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Prologue

Sandy

The door to my office swings open and I lift my head from my hands snatching my discarded reading glasses from the stack of papers in front of me, shoving them up my crooked nose. My bones creak like the unoiled hinges of doors long shut and I am weary.

“Ah, it’s just you,” I relax immediately at the sight of my oldest friend striding towards my desk.

If age is catching up with his body as quickly as it is with mine, it doesn’t show. He’s the same sinewy, rigid man I’ve always known. His shadowed and gaunt face a mask seven decades in the making.

He’s wound up tight as an elastic band stretched to its extreme, poised to snap at any moment like the protruding tendons in his neck.

It is no small miracle that the cold and calculating old fuck is still hovering around and not six feet under having suffered a stress-induced heart attack. Or with a bullet in his brain. If he was shot we would have a mammoth task figuring out which of his many foes pulled the trigger.

He’s a scheming arsehole, but he’s a scheming arsehole who is yet to let me down in the 60-something years we’ve known each other.

There isn’t an important moment in my life he hasn’t been part of; from our first day of school to leaving Italy together as young men. He is the godfather to my children and me to his. We’ve laughed and cried together. We’ve built a dynasty and now its survival depends on the next generation.

“You look like you haven’t slept in a week, mate,” Paul Rossi could never be accused of blowing smoke up anyone’s arse, even mine. I can always rely on him to give it to me straight, even if it isn’t flattering. He is perhaps the only person brave enough to openly criticise me these days.

When loyalty is the most valuable currency, almost anything else can be excused.

“Fuckin’ dog’s breakfast, mate. Bikies are getting their hands on some serious hardware. Not a good look for us when guns are going off on every street corner.”

“Bet it’s the bloody Arabs. They’re opening up new channels all over the shop.” Rossi hates the Arabs and would blame them for a hair in his dinner, but in this case, he is probably right.

Once upon a time we had a monopoly on the importation/exportation business in Sydney and held a significant share of the market nationwide. The MarinoFamigliawere the only ones who could get what was needed into Australia and across state lines.

Now competition is fierce. If it isn’t the Arabs trying to move in on our territories, it's the Vietnamese or the Turks. The Bikie gangs have demonstrated that they’re loyal only to a bargain and convenience, happy to forget decades of peaceful business with ourFamiglia, with Sydney’s Mafia.

Following the troubles we had in the early 2000s that saw an unprecedented amount of bloodshed, I have worked hard to reign over the MarinoFamiglia, and this city, mostly by commanding respect, but I fear my successor will have to resort to good old-fashioned fear more and more often.

It’s dangerous when folk think they have options, choices. Whether they want to or feel they have to, to get shit done in this city people need to know they have to go to the MarinoFamiglia.

“Your fuckwit of a son needs to piss off back to Melbourne, Paul,” I grumble, pinching the bridge of my nose.

“Preaching to the choir, mate. He’s putting a lot of hard graft into this ‘reconciliation’ charade. As if I don’t know what the sly fucker is up to. Didn’t come down in the last shower, son.”

He has been complaining for months about having to play nice while his prodigal son Stefan pretends to want to have a relationship with his daddy.

Paul is like those animals you see in nature documentaries. The ones that eat their own young. If he has a paternal bone in his body, I have not encountered it and I suspect neither have his kids.

“The kids on the way back yet?” I change the subject. It is what he has come to talk to me about anyway, I’ll bet.

“Our guys should be arriving about now at the flat. We should be able to hear the protests from my youngest all the way from London shortly,” Paul looks at his watch. Bemused as ever at the thought of his daughter’s attempts to defy him.

Like my Massimo, Francesca is Paul’s second-time-round offspring. We both ended up impregnating our younger second wives 24 years ago and produced a pair of Mafia brats spoiled by their mothers and their older half-siblings. They’ve been gallivanting around Europe, but now it is time to drag them back down under for a dose of reality. They might be the bambinos of the family, but they have their roles to play. Especially that beauty Francesca.

“She’s had eight years away to do what she wants, mate. It’s time for her to grow up.” He nods in agreement. We are on the same page about our children as well as most things.

A shrill ring interrupts us and Paul digs into the pocket of his pants for his phone, putting it on speakerphone. “Francesca, how nice to hear from you. I thought you had forgotten your old man’s number,” he answers dryly.

“It’s a two-way street,Dad. Haven’t seen any missed calls from you. Anyway, can you explain why two of your goons have forced their way into my flat and are telling me they’re taking me home?Thisis my home.”

She has picked up a hybrid English/Australian accent in the years since we sent her to live with her mother’s parents when she was 16. She squawked and protested about being sent there. Now, it seems she doesn’t want to come home.

“Australia is your home and it is time for you and Massimo to come back,” Paul speaks as though he is discussing something as mundane as the weather. The rage from his daughter is practically emanating from his mobile phone.

“No! Not happening! You dumped me here eight years ago.Eight years ago, Dad. You’ve had zero interest in seeing me since then and now you want to drag me back into your mob games? You’re dreaming!”