Secession: A Mafia Boss Series, Installment #2

Chapter 2~ Exile

**Present day**

~Victor POV~

I was in my home office at my Long Island Estate on Gardeners Bay, looking out the window that overlooked my private beach below. The sun was shining, but I could see some darker clouds forming beyond, and I was hoping it would not interrupt the planned festivities today. On the beach, I could see the rooftop of the white tent and the beautiful floral wedding arbor that was set up for Gia and Caden’s wedding that was to take place in just two hours’ time. All in all, it was a lovely day for a wedding. I couldn’t be any happier for my cousin Gia, who was like a baby sister to me and my best friend, Caden. Though their pairing was unimaginable given how different they were, my cousin being beautiful, smart but nerdy with a corky personality that you couldn’t help but love given her unintentional humor and weirdness, never wanting to be the center of attention, while Caden, on the other hand, well let’s just say he was definitely not that. He was always the life of the party, funny, cool, and confident and always seemed to have had multiple women on each arm. But all of a sudden, within the last year, the seemingly untamed playboy fell in love with the wallflower and the rest is history, all culminating in today, where they will stand before God, family and friends committing themselves to each other for prayerfully a lifetime. I suspected that the proximity to one another after many years working together at my corporate empire where Gia was the Chief Financial Officer and Caden, the Vice President, may have also played a factor in this unlikely union.

Gia and Caden’s wedding could not help but remind me of my own wedding that happened in many different circumstances almost a year ago when I married the daughter of my arch enemy, Don Alphonso De Rossi in a negotiated arranged marriage to end a century-long feud between the two families. A feud that spanned decades of wrongs and atrocities on both sides. Anna Isabella Rossi-Bernardi was my beautiful, fiery wife whose mouth could get you to either want to kill her or f**k her. It was a good thing I loved f*****g her more than I wanted to kill her. Being the head of the rival Mafia family, it was indeed a good thing that was the case. Though I suspected, in either scenario, she would put up a strong fight as she was Mafiosi through and through. I learned that fairly quickly. It would be to your detriment if you believed her undeniable beauty from her curvy sexy body, auburn long curly hair, full lips and greenish blue eyes were all she had to offer.

Isabella was smart, cunning, ambitious, and formidable. I can truly say she is the love of my life and my equal in every way. We were approximately a month away from our one-year wedding anniversary on June 20th. Isabella and I have been through a roller coaster of a year that found us dealing with mutual devastating family revelations, our seemingly intrinsic link to one another from even before we were born to now our unbreakable bond, love and devotion to each other, strengthening the alliance between our two families. We stood as one of the biggest powerful couples in New York upper society and undoubtedly the world, me as the very successful, thirty-five-year-old business mogul and founder of Bernardi Corp. and Isabella as the beautiful and talented, twenty-four-year-old powerhouse of the fashion industry as the creator and fashion designer of Rinascita, a subsidiary of my company.

Though the powerful and not so powerful, non-criminal, polite society elites and the greater public saw the attractive successful businessman and his beautiful wife, what they didn’t see was what was beneath that polished façade, Bella and I stood as the Queen and King of the Mafia world. Although, I tried my best to shield her as much as possible from my mafia organization, it did not change our reality, that I stood as the Capo dei Capi, the Head of all Heads. I am Don Bernardi, the man, the myth, the devil who would not blink when it came to defending my wife, family, mafia and my interests from any threats. Unfortunately, with power came the inevitable threats.

The Bernardi mafia has never been stronger. Under my leadership the past six years, the family have amassed more power, excessive wealth, and respectability beyond measure. I am not foolish enough not to recognize and acknowledge that I was able to accomplish it by standing on the shoulders of giants like my father and uncle. Though both men had complex histories and frankly had the capacity to be monsters, nevertheless they were instrumental to the success and longevity of the Bernardi family. With both of them now gone, I stand as the lone head of the Bernardi Mafia. No other mafia organization could compare or compete. It has been relatively uneventful since the Bernardi- Rossi summit a few months ago, when I overtook the Rossi mafia with my wife’s blessing after the unceremonious removal of Don Rossi and his nephew and heir apparent, Alto Cardello Rossi-Mancini months prior. The shock and awe of that night in which twenty-five main Rossi lieutenants were brutally replaced by their number two in command under my order has reverberated throughout the mafia world, reaffirming the power, reach and ruthlessness of the Bernardi Mafia.

Though I knew that a war was brewing. A war that will test me like no other. My men and I have been dealing with a then unknown conspirator who had spent a month-long campaign trying to overtake my mafia about nine months ago. He was able to kill one of my loyal soldiers in order to shield his identity, plant a spy in my corporation and turned one of my long-time confidants. Just when he was about to finally be revealed, he assassinates the only connection to him by delivering a masterful long-range shot through her head, missing me by a mere inch past my own head. But that shot was the perpetrator’s undoing. It was the last piece of the puzzle. My men and I knew we were looking for a supposedly dead soldier who had information about my organization that only a senior upper echelon lieutenant would have known. Adding this guy being a master sniper, Tony, my head of security and equally formidable master sniper, and I had no doubt who we were looking for. It was none other than Nicolai Constantino Bernardi-Giordano, my cousin.

Nicolai was supposed to be dead. He had died six years prior, on the job in a shoot-out in Jersey City with known Rossi lieutenants who supposedly ambushed him. I remember back then I had a hard time believing that Nicolai could be out maneuvered by anyone, never mind Rossi lieutenants. He was a formidable soldier. One of our best. Though growing up Nicolai and I were not close, and had no love lost between us, he was still family, so we found a way to co-exist. His death was a shock and blow to my then very young reign as head of the Bernardi Maffia.

Tony, the head of my security, was the only one of my close advisers up until last night that knew about Nicolai being alive. He has been discretely investigating Nicolai’s disappearance for the last eight months. There were a lot of questions about Nicolai’s sudden rise from the grave. One of which was that we had a very real body supposedly buried in the family cemetery that was located two miles onto the Estate. Nicolai’s body was recovered, and I remembered that my Uncle Vito was the one who identified him and had the cleaners prepare him for the funeral. Given what we were told about how he was killed, receiving multiple shots to the face and head, my Uncle Vito instructed and arranged for a closed casket service and burial to spare Aunt Lita, Nicolai’s mother, any added pain and anguish. I never saw Nicolai’s corpse nor, as Tony found out through his investigation now, anyone of our men except Uncle Vito. I remember going to Nicolai’s church ceremony but chose not to go to the burial given my aversion to cemeteries since my family’s death. But regardless, I knew for a fact a burial took place. Tony tracked down the cleaners who had prepared Nicolai’s body. They remembered the corpse they'd received had several bullets in its face and head, making it unrecognizable. They reported that Uncle Vito prevented them from running any blood or dental comparison to conclusively identify the corpse as Nicolai.

It did not pass my notice that at every turn in this investigation, my Uncle Vito’s literal and figurative fingerprints were all over Nicolai’s perceived death and now that I know that my uncle was indeed capable of keeping big secrets, it was not too far from a stretch that he must have masterminded Nicolai’s departure.

My Uncle Vito took over as the Head of the Bernardi Mafia when my father died nearly twenty years ago when I was fifteen years old, but he did it only with the explicit premise that it was my Kingdom to rule when I was ready to do so. So, as I got older, went to school, graduated from Princeton University and Oxford with my MBA, established my legitimate empire, wealth and powerful connections, my uncle ran the organization in my behalf.

Nicolai was my Uncle Vito’s number two and, as such, he stood to take over the Kingdom if my Uncle Vito stepped down or died. That would have been the natural succession of things if I was not Don Enzo’s son and if I did not stand as the legitimate heir of the Bernardi mafia family, the first male child to the firstborn son. My uncle did everything in his power to ensure that I sat as the head of the family. As I reflect on what could have caused my uncle to make the extreme move to permanently exile a Bernardi, the firstborn of his sister’s no less, I imagine Nicolai’s crime must have been unforgivable.

Tony was able to learn that Uncle Vito flew out on his private plane which he self-piloted around the week of Nicolai’s supposed disappearance, heading to an unknown destination in South America. Back then, I was under the impression that my Uncle Vito was in search for Nicolai, who had gone missing for three days before his body was discovered, but I did not remember this flight. I couldn’t be sure if my Uncle Vito purposely held this information from me, or I was overly preoccupied as it appeared to have taken place the night that my fiancée at the time, Amelia’s father, got shot by a would-be assailant who attempted to assassinate him. For all these years, I had been under the assumption that District Attorney, Michael DeAngelis was the target, but I now wondered what if he wasn’t. Michael was able to make a full recovery, and that assassination attempt catapulted him straight into the New Jersey Senate seat that same year. He was now running as Governor of New Jersey, the last I heard.

Lorenzo, Tony and Kaleb entered the office, bringing me out of my reverie. Kaleb, my head of digital defense and weaponry eagerly said, “One of our drones has just detected some movement in the forest two miles onto the Estate. The movement is too deliberate to be wildlife.”

I knew what that meant and my jaw tightened .