Prelude (Aliyana)

“Sometimes love comes in like a breath of fresh air, it finds you and consumes every piece of your existence.”

Capo Dei Capi

People don’t ask me when I became this way. No one can tell me they fully understand why I am the way I am.

I have never been normal.

I wasn’t born in the world that most of you are born into. My world is not like your norm. I live in the world your parents warn you about. The one with the boogeyman and no happy ending. It's the place where dreams are meant for the sleeping. And nightmares, a reality for the living.

Magic in my world is only meant for the most powerful villains.

We call our world, The Fifth State, but many of you know it as the Underworld.

My life has always been amongst the ones born with a target on their backs.

An early grave.

I was born to be an enemy of the state, guilty as the sins of my father.

Our life, tied solely to our last name and how quick one can pull a trigger and get rid of the body.

My life will always be this way.

There is no out.

Death is inevitable.

You either the one with the gun in your hand or someone pissing their pants, the choice is yours.

Life is something I learned to live like it’s my last day. Today might just be that, my last day.

The chance of an early grave has been instilled in me from the day I opened my unseeing eyes.

I was born and grew up knowing my father carried a gun in his right pocket.

The ring on my father’s index finger - a symbol that he is part of a dangerous family, The Catelli Famiglia.

Nobody fucked with our family or our kind and lived to tell the tale.

I was born knowing that one day I will marry a Made-Man.

And maybe I was born to be lucky as not having to marry for power or one of the other fucked up reasons our fathers chose our spouses. But I was born to be the wife of a criminal.

The extent of his crimes is still to be seen.

Us - the females of the Famiglia are honed to be wives to Made-Men, to turn a blind eye when our spouses have mistresses because that is their way of protecting us.

We are raised knowing that in the game of war and power, we are pawns on a bloody board of chess.

I can’t say I’ve never wanted this life. It will be a worthless thought, as I have only ever known this way, and will die only ever knowing it too.

We aren’t born in the Mafia to grow up and leave. That only happens in movies and books. Even those, the happy endings aren’t that happy.

Let us face facts! Are we going to be happy walking away from who we are?

Are we going to be happy living a simple life, relying on a bunch of fucking cops to sort out our shit when trouble finds us? No, we would be miserable.

My granddad, a Capo from Rome, told my brother, it is easier to off a man and hide the body than to report a crime and wait for the cops.

It is a messed-up response to life, but sadly it is true.

Many people look at us in horror. The whispers of how bad the lives we live, floating like a thick blanket, surrounding us in the eyes of the public. Our men get accused of crimes they didn’t commit because there is no evidence on the ones they did commit.

The tabloids that slaughter our family names paint us as monsters.

The life that we call normal, the only one we will live, gets looked upon with disgust, jealousy, and terror.

I will tell you now, it isn’t that bad.

It's like never falling prey to a handsome man.

How would one know the pain of a broken heart if you have never tasted the bliss of forbidden fruit?

We live our lives with no thoughts of how we are going to pay our bills. We take what we want. It is the only way we know.

Our men take the risk, and we, the women, live in the benefits.

Now, while many people heard the rules of the Mafia, the ways of the Famiglia, I live in it.

Here, now, I confess my sins and tell you the way of the Mafia.

I am going to tell you the ways of our world without sugar-coating it.

My name is Aliyana Capello, daughter of Consigliere Sartini Capello and, this is my confession.