Chapter 4: Fratellino

*Road leaving New York City—about 11 PM*

*Marco*

Marco has been driving for only twenty minutes which, for New York City, it’s just the end of the block. But, for him, it felt like an entire night. Just as quickly as those officers with the black vans came, news about it would be running amock in the city between the mafias.

Marco is still on the road, his head is pulsing hard. The sight of his Slavic Cinderella just made his heart bump stronger and faster. He really needed to calm himself down. Leaving the city, on the road to his family’s house, he stopped his car by a roadside. His car wasn’t anything special it was a humble black Beetle. Mafia lords shouldn’t catch people’s attention driving Lamborghinis and others.

His car, which Marco jokingly called Monique, stopped with a sigh. Marco left the car and huffed. He had to stop for a while to just absorb everything that happened that night. He got a chocolate roll out of the pocket and lit its edge with a lighter. The weird thing is that he didn’t smoke it, instead, Marco ate the heated edge, which was slightly melted.

His father used to smoke, and, advised by his father himself, he should never let that poison lure and take him. So, instead of smoking actual cigars or cigarettes, Marco used to buy boxes containing twenty to thirty cherry-tomato-sized dark chocolate rolls. He used to light their edges up to half of it and eat them, a process he would do almost every day.

Science says that a small dose of dark chocolate per day can improve your health and your mood. It explains why Marco is almost always in a good mood or perfect health, at most catching a cold or a twelve-hour headache.

Marco put his hands in his pockets. He wiggled his heels and huffed, making soft explosion-like sounds. What a night it was. And, most important, what a girl…

“She was pretty, that’s for sure,” Marco thought. “I don’t know, I think it was a special kind of pretty, she is different somehow, though I think I’ve met one that looked a little bit like her yesterday, only she had a bob cut. Why do I sense she is different…?”

Marco sat on his car’s hood and looked at the ocean. What a beautiful view that was.

“I never thought that a little bit of moonlight would make the sea look so beautiful,” Marco thought.

He almost couldn’t hear the noisy city, so Marco embraced the moment and lay down on the car’s hood. Nature’s sounds only. It was beautiful. That was the only word Marco could find to perfectly describe that night: beautiful.

A beautiful setting, a beautiful nature soundtrack, and what he believed to be a beautiful whale doing a belly flop on the horizon. Yes, beautiful, simply beautiful. The only beauty he wanted to picture but was too flustered to remember was the portrait of his Slavic Cinderella. Marco asked himself something he should have asked long ago:

“What even is her name?”

He was afraid that would become a case of finding the perfect girl for him at the subway, only to never see her again. Oh no, that was really bad… That girl couldn’t simply fade away!

Marco started singing a folkloric Italian song, but changed the lyrics to make them about Daisy, a name he would never guess was her true one:

La bella slava si è trovata così

Conosciuto così

fatti amici così

mi ha conquistato così

Oh oh oh

Bella slava così,

Cia cia pum, cia cia pum

In the middle of the third “cia cia pum”, his phone buzzed. It was a message from someone called “Fratellino”. Despite being named like that, Fratellino (Lil’ Bro in Italian), was older than Marco. Marco picked the phone up and looked, the message said: “Hey, where are you?”

Marco let the air out of his nose, a small giggle, and replied with the message “I’m fine, I feel like I’m in Neverland.” Fratellino sent a message saying “Ya heard the news about that nightclub?” Marco replied, “I suppose that the club’s owner is f*cked with his Papà.” Fratellino replied “In a heap of trouble X(”

“Who the heck uses keyboard emojis in the 2020s?” Marco thought to himself, laughing.

“Where are you, for real?” Fratellino messaged. Marco took glances around, and saw a wooden shack, falling in pieces and, some meters ahead, a kebab food truck. Marco sent these exact coordinates to Fratellino.

“How long ‘til you come home?” Fratellino messaged. Marco thought a little about it, and messaged back “As I am in a good mood, probably ten more minutes.” Silence.

“Don’t worry, Piccolino, I’ll start writing your will,” Fratellino messaged. Just as Marco teases his older brother by calling him Little Bro, his older brother responded by calling him Piccolino, or “Small One”, for Marco was almost one foot taller than him. Marco laughed and messaged “K, I’m coming.”

Marco got off the car’s hood and puffed once again, before lighting his lighter once again, to heat the remains of his chocolate roll and finish eating it. He almost threw the chocolate roll’s wrapping paper on the ground but stopped himself from doing so.

“Can’t be a *sshole to ruin this beautiful landscape or make a turtle eventually eat it,” Marco thought. He hopped in his Beetle and drove home.

Marco arrived in a mansion surrounded by a thick brick wall, searched on top with electric wires. He went with his car to the rolling gates and pressed the intercom.

“What is the password?” a female robotic voice said.

Marco then pressed the intercom series of nine buttons in a pattern to make them beep, four times, the first four notes of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. The intercom beeped an affirmative sound, and the gates rolled to the right to get opened. Marco entered the house. Lord knows what awaits him.

*

*Ricci family garage—11:30 PM*

*

Marco parks the Beetle in the garage. On the door that goes upstairs, a man is standing. A little smaller than Marco, but the facial features are very similar. Marco got out of the car and greeted him:

“Hey, Junior!”

“Hey there Piccolino, you don’t look like you’re scared for someone who is walking on death row,” Junior joked. Yes, Junior was Fratellino.

“I know papà, he’ll probably just scream at me for five minutes then we’ll play cards together,” Marco replied, playfully messing Junior’s buzz haircut, which was similar to his, only Junior’s hair was smoother.

The two brothers started climbing up the stairs to enter the mansion.

*

“Very funny, Marco, but you’re in big trouble, even though you’re a grown-*ss man, papà can still smack you with no problem,” Junior giggled, messing Marco’s hair.

“He can do it with the both of us, remember that Sunday after The Sopranos aired?” Marco remarked, both serious and joking.

“A yes, the battito d’una vita…”

“Battito d’una vita…”

Both slightly massaged their butts, as the mere mentioning of the Battito d’una Vita gave them some sort of PTSD.

“But hey, papà still loves you! He said it himself while you were driving home,” Junior tried to light the mood.

“I’m pretty sure he had plenty of love to give when he spanked us while the Sopranos theme was playing,” Marco commented.

“Very fitting actually,” Junior answered. “Your mood is still too bright for my taste.”

“You are a little sciocco, your taste is too picky,” Marco replied, reaching for his pocket, and taking out a chocolate roll. “Here, take it.”

“What is this?”

“Chocolate. Dark chocolate. Predicts heart conditions and is healthy overall. It would do well for your hypochondriacal self.”

They got out of the stairs and arrived in the main hall of the mansion. The two brothers then went to other stairs, walking through a maze of halls and doors.

“I only worry about my health because I will have more control when I take over papà’s place as the family leader with you,” Junior commented.

“Okay, Capone, no need to shove that into my face,” Marco laughed.

“By the way, doesn’t it make you jealous?”

“Of what, you?” Marco asked, laughing even more.

“Yeah, sort of,” Junior tried to put his thoughts into words. “I mean, I have more control over the family than you.”

“Controlling only 1% would be fine for me,” Marco answered, opening a door. “Ladies first.”

Junior cleared his throat and pointed at Marco’s feet. Marco looked, and he saw that his feet were already inside first.

“Oh shoot,” Marco groaned.

“I see it,” Junior giggled.

“Do you think papà is still angry at me?” Marco asked, handing for another door.

“Not in a lifetime,” Junior replied, with a peaceful and certain tone.

Marco smiled, and opened the door, to reveal an office, whose chair was turned away from the door. The chair spun to reveal a gray-haired man with a bald spot, almost in his sixties, chubby chinned and with a severe expression, remarked by the awfully thick black eyebrows. That’s Giorgio Ricci, the big leader of the Ricci mafia family, and controller of guns in NYC. He was sitting on his chair, caressing a beige Pomeranian dog.