The Rich Shall Inherit (55 page)

1904, ITALY

Franco didn’t know how much longer he could go on playing the waiting game; Poppy Mallory was interfering with his life; she dominated his thoughts, she affected every move he made. He was manipulating his business empire automatically, and his executives began to look at him nervously as he paced endlessly back and forth in the library of his big villa. They needn’t have worried; Franco’s iron hand and steely brain still controlled his empire expertly. But on the table beside his bed lay a withered gardenia that he had forbidden his servants to remove. And locked in a private safe was a small file of papers that told everything there was to know about Poppy Mallory.

Franco Malvasi had been born to inherit an empire. His father had planned it that way. Enzo Malvasi was a self-made man who, by dint of a sharp brain and a single-minded ruthlessness, had clawed his way from the lower depths of the Sicilian underworld—via extortion, protection, ransom, and blackmail—until he “owned” a fair-sized piece of southern Italy for himself.

Enzo had started out in Palermo as a wild young lad of sixteen, eager to attract the attention of the local Cosa Nostra and gain admittance to their secret ranks. First he’d collected small sums of protection money for them, then he’d done a couple of revenge jobs of arson, and a few broken legs for those who “forgot” to pay. His work had gradually increased in importance, and in violence, and as his final test, before he could be admitted to the dreaded society, he knew he had to kill a man. It was a village barber suspected of passing secrets from one Family to another.
Enzo had simply walked in and asked for a shave. He had sat in the chair and as the barber wrapped a white towel around him, he’d shot him. Enzo had felt no emotion about the act, only triumph that at last he’d proven himself and now he would become a sworn member of the Cosa Nostra. But he decided he would never again shoot a man in the stomach at close range; it was too messy.

He’d progressed rapidly, and by the time he was twenty-five he was living in a peasant’s idea of luxury in Naples and was known as a hard man, even in a world as tough as his. He returned briefly to Sicily, to marry a nice local girl from a respected Mafia Family, whose father was murdered two weeks later by a rival gang.

By the time he was thirty, he was head of his own “Malvasi Family” with territories and businesses that had made him a rich and feared man.

His first child, a son, as he had decided, was born nine months later and named Franco for Carmela Malvasi’s dead father. Enzo was himself a small man with preternaturally gray hair and a permanent worried frown, but as his boy grew and developed he thought disappointedly that he would have liked him to be more robust, taller, stronger—as befitted a future ruler. Still, his boy was intelligent even if he was small; he was interested in everything, he was affectionate, and his mother adored him.

Franco’s godfather risked traveling from the safety of his territory in Sicily for his baptism, in order to show respect for his old friend and countryman Enzo. His other godfather came from the north of Italy, and Franco’s aunts stood as godmothers. His early childhood was a happy one, running free in the palatial villa near Naples with its big, sunny walled garden. Franco didn’t even notice that its walls were exceptionally high, nor that the men who patrolled them and manned the great iron gates were not really there as his “friends.” All the other children he was taken to visit, or who came to see him, lived exactly the same way. His mother loved him and his father determined to make a gentleman of him. He had tutors from the age of four to teach him reading, writing, and arithmetic. He had a bright, acquisitive mind and he enjoyed his studies. In fact his tutors said he exhausted them, coming up with question after question and pursuing his train of thought with persistence and determination until he was satisfied with their answers.

“The boy needs other children,” the tutor told Signora Malvasi
when he was seven years old, “he needs school.” Carmela wanted nothing but the best for her boy, but when she brought up the subject with Enzo he refused even to listen. “Too dangerous,” he said flatly, “the boy stays here.”

Carmela knew that Enzo was upset that she hadn’t yet given him another child. Franco was all he had, but she couldn’t allow the boy to be deprived of a “real” life because of Enzo’s nervousness, especially as the Family were not in the business of kidnapping children; they were mostly religious men who feared only the wrath of God and their mothers. No member of a Mafia Family would stoop to kidnap a child for fear of his own mother’s anger at such a barbarous act. Still Enzo wouldn’t hear of it and when she finally found that she was pregnant once more, she took it as a sign from heaven.

The new baby was a cherub, with a mass of dark curls and enormous brown eyes. Enzo had his dream child at last. It was easy after that for Carmela to get permission for Franco to attend the local school with the other boys; after all, if anything happened, there was always young Stefano—named for Enzo’s own father this time.

Stefano was spoiled by his father and babied by his mother, because with Franco busy in his own new world of school, all her maternal instincts were centered on the little one. And Franco loved his little brother, though he didn’t always like him. Especially as he grew older.

When Franco was twelve, Stefano was still only five. Of course, he was just a baby so it was only right that Franco had to let him have his own way. Sometimes it was hard, though, because Stefano always seemed to destroy or lose the things that mattered to him, like his model battleship or his Swiss penknife, and once he’d even scribbled on the copies of famous paintings that Franco had admired and hung around the walls of his room.

When Franco was seventeen, he went away to a university and then to business school in America, and he missed a great deal of Stefano’s growing-up years. When he returned, aged twenty-two, he found his brother to be a spoiled, petulant boy of fifteen, cosseted by his mother and protected by his father. There was no doubt that Stefano was handsome, but there was also no doubt that he was lazy and stupid.

Stefano’s tutors had had an easy time of it; he’d asked no questions and avoided lessons as much as he could. He had no curiosity about the world beyond his own immediate boundaries,
and his only strong urge was sexual. At fifteen, Stefano had already got one of the maids into trouble and though he’d been warned by his father, albeit with a conspiratorial wink and a reference to his manhood being “the Malvasi inheritance,” he still pursued his urges as single-mindedly as a rutting stag.

It seemed to Franco that he’d always known what the “Family business” was and he’d accepted it and its special way of life because he knew no other. He’d gone to America armed with letters of introduction to the heads of other Families and, with an inborn wariness, he’d kept his social life within that clan. He’d made few real friends at the college itself, and none that would last, simply because he knew he couldn’t expect them to understand. Whenever he was tempted by the carefree life-style of the other undergraduates, and especially the beautiful blond Anglo-Saxon Protestant girls who looked to him like the princesses in his childhood picture books, he reminded himself sternly of who he was: Franco Malvasi, son and heir apparent of a Mafia godfather. And nothing and no one would make him deviate from that responsibility.

The Malvasi headquarters was in a massive warehouse and office complex in the southwestern corner of Naples, close by the docks. Franco was surprised on his return to find that Stefano was already working in “the business.” He even had his own office and a seat at the big oval table in the boardroom when the great meetings were called and all the “executives” attended. The fact that Stefano’s seat was on his father’s right hand, while his own was lower down the table, was not lost on Franco, but he kept quiet. He had been away so long, he thought it was only right that his father should expect him to prove his worth; as his heir he would be undertaking a great responsibility.

He had been home a month when he first detected the strain of cruelty in Stefano; he was walking in the garden, his head buried in a book on the life, works, and techniques of the painter Fra Angelico, when he heard the sound of a pitiful meow. Hurrying toward its source, he found Stefano holding a small cat aloft by its tail. He was clutching a long, open razor and he was systematically shaving the fur from the terrified creature. Each time it screamed and jerked in a desperate effort to get away from its torturer, the blade cut deep into its flesh. It was already a streaming mass of blood and fur when Franco snatched it away from him, glaring at him contemptuously.

“You young bastard,” he snarled, “what do you think you’re doing?”

“It’s only a cat,” scoffed Stefano, “what difference does it make?”

“And what right do you have to make it suffer?” Franco demanded angrily. “The poor creature is almost skinned alive! It will have to be put down.”

“You should have just left it with me, it would have been dead in minutes,” laughed Stefano. “You’re too softhearted, brother, and that’s not the stuff a godfather is made of.”

“Nor is senseless cruelty,” snapped Francco. “Use your head, Stefano, and try to control yourself.”

He kept his ears and eyes open after that, ever alert for reports of Stefano’s activities, and it wasn’t long before he became aware that his brother was already notorious for his treatment of women in the cheap alleyway brothels of Naples. It seemed Stefano sought out the lowest of them all, a place where he could play the young lord, throwing money around, swaggering and drinking and boasting of his sexual prowess—though oddly enough the reports that came back from that section were dismissive. Young Stefano was no hotshot in bed despite his claims, but he more than made up for it with a crude display of sadism.

At home, though, he was Carmela’s baby. He could do no wrong. He was tall, handsome, and always smiling, and he was as gentle and affectionate with his mother as he was coldly cruel to the helpless young women in the bordellos.

Franco was twenty-five and Stefano eighteen, when one night Enzo took them aside and told them that he was a dying man. Half a dozen different doctors had confirmed the diagnosis—cancer of the stomach. “This will go no farther than this room,” he said, glaring at them both, his dark eyes already filmed with pain. “Your mother will not know—and nor will our enemies. The time has come for me to think of the future of our business, my sons.
Your future.
You already know what I feel for the both of you. Let a dying man make one last request. Make me a happy man … get married. Now. Give me a grandson so that I can die happy, knowing that the Malvasi family will go on and prosper. Give your mother her grandchildren so that she will have some happiness when I am gone.”

Stefano proposed marriage through Emilia Bertagna’s father the following week and was accepted immediately, though Emilia didn’t find out about it until later when the family told her they
were throwing a big engagement party—hers. She was to be wed within the month.

Emilia was also eighteen; she was pretty and vivacious and full of fun, and though Stefano Malvasi wasn’t the boy she might have chosen, he was handsome. She accepted that it was a good match and went to her wedding like a dutiful daughter.

It was the most lavish celebration seen in Naples for years. The bride was beautiful in yards and yards of demure white lace with a retinue of twelve tiny dark-haired bridesmaids. She smiled happily, clutching Stefano’s arm as they cut their cake, and Enzo Malvasi, beaming paternally from the head of the table, gave them his blessing.

At three the next morning Franco was woken by a telephone call. It was from Emilia, alone and distraught in her honeymoon hotel in Rome. Stefano had drunk a lot of wine that night and when it came time to go to bed … well, she said desperately … he’d tried to make love to her, unsuccessfully. Swearing and cursing and blaming her, he’d slapped her several times across the face, flung on his clothes, and departed. She’d fallen asleep exhausted and tearful, but had been woken later by noises coming from the drawing room of their suite. She’d crept to the door and peered through. Stefano was kneeling naked in front of a young boy—and he was—Emilia hadn’t been able to go on but Franco had heard enough. Telling her to stay calm, he was was out of the villa and on the road to Rome in less than five minutes.

Now he knew why Stefano’s reputation with women was so unsuccessful; now he
understood
his lazy, self-indulgent mother-dominated brother! By the time he arrived at the hotel in Rome, he was ready to kill him. But Stefano had packed his bag and gone. Emilia said he’d left with the boy an hour before.

It took Franco two days to track him down, and when he finally found him it was in one of the lowest dives in the city, a sordid, dingy bar, wreathed in smoke and smelling of sweat and opium, with rooms above, patronized by deviates and their prey. In one of the rooms he found Stefano sleeping naked on a filthy torn mattress swarming with lice, while a young boy of eleven or twelve years cowered in a corner. Franco saw the opium pipe and smelled its sickly sweetness on his brother’s breath as he hauled him to his feet, cursing him for the beast he was. Thrusting a fistful of money at the poor child, he pushed Stefano into some clothes and half dragged him from the room.

He took him first to the public baths, ordering them to strip
him and to burn his clothes, and then he told them to plunge him into a hot bath filled with strong disinfectant. He went to buy some fresh clothes, and when he returned Stefano was shrouded in a white towel, looking furious. “What are you doing to me? Your own brother?” he snarled as Franco threw the clothes at him.

“You
are disgusting,” Franco said coldly. “You are worse than an animal. If our father were not dying, Stefano, I would take you to him and make him understand what you are.
You
know I can’t do that. Still, you have married this poor innocent girl and I’ll make sure you keep your marriage vows. Or I’ll see you dead.”