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Let me start with my real name, Giovanni Francesco Jr., named after my father. My place of birth was Monreale overlooking Palermo, Sicily. When I was 4 years old my mother and father moved me into Palermo for "work". It was in Palermo that I met my best friend and partner in crime "big" Luca Moretti, his father, Tommaso Moretti, worked with mine.
The Moretti Family lived five doors down the other side of the street. My father and Mr. Moretti would leave for work with each other early in the morning and return at different times of day and night also together. Tommaso would always come in and say hello to my mother and I if the time was not too disrespectful.
One day only Tommaso returned, looking shaken and bleeding from his arm, He told my mother to come with him and bring all my father's savings and the clothes on our backs quickly. Because our families were so close mother did not question Tommaso's orders. My mother undid a floor board and started stuffing piles of money into a large bag, the Moretti family were outside in a automobile I had never seen before. Tommaso shouted out "HURRY..GET IN QUICKLY", we then proceeded to drive off at high speed my mother and Mr. Moretti were sitting in the front shouting but I could not make out what they were saying over the vehicle's engine and Mrs. Moretti also had her hands over mine and Luca's ears the whole way to the docks.
When we had stopped and my mother picked me up, I could tell she had been crying but she would not speak a word until we had been on the boat for about 2 hours. Then she told me we would not see my father until we met in God's house. I had been raised strict Catholic so although I was upset I was not devastated. I then asked where we were going and she told me "we are going to America , the land of opportunity".
It was not until I was 14 that I found out from Mr. Moretti that my father and Tommaso were made men in Palermo. Before their Don turned paranoid and it didn't take too long before he saw my father and Tommaso as his enemies. As a consequence, he had my father wacked and tried to kill Tommaso. My father did not see it coming, one of his best friends took a shotgun and blew his head off in his car. However the assassin did not know they would both be there.
The Don had sent my father to collect protection money from a local smuggler, Tommaso went inside to collect. He heard two shotgun blasts and ran back out the front to see the assailant making a run for it. He saw my father and immediately chased down the killer and gave him some bullets of his own into the back of his head. When he realized who he was, he put the body of the man into the back of his own car and drove directly to the Don's compound. Sneaking in through a back window moved through the house dodging the guards and into the boss' music room. He came up behind the don and wrapped his garrot around his neck and strangled the life out of him. It was on his way back out of the window he took a 38.slug to his left shoulder but he managed to dodge the gunfire and ran to the nearest road and hijacked a passer-by on his way to the market with his revolver and then drove to my house.
By the time I had found this out I had just came out of my first jail sentence for a mugging I had committed with Luca, Luca however did not get caught which is why he named me Mad Frank because I picked up a habit of not caring if the police were right behind me, I would always finish the job I was doing. Luca was named big Luca necause he was far from big he was small and very quick like his father which is why he never went to jail. By the time I had discovered my fathers fate, Luca and I were prolificly violent offenders committing armed robberies whenever we saw opportunity. Muggings and burglaries on a daily basis and if ANYONE got in our way they were in serious trouble.
My mother died when I was 12, I moved in with the Moretti's and they became my family.
When Luca and I attempted a burglary one time, we were spotted in the residence by the huge Irish owner. We jnew we were in trouble when he pulled a piece from his waist band and started shooting at us. Fortunately neither of us were hit. Roughly two weeks after this incident I was back in the slammer for a assault on a cabbie trying to get some cash, I received a letter from Mrs. Moretti stained with tears saying how Luca had been shot and killed, Tommaso had gone out looking for revenge as Luca had told his father about the Irish giant and the botched robbery and gave him the address. He had found his revenge and committed murder in the first degree and was now on death row awaiting his execution.
Once I was released I came home to find Mrs. Moretti like a shell completely empty dead on the inside. I knew she wouldn't make it long so I stopped robbing to look after the woman who had took me in after I had nothing left. I was right, After Tomasso's execution, she lasted a week before I went out for groceries and came back to find her in her chair completely cold. Just like me I was 16 and already dead to the world.
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