, probing dark eyes.

  “Yes?”

  “Don Catalano calls, you go to him immediately,” Gloria said softly. “No questions asked. And you change—I see it.”

  Mia tightened her jaw for a beat. “What of it, Gloria?”

  “When you first started meeting with him after we arrived, you said it was because he wanted to help you, help us. That he knew Nicky back in New York.”

  “Don Catalano has been a friend to our family since before either Nick or I were born.”

  Gloria narrowed her large eyes to slits. “You meet with him several times a week. Every week. How much help is he providing?”

  The don had been, as a matter of fact, providing Mia with quite a bit of tutelage to retake the operation she’d left behind. He had instilled in her a belief that as Nick’s sister, she should maintain her control of the liquor operation, rather than let it drift into the hands of his friends, however trusted they’d been. She’d spilled blood for her brother—the ultimate act of vengeance for a loved one’s murder, and had thereby built a reputation she’d never planned to build or, frankly, wanted.

  “Now,” the don had asked her almost every time they’d spoken over the last year, “what you gonna do with it?”

  “What are you driving at?” Mia asked Gloria quietly. “He is my godfather. He’s as much family as Carlo is.”

  “He is a Mafia chief,” Gloria hissed. Her grip on Mia’s arm tightened. “He goes against the head of the government. Do you know what that could mean for us?”

  “This is not my home country,” Mia replied. “The head of the government is no president of mine. And besides, I’ll worry about such things when he does.”

  Gloria’s full lips thinned to a tight, white line. “Does he know…everything?”

  Mia didn’t answer right away. Of course Don Catalano knew everything. He’d known plenty of what had happened to her brother, and what she’d done in the aftermath, before she’d even arrived in Sicily. Over the course of the past year, she’d told him all the details about the killings and the business. But Gloria did not know everything, despite her best efforts, and Mia had decided long ago it would be best to keep it that way indefinitely.

  She met Gloria’s stare with an unwavering one of her own that, after an extended moment, caused her sister-in-law to drop her hand from Mia’s arm, her expression stricken. Mia never intended to try to intimidate Gloria, or wanted to, but when it was clear she had, a flash of guilt ran through her.

  But she should know by now she can only push me so far.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” she said in a soft voice that carried all the deadly venom of a viper. “I shouldn’t keep him waiting.”

  She brushed past Gloria and headed out into the balmy night air that carried a hint of a chill, but it didn’t bother her.

  In the blood orange grove, Mia plucked a large, ripe orange from a tree as she passed. It felt ready to burst through the rind as she tossed it and caught it gently in her palm. She spotted the white-haired don sitting at a large, round table with his enforcer Paolo Scarpa and another man. On the table was a bottle of red wine, accompanied by a plate of bread, cheese, olives, and salami.

  As she got closer, she recognized the third man. “Johnny!”

  A somewhat frail Johnny Torrio rose from his seat as she rushed toward him. She caught herself at the last moment and embraced him carefully. He lightly kissed each of her cheeks.

  “Ah, Mia,” he said warmly, and his voice, so Brooklyn, sounded of home. He pinched her cheeks. “Sicily agrees with you. Look at you, like a real village girl.” He gestured to the airy, printed teal frock she wore, in the style of the carefree young women of the village, instead of her old, high-fashion wardrobe.

  She beamed at him. “Johnny, when did you get here?”

  “I docked in Italy a few days ago. Made it down from Irsina just this morning. Beautiful here, really.”

  She was touched he’d left his native village so soon after arriving, especially in his condition, just to make sure he saw her before she left. “It is. Don Catalano told me everything that—that happened to you.”

  He waved a hand. “Sit, sit. We have so much to discuss.”

  Mia turned smiling eyes on Don Catalano as she embraced him. “Did you set this up, Godfather?”

  The tall don was clean-shaven except for an impressive salt-and-pepper moustache he groomed meticulously. His dark eyes were surrounded by crow’s feet, but they were as alert as they’d ever been. His ponderous body had taken bullets and other wounds over the years, but despite a limp, he still moved with agility for a man of his size and age.

  “A little goodbye surprise for you,” he said in English. Mia loved to converse in Sicilian, and her mastery of the language had blossomed during her time here, but Don Catalano liked to speak in English to stay sharp in case he ever returned to New York, he said.

  Paolo flicked open a knife and held his hand out for the orange. Mia handed it to him and he deftly cut it into slices and added them to the plate. The don pushed it toward her, and she took a slice.

  “Johnny, how are you, really?” Mia asked, settling back into her chair. “It’s so good to see you. But after hearing what happened to you and Al getting shot at—” The sweetness of the blood orange’s juice soured on her tongue.

  Johnny sighed as he accepted the cigar Don Catalano extended to him. “Well, you warned us Weiss was coming after us, didn’t you? We should’ve listened. We got careless. Cocky. Right after you left New York, Weiss hit Al’s limo. Word on the street says he threw a goddamn fit when he realized Al wasn’t in the car. Then twelve days later, they got me outside my house. Made sure they hit me.”

  Mia shook her head, rage throbbing to life in her chest. “Why is he still breathing?”

  Johnny shrugged almost dismissively, puffing his cigar to get it going. “He’s Al’s problem now. I survived by the grace of God, I did my time, and now I’m here. I want peace, Mia. Al can have it. I’m quitting. It’s Europe for me now.” He reached out and patted her hand. “I knew you’d come to Sicily, and I know you’re leaving for New York tomorrow. I asked the don to set up a meeting. I couldn’t contact you directly. This country has plenty of spies too, you know.”

  Mia glanced at her godfather. “So I’ve been informed.”

  Johnny inclined his head at Don Catalano. “I hear you’ve taken her under your wing.”

  The older man spread his hands, his stogie grasped between his forefinger and middle finger. “She’s family, if not blood. I gotta watch out for her.”

  The don had been in New York when Mia’s parents had arrived twenty-five years ago, and his father had known the man from th
eir days in Sicily before he’d left. Nick had remembered him from their childhood, but Mia hadn’t been born yet. Shortly after her family had settled onto Elizabeth Street and Mia had been born, the don returned to Sicily. He had returned to New York occasionally for visits and to check up on Nick and Mia, but she hadn’t seen him when Nick had been off in France, and he’d visited only once before they’d moved to Chicago. He was currently a large importer of Italian goods to the States, but his true business was gambling. He kept a few gambling houses run by trusted associates in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Harlem.

  “I’m too old to travel with her to New York to protect her, so I teach her instead,” Don Catalano went on. “I send Paolo for protection.”

  The silent enforcer bobbed his head.

  “So how is Al?” Mia said. “I haven’t wanted to write him for safety reasons. Never know who might get a hold of your letters.”

  Johnny nodded approvingly, then his face darkened. “I gave him total control of the Outfit, and, well…I guess you could say he’s taking to leadership.”

  The note of derision in Johnny’s voice caught Mia’s attention. He sounded as though he wasn’t entirely pleased with Al.

  “Custom silk suits for every day of the week, a jeweled ring for every finger, gourmet meals three times a day,” Johnny recited, shaking his head. “Let’s just say he’s a far cry from the guy you remember who cooked his own peppers and salsicce in the frypan and served you himself.”