Chapter Text
CHAPTER ONE—
MAKING LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON
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Italy is a country of many things. It held beautiful beaches that would put the Greeks to shame, cuisine differentiating each unique place you visited. The seashells were the finest around, and you will never taste gelato as good as the kind you get during a hot Saturday afternoon. Italy is a tourist's dream place. Even on colder days in the North, the trees and cities looked like heaven with snow gently powdered on wooden tops and homes.
What those tourism pamphlets didn’t show was the rampant drug and prostitution problem. Tourists would probably laugh if you warned them not go down particular streets at night, saying that they’d ‘been around the block’ and ‘knew what they were doing’. Didn’t stop them from accidentally getting addicted to homemade MDMA or disappearing after witnessing a ‘business’ deal in action, though.
Cops were a joke and could be easily bought out with money. Politicians, too. As long as they were paid an appropriate sum and the business didn’t directly affect them, they would willingly turn a blind eye. Bigger cities were hard to fully infect, some parents and family barring their neighborhoods against it, but small towns were easy prey. Small towns like yours, that is.
Amalfi is a small township in the Salerno province. It lies in a deep ravine and looks out into the gulf, with tall apartments and other buildings looming over it. There’s no railroad system. You’d either have to drive or go to Vietri sul Mare if you wanted to get to Naples. The drive is solitary, with little interruptions. It's perfect for drug trafficking and other petty crimes to worm its way into the otherwise peaceful town.
Your first encounter with it was when you were four years old, still stuck in nursery school.
Your small plastic sandals clicked on the stone sidewalk, one tiny hand grasping on the pink polka-dotted school bag and the other feeling the fabric of the ribbon that kept your hair back. You had gotten up extra early that morning. But fitful coughs could be heard in an alleyway, and your small strides slowing to a stop as you peeked inside. Grass began to grow in small clumps, peeking underneath the stones as you stared down into the grey area. It was dark, the morning sunlight doing Mr. Polenta, your next-door neighbor, no favors.
His body was slumped over, balding head slick with sweat and his normally pressed clothing drenched and crumpled. One of his shoes was even untied, the shoelace missing. Your eyes trailed up to his chest, watching as it would stutter before another series of coughs would begin. His shirt sleeve was rolled up all the way to his shoulder, revealing bulging veins and thin dark lines that spindled down like a spider’s web.
And wrapped tight around his upper arm, was the shoelace.
You feel your grip tighten around your ribbon, thumb rubbing it furiously as if it would comfort you after witnessing such a gruesome sight.
He wasn’t a very happy man, you knew that much. The chattering woman who visited your nonna every Thursday wouldn’t bother to hide their gossiping tones.
“Did you hear what happened to his son? Apparently, he yelled at him in the middle of the plaza,” they would say.
“I saw him stalking Mimi last Friday,” that was his ex-wife apparently, “what a creep!”
You didn’t understand how your nonna could stand them, but she would just pat your head and insist everything was fine. It wasn’t like she could force them out anyway, she was old and frail, and her body would probably break before she’d have the ability to. You liked him though. He would always give you biscotti on your way to school when you walked past his home. Sometimes it’d even be dipped in chocolate.
But you left him there in that smelly old alley, and you never saw him again.
Your second encounter was two days shy of your fifth birthday. Much has changed since you left that old alleyway. Old but clean clothes became ragged, your body covered in dirt and scratches while your hair remained frazzled, your bow holding your bangs out of your face. If you ran your fingers over the pad of your palm, you were met with a distinct type of roughness, a roughness no girl your age should have. Nonna likes to soak them in warm water with salts and dried flowers, but it doesn't help.
Walks to the school were few to zero, most of your days spent rummaging around the dirty seaside trying to scrounge up enough lira and coins for food and your nonna. If you were a few bills short, you would turn to other slightly... immoral methods.
Nonna would put a stop to it in a heartbeat had she known, but your ‘friends’ assisted you in keeping her unaware.
There were two gangs in your small home town. The Onorare, or Magliana. Both came from larger functions, but they still fought for control over the area. It was full of teenagers looking to escape life and naive tourists, they couldn’t have picked a better place.
The Magliana had spread out from Rome, a smaller gang compared to most, but it was still able to travel far and wide, taking whatever scraps the bigger gangs would leave behind. But since they were spread out, they were often thin. Seeing as Magliana wouldn’t trouble itself with younger kids with no money, it was easy for Onorare to manipulate you into their grasp.
Pickpocket and give them fifteen percent of your earnings, if the day was slow, they often sent you home with stale bread and cans of soup. Take this box and hide it behind the rock memorial in the park, right underneath the bushes. Occasionally you would open it to see syringes full of some type of substance, a fine powder held in tiny plastic cups. You never tried to take them for yourself.
In exchange, they provided you food on bad days and sometimes helped you out with homework, even faking to be your nonna on the phone when the school would call to schedule a meeting due to your frequent absence.
Most of the members were men dried out on their luck, some teenage dropouts or girls who had gotten into the wrong crowd. You liked them though, they helped you feed and clothe you and your nonna. But you were just a child, after all, one who didn’t understand the silent codes of mafiosos or crime very well, so they only gave you one rule.
“Whatever you do,” they said. “Never go near a Magliana.”
You could always identify them by the ‘XI’ symbol often found on their body. It was easy to recognize, the white contrasting the blacks of their suits. But after a slow day of pickings, you got hasty, and your eyes greedily eyed the fat Italian leather wallet, hanging out of a man’s finely pressed suit jacket. He wouldn’t miss it, your childish mind rationalized, plastic shoes quietly tiptoeing as you watched the group of men pass you by without a second thought, seemingly focused on finding someone.
If he wanted to keep it, he wouldn’t have had it out for everyone to see.
The fine, genuine leather felt smooth in your calloused hands, weighted with stacks of lire. But the next thing you know there’s a large knife being waved in your face and your tiny legs have never begun to run so fast before.
“Get back here, you brat!”
Curses could be heard as you scrambled underneath a broken fence, wood tearing into your dress and skin as you run into the street, knocking into women and dodging mopeds who barely even stopped for you. The pounding of your heart was all you could focus on, lungs gasping for air as you stumbled into the next street. There was no way your body could take all of this running, you would need to hide until it was safe to come out.
You book it into the closest alleyway. Big mistake.
Gasps beside your own could be heard in the dim alleyway, the sound of some type of liquid dripping onto the stone ground. Muscles shivered and shook as you stared down that alleyway, met with the familiar sight of a bloodied and defeated man, but it wasn’t Mr. Polenta.
His dark curly hair was matted and tangled, body leaning over as the shadows from his hat covered his face. Bruises were beginning to form around his nose, a disgusting mix of red and purple as blood trailed to his swollen lips. His white shirt was covered in bloodied fingerprints as if he had tried to stop the bleeding.
You recognized him.
You knew him.
He was one of the oldest members in Camorra, nicknamed a ‘drag’ by the others for his personal code, whatever that may be. He's watched over an exchange of yours, only once though.
Your plastic shoes slowly creep down the slanted alleyway, the man’s ragged puffs for air growing as you come closer. The leather wallet you had once greedily prized laid forgotten on the ground as you fumble inside of your dress pocket. You pulled out a light blue band aid, colored with stars. It was gently pressed to the side of his cheek, where one of the smallest scrapes laid. It was all you could do, you couldn’t risk running out into the street to find some Camorra members, you’d be caught right away.
But you needed to get help, you couldn’t just leave him here like Mr. Polenta.
The sound of pebbles tumbling into the alleyway, blood running cold as you instinctively dart to hide behind the man’s slumped body. Your heartbeat turned sporadic, waiting to hear angered shouts and threats from the man that had chased you. You could only hear the pants of the man beside you and your own frightened breaths. Slowly, you peeked your fearful head out from behind him.
A boy not even a few months older than you stood at the top of the alleyway. His dark hair was styled into a bowl cut, wide turquoise eyes staring down at you and the gangster. Your own (e/c) eyes briefly meet. You could see his fingers tighten around his leather backpack, feet threatening to take a step back. But before he could, a man’s voice could be heard.
“Damn it, where did he go?” Someone uttered.
Your head ducks under the protection of the man’s limp body, curling into yourself as tight as you could. It was the voice of one of the gangsters, from the Magliana gang. They had been looking for something, you heard that exact voice talking about it before you had stolen the wallet. Your eyes shakily glance to the man beside you, his breathing dangerously slow. Were they the ones who did this to him?
“He can’t get far without those wounds!”
”You don’t think he went into someone’s house, do you?”
“What happened to that little girl?”
Tiny hands slam themselves over your mouth, eyes clenched tight with fear. A small whimper threatened to release itself in fear, out of fear of what they would do to you if they looked down the alleyway. They were the ones who did this to him, and the thoughts of what would happen to you made you want to cry.
“Lost her,” the man grumbles.
“Who cares! Keep your eyes on the ground! There should be blood.”
”You go straight ahead. We’ll go this way.”
Giorno can’t help but glance down the alleyway one last time. Your shivering form was nearly hidden behind the body of the man, but he could make out your torn dress and roughed up sandals, blood starting to soak through them as you huddled beside the man. He was losing a lot of blood, Giorno realized.
“Hey, kid,” said one of the gangsters. His head snaps up to meet the face of the gangsters who had caused all of this. They wore decorated suits and clothes, the same XI symbol somewhere on their being. Giorno wasn’t ignorant as to what happened around these parts, despite being so young. He knew who they were.
“Have you seen an injured man around here? He’s tall and has black hair,” one of the men described, running his hands through his hair as if to imitate the man. Giorno blinked as if pondering the description. His eyes threatened to glance to his side, but slowly, his hand began to drift up, and he was pointing to the next street over. “He went that way.”
”That way?” One of them repeated, pointing in that direction. ”He won’t be able to move fast with those wounds!” The men began to run eagerly to the next street, voices clamoring together. “Let’s find him!”
The whimper you had desperately held onto released as the sound of running shoes became distant, tears starting to prick your eyes. Long tufts of grass were clenched in your grip as you stared at it, far too frazzled to comprehend when they had grown to such lengths. They practically covered the man’s body, hiding him away by the flora. Before you can question your grasp on reality, a small hand is shoved into your face.
Blinking away the tears, you’re met with the face of that young boy. He had a blank look as if he didn’t know how to comprehend the situation. Hesitantly, you reach for it, and he pulls you up. Neither of you says anything. He lets go after you were stabilized, slowly making his way out of the alley. You stood there until he was gone, recalling how soft his hand had felt in your own.
The man’s low groans of pain bring you back into reality. You still needed to find someone to help him. Your sandals pounded on the stone ground before the man could even call out to you, telling you not to involve yourself any further.