Hello again! I have gotten a lot of feedback on this experiment, and I have taken to heart everything said, both the good and the bad. One such criticism that arose was that, despite the story being a crossover, I failed to show off exactly how the crossover would work. THEREFORE! I will be releasing the first four chapters of the story as they are completed here to show off to you what I have in mind for this project, and as I am currently halfway finished with Chapter 3, I thought it appropriate to share chapter 2 today. Hope you enjoy!
A year passed into the November of 86, delivering a cold rain that chilled Michael to the bones as he walked up the steps of New York's Presbyterian Hospital. His feet made wet splashes against the concrete, while the heavy downpour pelted the rim of his umbrella. Michael rushed to get inside, hating how the cold did its number on him despite the heavy coat he wore.
Stepping into the lobby and out of the rain, Michael stood for a moment to take in the warmth of the building, knowing it would be the only comfort he'd be allowed for the day. Connie's lab report had rung true as the Shakespearean soothsayer's warning of the Ides of March. Her cancer had spread long before the doctors could have done anything about it, while time had become the enemy. Sighing in dismay, Michael signed into the reception desk and made his way to the elevator to catch a ride up to the hospital's cancer ward.
Stepping out into the reception area of the floor, Michael was greeted by the familiar faces of family friends and benefactors who had come to pay their respects. The noise in the lobby was filled with the soft sobbing of women, overcome by the occasional faint rumble of thunder. Many of their faces he recognized, some he did not, and many were absent that should have been there. As Michael's eyes scanned over the sea of people lolling about he noticed Bianchi sitting apart from the rest in the corner, leaning against the wall with a cigarette in his hand. As Michael walked over to meet him, Bianchi's face took on an air of relief as he noticed his approach.
Bianchi flicked the cigarette butt onto the floor as he made his way across the room, meeting Michael in a tight embrace, "Michael, I'm glad you got here in time."
"I came as fast as I could. How is she?" Michael asked, worry laced in his words for fear of being too late. Bianchi looked down in dismay.
"Bad, Mike. She's been asking for you. How are you holding up?" Bianchi asked, taking a step back.
"I'm as fine as circumstances allow, considering…" Michael noticed a slight tension in Bianchi's eyes, "Are they treating you alright?"
"As if that fucking ostrich they call a nurse glaring at me for trying to enjoy a smoke wasn't bad enough," Bianchi quipped as Michael turned to observe the nurse, who indeed resembled a member of the flightless birds with her long, wrinkled neck and black hair that was turning white with age. To his amusement, he noted that she was giving Bianchi and everyone else stinking her ward up with tobacco smoke a glare to rival the devil himself.
"Vincent's men showed up about an hour ago. Haven't let anyone in." Michael's attention was brought back to Peter before his eyes began to survey the room. Pennino holding guard to Connie's room stood out like a sore thumb from the rest of the morose group, though the men who stuck to the dark corners of the waiting room eyeing everyone caught his attention as well.
Michael frowned in disapproval, feeling that to deny mourners to attend the dying was a shameful thing. Michael turned his gaze back to Bianchi and asked, "Is Vincent here as well?"
"He went in fifteen minutes ago," Bianchi confirmed with displeasure. Michael breathed and counted to ten, weighing his options on how to move forward. He concluded the best course was the direct one, to hell with Vincent's orchestration of the whole miserable affair.
"I'm going in, Peter. I won't be denied my last moments with my sister on my nephew's whim." Michael finally spoke as though the matter were concluded. Bianchi smiled in approval.
"Yeah I mean, fuck him, right? She's only got so long, so it's as good a time as any, eh?" Shrugging his shoulders as though there was nothing left to say, Bianchi motioned for Michael to take the lead
As Michael and Bianchi made their way through the mourners to Connie's room, Pennino kept his eye on their approach. Stepping in front of the man, they glared at him in a silent standoff that lasted almost a minute. Pennino gave them both a quick look, as though weighing whether he would even humor their silent request, before turning his head and knocking on the hospital room door.
A moment passed before the door opened and Vincent stepped out of the room. Upon seeing Michael, he gave a half smile that came off as an indulgent smirk, "Uncle Mike. I'm glad you made it in time."
"Did you think I wouldn't? She's my sister, after all." Michael preened, not happy with the way his nephew looked at him.
Vincent blinked, waving his hand in denial, "Not at all, I'm just glad you got here, I've been keeping her comfortable in your absence."
"Is that why you've barred everyone else from paying their respects?" Michael asked.
Vincent looked at the other visitors and shrugged, "She's weak, I didn't want to put undue stress on her." He said, not in the slightest feeling that his decision had been the wrong one.
Michael paused, considering the answer with some reluctance. While he may not have approved of keeping the others away, he could understand not wanting to overwhelm Connie in her state. Looking into his eyes, Michael spoke again, "I trust you don't consider me as 'undue stress'." He stated, daring Vincent to challenge him.
Vincent held his own under Michael's gaze, unyielding to the older man's display of dominance. After a moment Vincent nodded, slow and conceding, not wishing to deny his uncle, "Of course not, who am I to stop her from seeing her brother for the last time?"
Michael looked at Vincent, searching into his eyes for anything hidden. Finding nothing, Michael nodded his head, turned to Bianchi, and spoke. "Make sure we're not disturbed, okay Peter?" Michael patted him on the shoulder and stepped inside the room, leaving the three men behind.
Bianchi, left alone with Vincent and Pennino, stared off against them with a contemptible glare. Unperturbed by his gaze, they responded with passive indifference. Vincent, knowing Bianchi's place in the world, gave him an indulgent grin that dared him to challenge him in any way. After a moment under his visage, Bianchi looked away in silence.
-/ↀ\-
Closing the door behind him, Michael found himself in a moment of respite from the world he so rarely indulged in and took the time to survey the room. Its setup was designed to be simple but comfortable for any patient unfortunate enough to reside there, with simple comforts in the form of a soft bed and a radio set up on the nightstand by the bed next to a vase filled with white flowers and a tray with a plate of uneaten food and a tall pitcher of water. Even the door was factored into the room's purpose, doing an impeccable job to keep the noise from the hallway and lobby out.
Connie lay in her bed as though asleep, her raspy breath coming in uneven intervals that gave away just how weak she had become. The sound of the rain pattering against the window echoed in the silence of the room, disturbed only by the news being played on the radio.
"...Heleen Andrews, wife of New York State Governor John Andrews, celebrated her victory in the New York Senatorial Elections held early last week. The new Senator's victory was all but assured when her opposition in the runnings, Democratic rival James Shea Jr., son of former President James Shea, died in a tragic plane incident…"
Michael moved over to turn the radio off, absently listening to the radio castor filling in on the report of the day.
"...Shea lost control of his private aircraft and crashed into the Atlantic in the first week of July. Shea's wife and sister also died in the accident, their deaths were confirmed sixteen days later when their bodies were recovered by divers. Mrs. Andrews chose to hold a special memorial for her former opponent in August with his family in attendance. In other news…"
The voice of the announcer fell silent as Michael switched off the radio, allowing the rain to be heard unmolested save for the sound of Connie's labored breath. Michael took a seat in the chair next to her bed, the creak of the wood stirring her from her sleep. As she opened her eyes he could see that even the simple act sought to rob her of her strength.
"Michael. You came, Michael." She croaked out, her weakened state making it difficult to even smile. Michael brushed her hair aside lovingly, taking her wrinkled hand in his own.
"Of course, I came. You're my sister, aren't you? How could I abandon you in your time?" He asked as though her surprise were absurd, as to a Corleone it was indeed such.
"How indeed?"
Michael gave her a peculiar look, noting the almost ironic undertone of her words. Michael noticed Connie eying the pitcher and licked her lips in thirst, so he took the silence as an opportunity to ponder it over as he reach over to pour her a cup of water and brought it to her lips.
"I'm so glad you came, Michael. I wanted you to be here. So that I could tell you." She spoke through gasps of air, laying her head back as her eyes glazed off into space.
"Isn't it funny? I used to do this for you when you'd get sick as a boy. Remember Michael? Remember that summer when you disobeyed mother to stay out in the rain?" Connie grinned and shifted with some discomfort, her head lulled to the side to look at him as she reflected on her nostalgia, "Father was so furious with worry. When you were well enough to leave your bed he yelled so loud it woke the other tenants. I was so frightened! But you just looked at him with that glaze you have, then you had the gale to further his misery by refusing to speak to him for weeks."
"You were such a naughty boy, but I suppose you never grew out of that, didn't you?" Connie asked rhetorically, considering her brother for a moment, "Even when you know you're in the wrong you have to find a way to make the other person suffer."
Michael snorted softly at the accusation, "I never did it to make him hurt. I did it so he knew I wouldn't let myself be pushed around." He defended. Connie looked away, and the two fell into silence once more. Michael idly listened to the rain pattering against the window, his thoughts straying to the troubles weighing on his mind.
"Connie, I need to speak to you, ask you things." Michael finally spoke, thinking about how he wished to convey his words. Connie looked at him as though offended he would bother her with an interrogation, but she signed for him to go on regardless.
"Vincent's become distant. I can't read him anymore, and it bothers me. Bothers me because I feel that he's getting into something he shouldn't with this Rosario business." Michael sighed, "I worry he's walking the Family back into the way things were, and I wonder if perhaps I didn't do enough to mentor him, that I should have been there these past six years."
There was a pause, then Connie asked in a peculiar manner, "How do you know?"
"He's involved himself with the cartels. I know Vincent killed Neri. He killed Dominic, and I'm sure he's killed others. No one's seen B.J. in months, I can't make heads or tails whether he's floating in some gutter. How do I know?" He echoed her words, considering the question, listing the facts he knew, "We have no enemies, none that have the strength to dare and move against us. The only ones that have been killed were loyal to me, but not Vincent's men. I think he knew how I'd respond to making that kind of move, and he took action."
"I know he's fortifying his ventures, taking out my support should I choose to oppose him. He's been thorough, I can do nothing." Michael lamented, the shadows hanging from his eyes like the funeral shroud of a widow. "Connie, I need to know if he's said anything to you. If he has said anything to explain why he is doing this?"
Connie looked up at her brother, her eyes looking into his without speaking a word. Then to his surprise, Connie gave a smirk, and then she was laughing. It was not one born out of delirium or irony, but one dark and mocking in the face of what he had said. Frowning, Michael leaned away, perplexed by her response.
"What's so funny?"
Her cackling getting the better of her, Connie hacked and coughed furiously before she simpered, "I know Vincent killed Neri. Dominic, too. I've known for some time now."
Michael stared down at his sister's face, eyeing her mask of cruel humor with a sense of cold dread for what he was about to hear, and swallowed. "And you know this because he told you?"
"Because I told him exactly the kind of threat you presented to his vision for the future." She said with sadistic glee, and all began to fall in place in the mind of Michael Corleone.
"What did you do?" Michael asked, his words simple yet dangerous in tone, his mind already forming a logical guess. Connie smiled in the face of his wrath.
"None of you ever treated me with any respect. Always the kid sister in your eyes." Connie moaned bitterly, "I know I couldn't be a part of the business, that's not how things are done, but you would never be honest with me, your own flesh and blood."
Anger welled up inside his sister, and she lashed out in despair, "You killed my husband, Carlo! I know he was a rotten bastard, but you couldn't even admit it, so you lied in the face of my accusations. Your own sister, Michael!"
"I hated you for it, but I let it go when Fredo screwed up. I knew how cold you are, that you wouldn't forgive him without purpose, so I swallowed my pride and asked you to spare him. I begged you even, and what did you do? Smiled in my face and betrayed my trust when my back was turned. And when it was done you -you lousy son of a bitch- you lied to my face again."
"Fredo drowned, Connie." Michael retorted, bile rising in his throat at her betrayal.
Connie laughed, "That's bullshit and you know it. So did I, but I played your game. Pretended to be the fool you thought I was, and I planned, planned for the day I would make you hurt as you hurt me."
"And then my opportunity came. I… I took a young man working a nightclub in Manhattan who was just like me, kicked aside by our family because he wasn't seen as worthy, a bastard that would never be good enough. But he had ambition, and the guts to see them through. I cared for him, vouched for him, mentored him. And then, I presented him to you."
As he felt his through tighten, Michael tried for diplomacy, "Connie, you have to tell me what he's got planned. I could stop it before it destroys our father's legacy!"
But Connie, feeling assured in her own scheme and reveling in her brother's desperation, choked out a laugh that was labored and gleeful and cruel, "You can't stop it, Michael. You admitted it yourself, anyone who could have fought for you he's already dealt with. Besides, it would ruin the surprise if I told you."
"So you took it upon yourself to destroy this family. To destroy everything our father poured his blood and sweat, his very soul into! You destroyed his legacy." Michael growled in his anger, each accusation more spiteful than the last. His words made Connie scoff in derision.
"Our father's legacy died the moment you took over, Michael. I simply assured its corpse would cease to be paraded around for the sake of your ego." Connie shot back, repulsed.
"Everything I did, Connie, I did for my family. Right or wrong." Michael ground out, as though he was trying to convince himself as much as he tried to convince her, "I never wanted you to feel that I was cutting you out. I've relied on you, for years now, as the only confidant I had. You were there when no one else was, and I respected you."
"That was well recited. I would bet you even believe in that." Connie acknowledged, but was steadfast in her conviction and would not be moved. "But there are consequences, and I'll die content that you'll have to watch Vincent run your empire into the ground."
Michael blinked, then fell silent. Dark clouds passed over and thunder rolled across the sky, But Michael never said a word, as if processing the hatred his sister felt for him, wondering where it all went wrong.
"Don't you dare." Connie hissed, using what little strength she had craning her neck so that she could glare at Michael, "All my life I've spent ignored because I wasn't seen as valuable to the family. All my life I've been brushed off or kicked aside. So don't you dare ignore me now!"
Michael looked away, which spurned the woman further.
"Say it, Michael! Tell me what we both know! Tell me how I bested you!" She demanded as frantic for his misery as a beast for the blood of its prey. For what felt like hours Michael sat refusing to look at her, content with the quiet of the room. And then he laughed, and smiled down at her, a cold spark alight in the corners of his eye.
"I've got to say, I didn't see this coming. You really pulled a number on me, didn't you, little sister?" Michael chuckled, his words deceptively cheerful, giving applause to her machinations as though she were a true master of the craft. Connie however wasn't pleased by this at all, her features growing pinched and sour.
"Why? Why don't you hate me?" Connie demanded, bile threatening to rise as he denied to give in to her torments, refusing to spurn her as she so desired. "You bastard, why?! Why did you have to take this from me too?!"
"Hush." Michael smiled, tucking his sister into the sheets in a deliberately loving manner, caressing her face as their mother would have done when they were children, "You're my baby sister, how can I hate you, eh?"
Connie's eyes watered, hateful desperation clawing up in her throat as Michael tormented her with his 'kindness'. "You bastard. You bastard." Connie cursed Michael in bitterness, her feeble voice fading into the thunder and gently falling rain.
-/ↀ\-
Michael closed the door behind him in a daze as he turned, ignoring Bianchi's inquires as he walked to the lobby. When those there to see Connie saw the crestfallen look in his eyes, the men hung their heads while the women began to wail. Silently, Michael began to make his way through the crowd, idling accepting the condolences and well-wishers, though he didn't hear most of it for the ringing in his ears.
The sea of mourners politely parted the way for Michael to leave, save for one who stood in his way to the elevators. Looking up, Michael saw that it was Vincent who delayed him, "Did you talk to Connie?"
Michael looked up at Vincent with a gleam of understanding, seeing his nephew in a new light after all his sister had said. He understood he had been played up to this point, but now that he knew Connie's game, he could see the superior, victorious fire aflame in Vincent's eyes. It was then that he knew that Connie had told Vincent that she would reveal her plot to him, that he was fully aware that Michael knew of the betrayal and felt no shame.
"Yes," Michael said simply, repressing the urge to vomit. Vincent nodded his head knowingly.
"I trust you're returning to Sicily, then?" Vincent asked without delay.
"Yes." Michael clipped, glaring at him for his tenacity.
Vincent eyed him for a moment, sighing as he waved his uncle's anger away, "I'll send a few of my boys to see you off. I know things are rough, so I wanna make sure you make it out okay, eh?"
Vincent was having him followed. The little bastard was actually going to have him followed. Michael shared one final look with his wayward nephew, then made his way to the elevator without a word, forcing the younger man to step aside. Michael's visage was that of a vulture, and as the elevator doors closed, his eyes held a quiet rage not seen in them since the days of his youth.
Eyes as black as burning coals, the eyes of Lucifer the Fallen. The eyes of Don Michael Corleone.
-/ↀ\-
Under the blaze of the Sicilian sun, even the chill of November was abated and as warm as any day of Spring. That was what awaited Michael as he arrived at his villa in Bagheria, a small comune built in the interior near the northwestern coast of the isle of Sicily.
The old estate had once belonged to Don Tommasino, a friend of Michael's father who had helped the Corleones expand operations for their olive oil company and enact Vito's revenge against Don Ciccio. Now it belonged to Michael, a retreat in his seclusion from the rest of the world to escape from the choices he'd made in life that haunted him in the dead of night. Yet even here in the rolling hills of the Sicilian countryside dwelled the ghosts of his past.
Men patrolling the ramparts of the villa looked over the railing as his car entered the gates and waved to him in greeting over the luparas slung over their shoulders. Michael paid them no mind as he stepped out into the courtyard, kicking up dirt as he walked to the entrance and stepped inside. Michael's eyes strained to see in the darkness of the empty villa, what was once filled with life, felt now as though it were his fated tomb.
Michael walked into his study and closed the door. He poured a glass of Amaretto from a decanter and threw it back, grimacing as the bitter-sweet liquor slid down his throat. Michael poured himself another glass, swirling the Italian liquor over cubes of ice, stewing in his own misery as he wondered where it all went wrong.
His time in America had left much that weighed heavily on his mind. He had known Vincent was involved the moment he had heard of Abbandando's assassination. Up to that point, he had only suspicion to warrant a probe into Vincent's dealings, but when Michael discovered Dominic's hatred for Rosario who was then blown to smithereens the night he brought it up to his nephew, it was the confirmation Michael needed. Vincent was cleaning house.
What he hadn't foreseen was his sister's hand in this mystery scheme, and he felt genuine hurt from her betrayal. The guilt for killing his own brother for the same had haunted him for years, his first wife's murder at the hands of someone who had thought a friend, and his second wife's treason by aborting their son behind his back had left deep wounds in Michael's soul. But for years, Connie had been there to hold him together, to be the one left of his family to not turn away from him in his time of need. Learning that it was all a ruse, crafted to ease him into a false sense of contentment with the way things were, filled him with the crushing reality that he had been alone in this world for a long, long time.
Now that Michael knew her scheme, aware that the walls that protected the Corleone Family were falling around him, he could now see how the dream his father had founded an empire upon would crumble in the years to come. Oh, what a cruel joke it was! Michael had known there was something wrong with Vincent's friendship with Rosario, but his mistake had been to wait until after his meeting with him to rally his allies. Abbandando had died with twelve other men loyal to Michael that very night, all of whom would have been pivotable to any opposition he may have wished to form against the Godfather.
He didn't know for certain what Vincent was getting himself into, but he could extrapolate a damn good guess. In the year since he had visited his nephew on Halloween, Michael had investigated every rumor, every tidbit of information about Carlos Rosario and what he did with his business.
What he found was that Carlos Rosario had begun life in the mountainous provenance of Antioquia in Colombia to a family of poor farmers. It seemed that, not feeling content with this life for their son, his parents had saved everything they had to send him to the University of Carabobo to enroll in an engineering course in 1953. However, it seemed the young Rosario had a sense of patriotic duty and joined the military after he had achieved a Master's Degree in 1960.
Then in 1963, Rosario had gotten smart and became a volunteer mercenary to fight in the Dominican Civil War after the collapse of the dictatorship of the Dominican Republic in 1961, spending two years fighting a guerilla war against the Loyalists under President Reid. However, he soon fled the country when the Rebel group was crushed by the Loyalist Army after Loyalist Propaganda insinuated that the Constitutionalist Rebels were seeking a Communist uprising in the country. But by the time the ceasefire had been called, Rosario had resettled in Chili with a fat sack of cash in tow. He could have had a somewhat comfortable life with the money he had made fighting someone else's war, but he would soon land himself an opportunity that would make him millions.
Rosario had aligned himself with Chilian smugglers who funneled everything from counterfeit jeans to alcohol, electronics, and most importantly, cigarettes. This enterprise grew throughout the 1960s and 70s, and Rosario grew to prominence during what was known as the 'Marlboro Wars', a conflict where smugglers murdered each other over control of the cigarette trade. This prominence seemed to have helped make Rosario the top dog in the smuggling trade, leading to a lucrative business worth a small fortune.
But it was the late 70s and early 80s when Rosario seemed to have gone legitimate, dealing in high-value goods that were delivered throughout the entire South American continent all the way up to the American-Mexican border. That money had then been used to secure the land rights to diamond-rich provinces within the Bolivar State south of the Orinoco River. What was once a million-dollar enterprise was now racking in billions, enough for Rosario to have his name featured in Forbes Magazine as one of the Top Fifty richest philanthropists for his efforts to elevate the impoverished in his country by working through the Venezuelan Government. How he had managed to expand so quickly was a mystery to even Michael, but he suspected that Rosario had his hands intertwined with higher powers.
All of these would have sounded ideal to someone like Michael. After all, who was he to judge how a man made his fortune? Who was he to look down upon another man who had worked outside the law to build up a legitimate empire? However, the escalation of Rosario's power in such a short amount of time gave Michael cause to look deeper, and what he found troubled him to the core.
As it happened, Rosario also happened to have close ties to several South American Cartels that operated in high-stakes ventures such as cocaine and human trafficking. It was likely, Michael thought with grim realization, that Rosario was the one who provided the smuggling services needed to disperse said ventures throughout the region. If this was true, then it did not matter how Vincent was involved. Whether it be political protection, real estate to store Rosario's contraband, or distribution rights in America, having any association with the Venezuelan drug trade would destroy the Corleones.
Sighing, Michael finished his drink and sat down at his desk, pondering what could be done. Without the support of a good number of the men in the ranks of the Corleone Family, there really was nothing he could do. Many of his political connections had long since stepped out of office, and those who remained in Washington were now the instruments of Vincent's will. Michael was simply too weak in the American sphere to stand against Vincent's foolish grab for more power and money.
Even if he could overtake his nephew in what would no doubt be a bloody conflict that would destroy his family's image further, who would take his place when it was over? Michael was too old to continue, and his own son wanted nothing to do with him, let alone the business.
Michael rumbled his face in frustration and sighed, feeling as though God were punishing him for his sins, unleashing the Devil himself to inflict his torments on the old Sicilian before his time to be placed into the fire. And despite his efforts, he couldn't help but imagine that fallen angel's damnable face as the visage of his contemptible nephew twisted in smug triumph.
No. Michael refused to let his fool of a nephew win. He would not let his father's legacy die while he still lived to do something about it! Michael sneered with righteous anger, refusing to accept defeat while his tired body held stubbornly to life. But what could he do? Vincent's moves were methodic, surgical. Michael's most valued players were either dead or in Vincent's pocket, depriving him of the forces needed to take back the position of Don from Vincent.
Sighing, Michael shook his head in sadness. The Corleone Family was dead, its corpse paraded around on borrowed time. To his shame, he had failed his father to keep the family together, and there would be no salvation for it.
But, what if Micheal didn't need to save the family itself, but rather its very soul? The Corleones may be doomed to go down a dark road, but its principles, the very foundation of what had made them great, could perhaps live on in spirit. Yes, that was the solution! A new family would have to rise to survive the old, rising from the ashes as the fabled phoenix of legend.
However, it could not go to just anyone, not to some nobody he found on the street. No, its legacy belonged to Vito's blood, and in his blood it should remain! But who?
With the question lingering in his mind, Michael got up from his chair with a convicted determination he had not felt in years. To Michael Corleone, he was not only saving the soul of his family, but his own soul as well, hoping to find redemption in this act and pass on the lessons of his and his father's life to a new generation. Stepping over to the wall between the bookshelves, the old man drew open a secret cabinet behind the portrait of his father, spinning the combination lock to the steel safe hidden there. From it, he drew a journal where records of family members were kept, updated every few years so that he could keep track of what little family he had left.
First, he looked into his cousins, hoping to find someone of worth. Unfortunately, those who weren't dead were either too old or had distanced themselves from their family's business a long time ago.
Therefore, his nephews were his best bet. Michael was immediately dismissive of Connie's children, not that he held their mother's betrayal against them, but simply because Michael and Victor Rizzi were not ideal for one reason or another. Connie's youngest wasn't an option by no fault of his own, as he had died from a blow to the head when he was young after he had been ambushed by a Porto Rican youth gang while out with his friends. The vengeance that had rained down upon those boys who had broken his sister's year had been swift and vicious.
Victor, on the other hand, was a burnt-out hippie who had fully embraced the youth culture of the 1960s and was a general embarrassment to the rest of the family. Even so, Michael doubted he would have even considered Vic, as he had always been a moody and wild youth, getting his first arrest by the juvenile courts at the age of nine for theft. Michael doubted it was even worth the time to speak to the man, dulling his mind with LSD years ago.
Grumbling, Michael paused to look at an entry for his brother Fredo, who astonishingly enough had managed to sire a child with a Vegas dancer by the name of Marguerite Duvall. Ah, Michael fondly remembered Rita as she liked to be called, having dated her for a few years after his split with Key. Of course, nothing ever came of it, the two so unalike with Rita wanting to pursue a career as a Hollywood star while Michael tried to take his family into the legitimate world, but they had separated on good terms.
Michael had never met the child she gave birth to, however, as she had given it up for adoption long before they met. All he knew was that it had been a boy, and that was the end of it. Rita never spoke of it beyond the bare basics, much more interested in bragging about screwing James Shea while he had still been a senator from Massachusetts running for the Presidency. Besides, even if he knew where he lived, did Michael really want to have to deal with the offspring of his admittedly weak and dimwitted brother and a French woman? Michael would sooner blow his own brains out with one of the luparas his guardsmen carried around.
Finally, with desperate hope, Michael turned to the family of his brother Santino. Michael of course wasn't interested in Lucy Mancini, knowing what had been spawned by Sonny's inability to keep it in his pants. But Vincent wasn't the only child Sonny had sired. Santino married a young woman in 1935 by the name of Sandra Columbo, an immigrant from Sicily whose parents had returned to their home country from America before she was born. Despite that, she had been raised speaking flawless English due to her education. They had stayed in Sicily for years until one day when most of her family, including her mother and father, had died when she was young due to an earthquake that had struck the island.
Alone in the world, she moved to America after her thirteenth birthday to live with her Grandmother Anita in the Bronx. Here she had met Don Vito, who had helped her grandmother from being evicted from her home when Sandra's father had still been a boy. But it was two years later in 1932 when she had met Sonny at a dinner party hosted by his father. It had been a rather embarrassing affair when Sonny had remarked on her beauty and loudly proclaimed to the table that he, "Wouldn't let her get away." However, she couldn't help but find his declaration amusing after he was chastised by his father for making a fool of himself.
She had owed a lot to Vito for steering Sonny into settling down with her. However, even back then while he had been courting her, Sonny had been seeing other girls on the side to her sorrow. But as he became more involved in the family business, Vito intervened and protested his womanizing, having discerned the young girl's heart and revealed to Sonny her love for him. Sonny had stubbornly remarked that she was too young for marriage, only just reaching her eighteenth birthday, but in a rare moment of rage that was remembered for years to come, Vito insisted that if he saw her again without proper intentions and broke her heart, he would no longer have any respect for him. And for someone like Sonny who worshiped the ground his father tread, the notion of losing his father's respect was too horrific to imagine.
When Sonny had been killed on the causeway, Sandra had been devastated. Despite his unfaithful ways she had loved him. After the funeral, Vito offered to move her and her children to Hollywood, Florida. However, Sandra refused.
Her reasoning was that she wanted to relocate to a neutral territory for the safety of her children, but the Don decerned her true intention. Sandra knew the male Corleone's need for vengeance and feared her eldest son's desire to avenge his father's murder would be too great to resist. Sandra had simply grown tired of the violence of the criminal underworld of America and didn't want her children to grow up in it. Though it pained him to be separated from his grandchildren, Vito understood her unspoken motives, knowing how a vendetta had destroyed his parents and brother. The Don indulged his daughter-in-law and set up a home in an upper-middle-class town on the outskirts of London in Britain. As the Italian mafia had little influence in the English Empire, her family could live comfortably there with the help of the provisions left in Sonny's will and resources provided by the Corleones.
Michael shook his head, relieving himself of his own recollections as he looked over the documents concerning Santino and Sandra's children. As it turned out, Sandra had not felt content with keeping the Corleone name for herself or her children out of fear of discovery, so had changed her children's surname and taken back her maiden name to separate themselves from the shadow of their father. Michael found it curious that, of the many Sicilian names he would have expected her to take, the name she chose for her children was Evans.
The youngest son Frank had moved back to America in 1965 to attend Notre Dame, where he was the linebacker on the University's football team and earned the nickname 'Frankie the Hit Man'. However, he was forced to retire early from playing due to an injury he sustained during a game. Soon afterward he graduated and moved to Florida, where he became a lieutenant in the Miami Police Department. From what Michael understood, he never married.
Kathy, it seemed, had become a bit of a Bohemian after the death of her father, exercising her talents in art and music while keeping her grades at the top of the class. This determination served her well, assuring her a spot at Oxford University to study to obtain her doctorate. Years later, it seemed she had married a fellow doctor named Leon Pietralunga and taken his name. However, they had no children.
Kathy's twin sister Francesca, however, seemed to have led a more interesting life. Though she had attended college she didn't finish, dropping out halfway to marry the son of a rich citrus juice salesman by the name William 'Billy' Brewster Van Arsdale III in 1961. Michael smirked, finding the pretentiousness of such a name amusing. However, to his disappointment, their marriage was an unhappy one, only coming together because Billy had gotten her pregnant during a romantic rendezvous and was threatened by her brothers. The poor boy seemed to have broken his legs in a 'skiing accident'. Unfortunately, misfortune would follow the couple as the child, a daughter named Carmela, was born premature and only survived a day.
Things seemed to have improved three years later when Francesca gave birth to a second child named William IV, who Kathy had nicknamed 'Sonny'. However, shortly after her pregnancy, Francesca discovered that Billy was having an affair with one of his secretaries. Distraught, she followed him in her car one night and purposefully ran him over, cutting him in half. Michael vaguely recalled receiving a letter from Sandra about the event and having the unfaithful bastard's mistress framed and convicted for second-degree murder. Her son it seemed was studying to become a lawyer and was currently dating a British woman named Kathryn Yates.
Frowning, Michael read the file for Sandra's eldest son. It turned out that Junior had a temper like his father, cracking the skull of a fellow classmate with a thermos after being called a derogatory name at school. However, his mother had set him straight, as he had attended Oxford as well and became a dentist while he played soccer on the side, 'football' as the Europeans would call it. Jesus, fucking Brits, Michael thought condescendingly. Junior had married before entering college and had two daughters before settling down in Cokeworth, the youngest born in 1960.
Despite his death in 1979 in a car accident with his wife, what drew Michael's attention was that the youngest daughter, Lily, seemed to have little in the way of documentation. There were records of her schooling up until her eleventh birthday. Then everything fell off, the only information provided was that she had attended a private school in the Scottish Highlands, and had married a man by the name of James Potter. It seemed she had also had a son named Harry, who sadly was now an orphaned six-year-old boy since his parent's death in October of 1981, though it was strange there was no reason given.
Curious, Michael looked to see if perhaps the boy had been sent to live with any relatives. Unfortunately, while it appeared that he was placed with Junior's eldest, there wasn't any information on where they might live, only that she had married a man named Vernon Dursley and had a son called Dudley. Michael couldn't help but snort at such a stupid name, wondering if the young man was harassed by his peers for the stupidity of his parents for cursing him with it.
What was more peculiar however was that, while his file contained school reports and his guardian's names, it didn't provide a home address. A further inspection of their files confirmed that none of the Dursley files gave an address either, nor did it provide the name of the school the two boys attended. The only relevant information provided was that it appeared that Harry had already accumulated a record of delinquency, receiving several school disciplinary actions for starting fights with fellow classmates and a pattern of poor grades.
Michael began to ponder the boy named Harry Potter. This was a boy who was alone in the world, who fate had dealt with unkindly in his infancy by taking his parents away from him. He was a boy who obviously needed a guiding hand in the world, made all the more clear by his guardian's apparent inability to curb the rambunctious behavior that he no doubt inherited from both his grandfather and great-grandfather. Likely they were a simple-minded hopeless sort, given that they were stupid enough to name their own son with such a ridiculous name. Was it then that the boy should be made to be content with his lot in life, left to grow up as a delinquent held to no higher standard? No, Michael decided that out of all the members of his family, this boy needed the direction and discipline that only Michael could provide, and there was no doubt it would be easy to convince them to coincide the child to him given the boy's behavior.
Now, all he needed to do was make a call.
-/ↀ\-
Shoutout to my friend AlexWoundedSide, who I helped post his reviews. I'm happy that you enjoyed listening to my story so far!