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families of North America were overseas branches of the Sicilian Mafia, that they were all directed by some capo di tutti capi , a boss of bosses who ruled from the island homeland. In order for the fratellanza to exist on such an international level, it would have to be disciplined and centralized, which would make it easy for police organizations to discover, penetrate and destroy. The true reason that the brotherhood could not be effectively fought was that it was many things at once, a many-headed beast that could live for some time without any head at all.
    The roots of the brotherhood in North America stemmed rather from some few Sicilian immigrants who had been small-time mafia in their homeland. They brought with them the cosche ’s unique ability to move in and out of written laws, a capacity to grasp situations immediately, to invent solutions to intricate tangles, to gauge exactly the relative strengths of contending parties, to work amazingly complex intrigues and coldly control their smallest acts while at the same time allowing themselves to abandon all those controls to generous enthusiasms when it was safe to do so.
    Few ancestors of those original immigrants survived in the American fratellanza , but there were still some, such as the Magaddino family that Valenti had belonged to. Don Magaddino had been interested only in protecting his family, his property and business, remaining successful without having to resort to handling either prostitution or drugs.
    Valenti was taught from the cradle that he must always help his family, first by his uncle—his own father being deceased—and then by Mario, who had sponsored his membership. He was taught to side with the friends of the family and fight their common enemies, even when the friends were wrong and the enemies right; to defend his dignity at all costs and never allow the smallest slight or insult to go unavenged; to be able to keep secrets— omertà , the law of silence—and always beware of official authorities and laws.
    This he had always done, but now in the eyes of the fratellanza he had turned on those who had respected and worked with him, first by hitting Eddie Pinelli for personal reasons, and then hitting his own padrone . Neither was true, but the fact that the fratellanza believed it was true had outcast him. There was no court he could go to for justice. He was already sentenced, and in the brotherhood the only sentence was death. It was only now, forcibly cut off from all he’d known, that he had begun to question.
    A man had to have honor, sure. And respect. But then Valenti thought back to how it was when he got into the business and what it was like now. When he thought of how easily the fear by which the fratellanza ruled had turned on him… He shook his head. He no longer knew what was right and what was wrong.
    “ Chi lo sa ?” he asked his reflection. Who knows?
    The only reason he was still alive today was because he’d worked under Mario Papale.
    “You’ve got to trust in the family,” Mario had told him once, “but you got to trust in yourself first, capita ? You take some of that money you’re making, just a bit at a time, and you invest it in a safe place where no one knows you, no one can reach you—not me, not your uncle, not even the padrone . You understand what I’m saying?
    “Maybe—and I hope to God this is the way it works for you, Tony—maybe you’ll never need that place. You can use it for holidays, ’ey? But someday that place might be all that stands between you and being dead, Tony. So you keep it. You cover your ass going to and from it. You keep it under a name you never use for no deals. You keep some artillery there and you keep a lot of cash, and then you’ll have something the other soldati don’t—you got security then, Tony.
    “The soldiers that got no place to go like that, they’ve got to walk around careful all the time. But you, you can be patient. You don’t have to kiss