u/BlackHoodPress

Hi all, I'm still looking for few more unpaid beta readers to get general feedback for my turn-of-the-century organized crime drama/thriller, A RESPECTABLE CRIMINAL. Complete at 114K words.

New York City, 1919. In the days leading up to Prohibition, Vittorio Gennaro is Sicilian immigrant just trying to make an honest living so that he can marry his best girl. But as a young man who already has a criminal past, he’s mistrusted by everyone around him. Especially his own father. When a run-in with a notorious Irish thug once again leaves him behind bars, his only refuge is the life that he’d left behind. In order to survive, he will have to face an impossible choice: between the life he so desperately wants or the one that he’s tried so hard to escape.

This is a gangster story in the vein of Boardwalk Empire and The Godfather, so you can expect some of the usual for the genre (murder, assault, butchery of a dead horse, prison execution, ethnic slurs). It also deals with the typical challenges of immigrant life in early 1900s New York City.

Please DM if interested.

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CHAPTER ONE: La mano nera

New York City, 1909

“DEATH now stares you in the face.”

Amedeo Fraschetti’s hand trembled as he sat alone at the kitchen table in his cramped fourth-floor tenement. There, he reviewed the handwritten letter once again. He’d been completely unable to sleep since receiving it. And had read it many times over already.

Each time, he’d hoped that somehow its message would be different. That perhaps he’d misunderstood and was mistaken about its meaning. But it was always the same.

It was written in Sicilian, of course. The penmanship was poor. Perhaps deliberately so. And it began with a surprisingly apologetic tone.

Please excuse our intrusion. We send you this note to let you know our misery. Times are difficult.

While the first part was courteous enough, the second half left no doubt as to the sender’s true intentions.

Death now stares you in the face. We advise you not to act like a coward. We know that you can pay. You must obey.

If you do not, you will suffer. If you make known the contents of this letter to anyone besides your wife, we shall know at once. We ask of you $1000.

The final section instructed him on how to deliver the money. He was to put it in a package wrapped in plain brown paper. Then, at 10:00 pm the next night, he was to deliver it to an alley off Baxter Street and place the package behind a pole.

We will be watching. Pay or die.

It was signed LA MANO NERA.

At the bottom were crude drawings. A grisly dagger. A stabbed heart that dripped blood.

And the most telling of all: a Black Hand. La mano nera.

Amedeo didn’t have to ask who these men were. He knew them well. They already came into his tiny grocery every single week, demanding tribute. Under the orders of the local chieftain, Don Giuseppe Mastrangelo. For “protection.”

But now they demanded more. Far more than he could possibly surrender.

Men like these had plagued his homeland of Sicily for many decades. They were men to be feared indeed.

He knew of other shopkeepers who’d attempted to stand up to them. And in return, they’d had their shops bombed. Or their children kidnapped.

The police had tried to fight them. Led by the great detective, Lt. Joe Petrosino. Who was well-known as a master of disguise. And one who never forgot a face. The “Italian Sherlock Holmes.”

Petrosino and his Italian Squad had done much to combat the Black Hand. But they were few. And the Mafiosi were many.

And very good at keeping to the shadows.

“Vieni a letto? È così tardi,” his lovely wife Silvana called from the bedroom. “Are you coming to bed? It’s so late.”

“Sì, carina,” he responded. “Uno momento.”

He locked the letter away in a drawer to keep it out of sight. He didn’t want her to worry.

He got up and went to the window. There was only one for the whole apartment, which led to a fire escape. He checked the blanket that hung over the frame to keep out the draft as best they could.

It was the first week of March and still bitterly cold outside. Just two days earlier, they’d had what they hoped would be the last snowfall of winter. Then, in just a few short months, they’d leave that same window open day and night to endure the heat of summer.

It was a very different life from what they’d had in Messina. Tenement life was difficult. And not made any easier by this new threat. But the grocery was thriving, and they had food in their bellies. What’s more, they knew that with continued hard work, they could one day prosper in their new country.

If the Black Hand didn’t come and take it from them.

Amedeo went to extinguish the soft glow from the gas lamp. But before doing so, just as he did each night, he took one last look at his sleeping children. Three little angeli from heaven, all quietly sleeping in their cots.

At age seven, Oriana was the oldest. Strong-willed, responsible, and dependable. Just like her mother.

Rosina was a year younger and also strong-willed, but far more interested in what else might be in store. Just like her father, Silvana always said.

The youngest, Mafalda, was only eighteen months old and their first to be born in l’America. Who knew what she would be like?

Perhaps next they would have a son. But as he stared at their beautiful young faces, he could feel nothing but love. Proud of what they had created and determined to protect them at all costs. To forever keep them safe from harm’s way.

All of which led him back once again to that letter. And the question of whether or not he would give in to their demands.

But what kind of a father would he be to cower in fear?

And even more so, what kind of example would he set for his children?

* * *

THE NEXT MORNING, Amedeo awoke early and went straight downstairs to open the grocery. He was wrought with worry deep in the pit of his stomach. He’d barely slept, and it showed on his face. He’d been like this for two days. Ever since receiving the letter.

Each time Silvana had asked what the matter was, his answer was always the same. “Non è niente,” he told her. “Probably just the weather.”

Theirs was a small shop on the corner of Elizabeth and Broome, on the ground floor of the same tenement in which they lived. And certainly not the sort of place that one would think to attract the attention of the Black Hand. They were tiny compared to the Gimavalvos, who’d recently had their store bombed when they’d refused to pay.

Amedeo had worked long and hard to get where they were. Life had been good to them since coming to l’America. Difficult, yes. But they had survived.

Like many Italian immigrants, he’d originally left his family behind in Messina and come on his own. Just after Rosina was born.

The hardships in those early days in New York were unrelenting. The church took pity on him and gave him two apples. He ate one and sold the other. Soon, he had a pushcart from which he sold fruit.

After two years of long hours day in and day out, he’d earned enough money to not only bring over Silvana, but Oriana and Rosina as well. And after another two years, the family had earned enough to open their own grocery.

They were doing well. Enough that Amedeo hoped to move to a bigger location. And a better home for his growing family. He’d already been to the bank once, hoping to secure a loan.

After all that effort, he certainly didn’t like the idea of some band of thugs just coming and taking it away. Or even just a piece of it. Especially through simple threats and intimidation.

* * *

AFTER a full week had passed, Amedeo began to feel more at ease. There’d been no other word from the senders. Perhaps, he wondered, it had been delivered to the wrong address. Or that, by some miracle, they had already been arrested.

But then a man he didn’t know entered the store. There was nothing particular about this man. He looked just like any other paisano from the neighborhoods of Lower Manhattan.

But what he came to deliver was something very different. It was a message of fear.

“You’re late in your payment,” the man informed him.

Amedeo attempted to feign ignorance. “Payment for what? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t play stupid with me,” the man grumbled. “You owe 1000 dollars and our patience grows thin.”

Amedeo pulled him aside. Fortunately, Silvana was upstairs with the baby, and the other two were in school.

“I don’t have that kind of money,” he balked. “Where would I get it?”

“You went to the bank about a loan,” the man informed him. “Best see to it that you pay your fair share.”

Amedeo stood his ground. “I already pay Don Mastrangelo for his protection. What good is that service if you’re just going to come and demand more?”

“We hope it’s because you and your family want to live,” the man told him.