“Grab my hand,” Miles said in a whisper. “We’ll go out the back. We have to run back to Corina.”
“But she’s seven blocks away!” Letty said.
“Trust me, Letty. Please. I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
“It’s not me that I’m worried about!” Letty gasped.
Letty’s eyes went wild with panic as she rose to her feet. As the other patrons screamed and rushed out the front door, Letty and Miles rushed for the kitchen door. Giving a glance behind him, Miles’s eyes met with Knox’s, and he rushed through the door of the restaurant’s kitchen with a knot in the pit of his stomach.
“Miles!” Knox called as he raced after his brother.
“Shit…” Miles said as he saw his brother chase after him. “C’mon! Here he comes!”
“Why are we runnin’ from Knox?”
“Because he’s with the guy who just tried to shoot me in the fuckin’ head! C’mon!”
Tears began to stream down Letty’s face as she gave a look back at Knox. Horror took over Letty’s eyes as her gaze met Knox’s. Shaking his head from side to side, Knox looked at Letty with a look of warning.
“It’s not what you think!” Knox screamed in a desperate voice.
But Miles continued to run, pulling Letty along behind him.
“Keep up, Letty. Come on!” Miles urged.
Letty’s heart beat frantically as she fought to keep up. Giving Knox one last glance behind her, she tried to wrap her head around what was happening, but logic failed her. Knox had always been Miles’s right-hand man. He was his best friend, his brother, and often, his closest confidant. But in that moment, the lines blurred as Knox ran after Miles along with Vic, the triggerman, and Miles’s own father, Michael Capadonno, the Butcher of Carrion.
“Miles, wait!” Knox screamed as his pace quickened. He was catching up and fast. Miles pulled Letty at a faster rate, yanking her arm hard to keep her out of danger. Knox, catching up to his brother, cut into Letty’s stride, knocking her to the floor of the restaurant kitchen. A sauce pan clattered as it hit the floor next to where Letty landed. Looking at Knox with a scathing look upon his face, Miles cut the gap between himself and his brother. He might not have meant to knock Letty to the ground, but it didn’t matter. Reeling his arm back, Miles drilled his fist straight at Knox’s face.
Snap!
Miles’s fist collided with Knox’s nose as he sent his brother falling to the kitchen floor.
“Fucking put your hands on a woman! Especially mine!” Miles yelled as he glowered at Knox with a hostile glare.
Blood covered Knox’s face and shirt as he glared up at him. Before his brother could say a word, Miles grabbed Letty’s hand, pulled her up from the floor and started running again.
The echoes of footsteps falling upon the concrete sidewalk were drowned out by the approaching sound of the subway as Miles Capadonno and Letty Alves raced hand in hand, fleeing from an unseen danger.
“C’mon, Letty! Run! We gotta get back to the car!” Miles screamed.
Letty fought to keep up with Miles’s swift stride as he pulled her forward, desperate to get her out of South Philly alive.
Miles’s voice was drowned out by the approaching train as the 7:17 Broad Street Line rushed under the street below. Miles’s and Letty’s feet slapped the pavement as they charged south on Broad Street. This was supposed to be a fun night out. A break from all the chaos that had broken out in Carrion. The last thing Miles and Letty thought would come from a visit to a restaurant in celebration of Miles’s birthday was an execution attempt on Miles’s life.
“Miles, wait!” a deep voice shouted from behind them.
“Ignore him, Miles. We need to just go!” Letty screamed.
“Fuck off!” Miles spat back at the man he once considered his best friend.
“Miles!” the voice called again.
“Knox, back off!” Miles shouted over his shoulder.
“Miles!” Letty screeched.
It took a moment for Miles to understand what was happening. His chest heaved as he continued to run, but something stopped him dead in his tracks. A vintage black Cadillac curled the corner of Broad and Mifflin Streets, Miles attempted to identify the driver, but the windows were tinted and it was impossible to see. The passenger side window rolled down slowly as the tip of a gun pointed out at Miles. Immediately, Miles recognized the man’s face.
“MILES!” Letty screamed.
Grabbing his girl by her waist, he ran faster ducking into an alley. Three shots were fired, each hitting the pavement just feet away.
“Miles!” Knox’s voice cried out again.
As the car pulled off again, Miles and Letty darted from the alleyway and raced down Broad Street with Knox still on their tail. The black Cadillac had turned onto the opposite side of Broad Street and was now traveling south. The driver had rolled down his window now. Letty’s mouth dropped when she saw the man’s face. The tears didn’t begin to flow from her eyes until she saw the passenger.
“I don’t believe this!” Letty screamed. She ran as fast as she could beside Miles, barely able to keep up. “It’s Vendetta Vic and the Butcher. Why the fuck are they after us, Miles?”
“Don’t worry about that, just run, Letty!” Miles screamed. The fear was apparent in his voice, though he was trying not to let it show for her own benefit.
Letty was only seventeen, and scared out of her mind. Miles was holding his composure a little better, though at eighteen years of age, Miles was nothing more than a kid, himself. Miles could see the lights of Broad and Snyder fast approaching. Letty’s knuckles blanched as she clasped onto him, running for dear life. The Cadillac screeched up Broad Street, fast approaching on them. Another shot was fired. It hit the ground just inches from where Letty stood.
“Miles! Listen to me!” Knox screamed. It was a terrible blood-curdling cry.
But as Miles turned around to face his brother, the one man that Miles had grown to love and trust, he realized that his trust was misplaced. Three officers on foot raced up the sidewalk behind Knox, shouted at Miles to drop his weapon.
“I don’t have a weapon!” Miles shouted with a perplexed look on his face.
“He didn’t do anything!” Letty shouted.
Out of the corner of his eye, Miles watched as the black Cadillac rolled off with not even a second glance from the officers.
“I’m sorry, Miles,” Knox said with a look of guilt on his face.
“Yeah, you are sorry,” Miles said in a voice of total disgust.
As the officers rushed past Knox, they cuffed Miles, Mirandizing him, leaving Letty in a state of shock.
“What am I being arrested for?” Miles asked with a dark edge to his voice.
“The murder of Giancarlo Rigatti,” one of the officers said as they led Miles to the patrol car that sat idle in the shoulder of Broad Street.
“What?” Miles spat. “I had nothing to do with that!”
“Fifteen witnesses, Capadonno. Let’s go.”
“Miles!” Letty screamed.
Giving his girl a glance back, Miles gave Letty a cool wink.
“It’ll be all right, Letty. You’ll see. Everything will be all right. Wait for my letter.”
Quickly, Miles flicked the keys to his car to Letty, as she ran off, fear ripping through her body.
“Miles!” Knox called out.
Turning his glare in Knox’s direction, Miles spat, “Don’t ever speak my name again. You’re dead to me!”
As Miles was loaded in the back of the squad car, he grit his teeth, hell bound and determined to gain revenge on the men that had framed him. As the patrol car sped off, Miles watched as the black car slinked off Broad Street, rolling east down Passyunk Avenue.
CHAPTER ONE
October 5, 2015
Franklin Correctional Facility
Philadelphia, PA
Seventeen Years Later
“BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN CAN tell you everything you need to know about
New Jersey in a song. For that matter, the dude from Asbury Park, New Jersey, can tell you everything you need to know about me in a song, too. I walk a Thunder Road. I was Born in the U.S.A. I’m On Fire and baby, I was Born to Run. I got a Hungry Heart and I’ve been Dancing in the Dark. These feet have pounded the Streets of Philadelphia and I’ve stirred up trouble in Atlantic City. I’m Working on a Dream from the confines of a six by eight cell.”
Miles Capadonno spoke with certainty. There was no trace of insecurity in his deep voice or his big as life stance. Standing at six feet, six inches tall, with a long black beard, and intricate tattoos covering every inch of his arms and back, Miles was certainly a force to be reckoned with. Every word he spoke was gospel. He was commanding and knew how to hold an audience. When a man like Miles Capadonno talked, you sure as shit listened.
“He’s called the boss for a reason. What other singer has the balls to write a song about a South Philly mobster? I haven’t heard one of the Boss’s songs in years, but I remember the sermon he preached loud and clear. Being in prison doesn’t afford me some of the things that you probably take for granted.”
Miles leaned in closer to the bars of his cell.
“Yeah, you heard me. Prison. The clink. A six by eight cell. For the last seventeen years, I’ve called the Franklin Correctional Facility in Center City Philadelphia my home. What? You have something you wanna say? I see what’s happening here… Your face, it just changed. Was that a change of opinion? Was it judgement? Before you slam your gavel on me, you might want to know the facts first.”
Miles ran his tongue over his teeth as his eyes took on a dangerous quality. Wrapping his fingers around the bars of his cell, Miles Capadonno demanded attention.
“Here’s all you need to know. Number one… I was framed. Number two… I’m not a rat. Number three… vengeance belongs to me. I can hear the Boss’s voice in my head loud and clear to this day, preaching about suicide raps, hitting the open road, and bolting from the town that intends to slay you. I should have listened to the message that the Boss preached. I should have run. I look back often and think, what if I would have packed up Letty and hit the road in my Charger. Things would have been different. Right?”
Shaking his head slowly, Miles sighed heavily as his eyes darted to the floor.
“She’s long gone, along with my freedom. Now here I am, doing this interview with you through the bars of my cell at the Franklin Correctional Facility, where I’ve spent half my life rotting away. I took the fall for another guy. The men I once called brothers were nothing more than blood-thirsty cowards. They were spineless swine wearing the guise of a made man. I wear no such disguise. I say what I mean, I mean what I say, and God help the fucker that stands in my way.”
Smacking his lips, Miles continued, “I grew up in Carrion, New Jersey. Set deep in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, Carrion is a town with a unique setting. Founded in 1922, Carrion is in a coastal forest along the Jersey Shore. The City Council named the city Carrion. They were sadistic sons of bitches. Who names a town after the rotting flesh of an animal? Did they know what would happen to the town that stood in the shadows of New York and Philadelphia? It was an epicenter of crime, and it just so happened to be the halfway point between the two busiest mob cities in the United States. New York was where the kings sat on their thrones and called the shots, but Philly was where shit went down. South Philly is where the action was. I knew the towns all too well, but none as well as Carrion. It was a town that lived up to its namesake. Organized crime families with ties to the five boroughs of New York and the bloodthirsty demigods of South Philly rocked this town. It didn’t matter that the boss was a man that I called uncle, and my father was the enforcer for the Capadonno crime family.”
Shouts from the other inmates distracted Miles for a moment. As he refocused his attention, Miles continued.
“My uncle, Sonny Capadonno, is half the reason I am locked up in this shit hole to begin with. The other half belongs to my father, Michael. If you want the whole story, you’ll have to ask around. I’ll never tell. Around here a snitch is a rat, and rats get killed. Omerta. It’s a code of silence. An oath of secrecy. If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”
Miles laughed darkly. “Ha. If only I was joking…”
Miles pivoted on his chair as he tapped three times on the cement wall of his cell. The words La Cosa Nostra were etched onto the wall some time ago by another hand with a pencil. The words translated from Italian to English as This Thing of Ours. Tapping his finger at the words, Miles laughed facetiously.
“I ain’t worried about La Cosa Nostra no more. I’m worried about this thing of mine. All I want is to pick up where I left off. Find Letty and pick up the pieces. The creeps that put me in here will get what’s coming to them. I’ll go up against Carrion. I’ll wage war against the foot soldiers of South Philly. I’ll rage through the five boroughs until everybody remembers my name and my face. There is just one thing that slows my stride. The mob couldn’t kill me. Prison couldn’t break me. Going home threatens to do both.”
A somber expression takes over Miles’s face.
“I shouldn’t have expected her to wait around for me. It’s not like we were married. We were kids. But when she didn’t return my letters, I felt burned. Say what you want. Think what you will. I know we were young, but it wasn’t just some summer fling. Yeah, we were irrational, but what we had was real. She could be married now, for all I know. She could have a family of her own. Shit, living in Carrion, she could be dead. I have no idea what happened after I went on the inside. Thoughts about Letty have plagued my nights for seventeen years now.”
Miles glanced up at his prison wall again. Strike marks filled up the empty spaces on the wall. Each day Miles Capadonno has served as an inmate earns a check on the wall. Grabbing a pencil out of his back pocket, Miles strikes the wall one last time.
“Last one. That’s the last one I’ll ever have to make. I was arrested on May 18, 1998—my eighteenth birthday. Letty was only seventeen and scared out of her mind. Age eighteen and the Capadonno family had put a contract on my head. I had to choose between the women I loved and the men I served. Part of the code is that if the Capadonno family needs you, they expect you to turn your back on the world.”
Miles pulled a photograph from his pocket. He stroked the old polaroid as if it was his most prized possession. Anyone that knew Miles Capadonno well knew that his only photograph of his mother Andie was extremely important to him.
“Nothing else matters. Not your girl. Not your own mother. My mom, Andie Cormack, was not a well woman. A week before my eighteenth birthday, she took a turn for the worse. Her ovarian cancer had become stronger than she was and that was saying something. Andie Cormack was the strongest person I knew—male or female. My mother was the perfect combination of spitfire and sugar, honey and hell.”
Miles continued to glance down at the photograph. There was a pain in his eyes that was palpable.
“In my father’s youth, he had hooked up with my mother and quickly became the brunt of his brother’s jokes. Why? Because my mother wasn’t Italian-American. She was, however, a smart, beautiful, Irish-American woman with a heart of gold. He married her despite the jiving. They had six kids together, but among their three oldest kids, I was the only one that rushed to her side. My mother was a saint and I had to watch her die.”
Miles’s face fell into his hands for a moment. Emotion filled him and he needed a moment to swallow it down. Letting a sharp breath escape his lungs, Miles continued.
“I had to choose between being by my sick mother’s side and running jobs for the Corellis in Philly. Loyalty won. I was the good son. The Capadonno’s didn’t quite see it that way, though. The Corelli’s were short a man, got their panties in a bunch, and sent Nico Firenze, fresh off the boat from the boot, to kill my uncle Sonny. Nico failed to kill him, and got deported shortly after. In retribution, Uncle Sonny sent a guy to ice Giancarlo Rigatti. They whacked him at a bar
near the Navy Yard in Philly, and sent my father, the “Butcher” his body. Rumor is that he turned Giancarlo into Vienna sausages which were delivered to his grandfather, Nunzio Rigatti, boss of the Rigatti Crime Family up in New York. Problem was, rumor got out that the guy who whacked Rigatti was me. After that, they were all gunning for me. The Corelli’s. The Capadonno’s. The Rigatti’s. Even my own brother. There was only one thing to do. I had to get out of Carrion. I had to get miles away.”
Miles tucked his photograph back into his shirt pocket. Unfolding himself from the chair, he stood up to his full height. His presence was commanding. Surely much more commanding than the kid he was when he entered Franklin Correctional Facility all those years ago.
“See, there’s no loyalty where there’s no money involved. I had to learn the hard way. Now, not only is the Coalition pissed because they received chopped up bits of Giancarlo Rigatti served up on a platter with a letter with my name on it, but the Capadonno’s are pissed because I put someone else before them, putting them in a tight spot. Lord only knows how many hits were put on my head.”
An unseen reporter cleared his throat. “Tell me about the Coalition, Miles…”
“The Coalition. That’s like the league of nations of the mafia families. If you wanna know more, maybe you should set up a fuckin’ interview wit’ them…” Miles spat, giving the reporter a nasty look. “I ain’t a rat.”
“Sorry, Miles. Continue…” the reporter said apologetically.
“Now seventeen years later, after spending half my life in this shit hole, the great state of Pennsylvania has deemed me fit for civilization. Imagine that. Freedom. What the hell would I do with it?”
Casting a dark look out of his cell, the edges of Miles’s lips turned up just slightly. With a voice ripe with assurance, Miles said, “Don’t worry. I’ve got a plan.”
CHAPTER TWO
“FUCK YOU, CAPADONNO!” Vic Schiabetta screamed from his cell as Miles was ushered through D Block by two armed prison guards. Vic gripped up the bars as he bared his ugly stained teeth.
Miles Away (Carrion #1) Page 2