Path of the Vampire forum

He was born in Verona, Northern Italy, in 1984. It was a year just like any other, had its mixture of troubles and woes just as it had its achievements and delights; advances in technology and science, steps forward in spiritual enlightenment, steps back in peace talks, economic strife and environmental disasters. The average family might have lived on in ignorance to all the world’s ups and downs, but Levi was brought up in a household that kept their eye on everything and it was because his father, William D’Amico, had his hand in everything.

Before the arrival of the high-calibre Sicilian mobsters Mala del Brenta, Veneto's crime problem was restricted to various disorganised gangs operating throughout the region. The D’Amico family had connections to each and every one of these, whether as conspirators, advisors, runners, gofers, distributers, or mediators. William was the smart kind, consulting gangs, advising them and mediating whenever things got out of hand between associates. He had his eyes on the future and a good idea of the past, giving him the knowledge and intuition to make plans that would bring him success and money. More than anything else in the world, William loved money and power, so when the Mala del Brenta arrived in the 1980s and a few organized crime syndicates merged under their central authority, William decided to put all of his efforts into seeing the Mala del Brenta take over the whole of Veneto. As it happened, William’s vision of unity had been well shared.

Felice Maniero had started his own crew of local gangsters in the mainland province of Venice after a number of high-ranking members of the Sicilian Mafia were sent into solitary confinement in an attempt to isolate powerful Sicilian ringleaders from other members in the Mafia. Although Maniero’s crew was composed of mainly family members and childhood friends, it quickly took the recognition of a number of prominent Sicilian Mafiosi, who decided to back Maniero in his vision of uniting Veneto’s organised crime once again, bringing about the rise of Mala del Brenta.

The Mala del Brenta’s growth continued for several years. Maniero gained many allies, including the entire D’Amico family, and all but the exponents of the Veneziani clan, the Rizzi brothers, were feeling menaced by the mainland syndicates under Maniero. On March 17 1990, mediator and Veneziano capo, Millo, was shot and killed by the Rizzi brothers. Since Millo and Maniero were good friends, this treacherous act resulted in a violent feud between the Mala del Brenta and the Veneziani. After six months, the Rizzi brothers and an associate were murdered in an ambush disguised as a meeting to discuss peace terms. Shortly after, Maniero placed Giovanni Giada as head of the Mala del Brenta in the Venetian lagoon, in firm control of all Veneto.

Growing up in this tense environment had certainly left its mark on Levi. He and his mother were never sure whether William was going to come home, never knew if he was going to be picked up by the police or killed, and if they too were going to suffer a similar kind of fate. They lived in a world of insecurities, of constant anxiety and fear, and it wasn’t long before all this stress took its toll on Levi’s mother. In her prime, Marietta was a strong, opinionated woman and her determination had seen her survive the Opposti Estremismi (opposing extremists), later renamed anni di piombo (years of lead), for the wave of terrorist bombings and shootings that occurred across the whole of Italy from the late 1960s to the early 80s. Still, with her husband’s increasing absence and increasing violence toward her and their son, Marietta began to wither into a shell of her former self. William took the limelight more and more as a result, moulding their son into his miniature. Levi quickly lost his respect for his elders, particularly for his mother and eventually for all women entirely. He became conceited and power-hungry at an incredibly early age and if he couldn’t intimidate his competitors with his words, he quickly turned to violence.

Of course Levi couldn’t win all of his battles, but he always had the last laugh. Like his father, Levi had an innovative mind and a sense of strategy. If he couldn’t rely on his mouth and couldn’t rely on his fists, he’d rely on his wits and money (of which his family quickly had excess of as a result of their affiliation with Mala del Brenta) to get revenge. Levi enjoyed this authority and like a drug, he lived on the high of the moment where he could put someone in their rightful place beneath him. Levi began to seek this feeling out more and more, even enjoying the brief euphoria of petty victories to get him by between bigger pay-outs. But Levi’s satisfaction became harder and harder to achieve as he grew older and he began to take greater and greater risks to get what he wanted. It came to a point that, at just nine years of age, Levi had almost killed another kid over an argument about a bicycle, for William to finally decide to pay attention to his family.

By 1993, the Mala del Brenta had a firm hold of nearly every criminal venture in the region. They were making money on all kinds of ventures from money laundering to loansharking and extortion, but their major source of income was drug dealing. The Mala del Brenta bought a massive amount of cocaine directly from the Sicilian and Colombian Mafia, as well as heroin from Turkish drug baron Nvo Berisa. When things were looking this good, William couldn’t afford to start a feud with anyone because of his way-ward son, so he sent the boy away to a private correctional facility in Venice for juvenile delinquents, paid for and managed by the Mafioso. Being part prison and part school, the facility aimed to educate and rehabilitate boys from the ages of seven and seventeen.

Levi stayed at the facility for eighteen months. In that time he learned the hard lesson of keeping his mouth shut, his head down, but his nose in everything. He also learned about the power of numbers, how he could gain a following and divide his enemies. Levi was nowhere close to ruling the roost before he was pulled out, but he’d managed to survive and make a fairly decent living. He’d lived in a criminal family for all of his life, but he’d never known what it took to be a made man until he’d spent those months in that correctional facility. He’d gone in as a ball of fury and fire, ready to consume and destroy anything in his path even unto his own destruction, but he’d come out with his eyes opened to the way of the world. His fire and fury was still in his heart, but now he knew how to control it, how to be economical.

In 1994, things started to go down-hill for the Mala del Brenta. Former boss, Maniero, together with many of the top members of the syndicate, had been arrested in Turin in 1993 having previously evaded the Padua and Vicenza prisons. Faced with life imprisonment, Maniero turned informant and began to work with the Italian police to dismantle Mala del Brenta, to take apart his dream of unification. In all, Maniero contributed to the arrest of four-hundred mobsters, plus many judges, policemen and local Venetian politicians. William and a few of his close associates had seen the net closing in on them, however, and decided to flee the country to escape imprisonment. Since some of his friends had connections to America, William decided to follow the money trail to Boston where he could work his way into the Patriarca crime family.

After the crime family head, Raymond Patriarca, had died in 1984, the Patriarca began a long period of decline, resulting from both legal prosecution and internal violence. In 1991, a war between Frank Salemme, acting boss of the Patriarca, and a group of renegade gangsters had broken out, resulting in several years of murder and back-stabbing. It was right in the heart of all this chaos that William D’Amico and his family moved to Boston. Seeing the Patriarca broken so thoroughly only worked to stoke the embers of the man’s passion to reunite them, however, as if this were his second chance with the Mala del Brenta. William worked his way into the organisation, hanging on by the threads of his reputation. It took all of his focus and all of his cunning to evade the heat of both the cops and his fellow gangsters. He barely even flinched when his wife left him and ignored his son, working his way right up to the top of the tree to claim the title as underboss of the Patriarca.

By 1999, under the command of Giovanni Manocchio and the guidance of William D’Amico, the Patriarca began to form some semblance of normality again. Internal feuding decreased, the authorities lost their power and everyone started to make money. New members were brought into the fold and even the fifteen-year-old Levi was ushered in, expected to follow in the footsteps of his father. He was young, but smart and hot-blooded enough to be recognised as something special; plus he was pure, from a long line of Italians. Levi was given the capo title and a handful of soldiers to manage, but the other capos – men who were at least ten years his senior – wouldn’t see Levi as an equal. They were convinced that he’d gotten the position because of his father, that he was just some twerp that they could boss around. Levi left them to form their own opinions; he was busy biding his time.

A few months before Christmas, the still waters that the Patriarca had been floating upon took a turn. Manocchio died of a sudden heart-attack, aged just 67, and quarrels arose surrounding who would succeed him. As acting underboss of the Patriarca, it was up to William to take charge, but conflict started in as many of the gangsters challenged William for leadership. It was eventually left up to the National Commission, the governing body of the American Mafia, to approve William as the acting boss of the Patriarca, but internal warfare resulted in a rapid betrayal and his imprisonment instead. William was indicted for racketeering charges and sentenced to forty-five years imprisonment – a life sentence – leaving the D’Amico family name in the hands of Levi. The Patriarca family, however, was now turned over to Carlos Nicoletti, whose first act as boss was to discharge Levi from his position as capo.

The act itself never phased Levi, in fact, he even saw the coup d'état toward his father in a favourable light. What irritated Levi was Carlos’ leadership and governing skills. Carlos was an old-fashioned gangster and an old-fashioned man. He neglected many of the unwritten rules of the Mafioso and when it got in the way of progress, it upset a few people. Anybody who made a point of airing their opinions though, soon found themselves on the wrong side of a baseball bat. The Patriarca was smothering itself like a gasper and hiding this dirty secret away from the rest of Cosa Nostra, blaming their problems on everyone else. Levi knew when to keep his head down and for the next couple of years, worked his way back up the posts to capo and into the favours of many high-ranking members of the American Mafia.

Although Carlos wasn’t fond of international deals or working with ‘foreign scum’ as he called them, Levi saw the profit in making little independent ventures. With progression through the ranks remaining slow over the years, Levi engaged in a little work on the side. As the Mala del Brenta had done before him, Levi began to buy quantities of cocaine and heroin directly from the Sicilian and Colombian Mafia. After some success in that area, he also branched out to the Asian criminal organisations – the Yakuza and Triads. What began as shipping small bits here and there turned into a global drug smuggling racket and with the drugs trading so well, it was only a matter of time before he began trading in other valuables like guns and weaponry.

Levi had always had a fascination for guns. For as long as he could remember, he would look at them with the same kind of desperate yearning as a kid would to candy. His father carried two; the Beretta M9 and the Browning Hi-Power – BHP for short. He remembered always keeping an eye on them and when his father had left them out and in reach, he would pick them up – one at a time – and be surprised by the weight of such a small thing. His mother had caught him once, just six years old and pointing his father’s gun at her heart over the breakfast table. She’d screamed in terror and he pulled the trigger, but the safety had been on. He’d been punished for that, his arse stung for a week and the bruises took a few more weeks just to pale from that sickly dark mauve to the jaundice yellow. Levi didn’t touch a gun again till he was thirteen, when his mother had just walked out on them and his father was an uncaring, selfish ******** as always.

At the time, Levi had turned to one of his father’s ‘brothers’, a man called Gino Valachi who taught him how to shoot. They went out to a field in the middle of nowhere, some place quiet where you could hide a body or shoot an illegal gun without anyone finding out about it. Gino gave him a Colt .32 and .38 Special revolver, and told him to shoot at the target. Said target was a pig, gutted and tied from a tree at a man’s height. Gino had wanted it to seem as real as possible, to teach Levi not just how to aim and squeeze the trigger, but what happened to the body when you shot a man. It was this kind of knowledge that gave you the power over someone’s life or just a few weeks’ debilitation. Levi never really questioned the man’s teaching techniques or his motives, which was just as well because Gino wasn’t the type to answer questions. They continued to practice with a dead pig for a few months, working their way up to smaller targets and moving ones until there came a time to test his skills in a real-life scenario.

One night, Gino took him out on a job, a little interrogation business that quickly turned sour. When the man saw Gino, he took off running and the pair hunted him down. They cornered him in the dumping grounds at the back of a small store. Gino reached into his jacket to unveil a Five-Seven USG and then handed the pistol to Levi. He ordered the kid to shoot this man, to kill him. Levi took the gun, aimed at the man’s heart and fired. There was pleading and apologies and then there was a sudden crack as the round exploded out of the barrel and into the man’s chest. He wheezed, his body collapsing into the garbage bags. Levi handed the gun back to Gino, they got in his car and left.

It never really bothered him that he’d killed a guy, that the man might have had family back home waiting for him; children to feed, a wife to love, maybe a dog to take outback for its nightly piss. Levi just didn’t care about all that. He’d looked into the man’s eyes, watching him beg, watching the fear trickle down his pants leg. He’d pulled the trigger like it was nothing and at the end, he came away rather satisfied with himself. He didn’t think about the consequences so much either because he was just like a soldier pulling the trigger under someone else’s authority. Death was just an inevitable part of war and no jury could convict him – he was convinced. Levi had seen gang members go to prison, he’d even seen them turned in by their own, but he trusted Gino. He thought Gino wasn’t stupid enough to leave a trail for the heat to find, to piss off the wrong people. He could take orders from Gino because he was just like him – clever, conniving and damn good at his job – he just had a few more years under his belt, a few more lessons he’d learned.

When Levi’s father was sent to prison, he lost what little respect he’d had for the man. Levi thought he was greedy and selfish and that his self-indulgent attitude had been the cause for his downfall. William had made some friends, some powerful allies, but he rose up too quickly and too far into notoriety. He’d made enemies and they waited until his back was turned to cut him down to size. It might have been cowardly, it might have been traitorous, but it got the job done. When the police took William into custody, Levi took the man’s guns. He carried the memory of the weight of those guns in his hands, making them feel no less heavy than the first time he’d picked them up. Only, now his hands were larger and he could them both at the same time. Carlos might have taken his title away and stripped him of command, but he didn’t feel powerless. Levi had plans and he wasn’t going to go the way of his father. He was going to be enough of a name to intimidate people, but not enough to make them grab the pitchforks. He wasn’t going to be a sheep in wolf’s clothing, he was a dragon in wolf’s clothing. They wouldn’t bring him down because they wouldn’t see him coming.