Page 47 of Heart Of A Goon II

Because he used the Caselli name, it wasn’t hard to find out about him. Especially when I found out about Caselli Imports.

The shipping and import business for everything under the sun. Anything you needed brought in or out, he was responsible. It wasn’t something that many knew about. It was one of those if you know you know things, but lucrative as shit.

Bruster was the one who did some research and found out about it. My uncle was known for getting anything in and out of the city from his hub. He had built a name but rarely went by the Caselli name.

He was Cyrus to anyone that needed him, and when he passed, his son took over. Lazarus Caselli was known as Lucipher, and his reputation precedes him. If he tolerated you, then you had the privilege of calling him Luci.

I was intrigued.

Patient, because I knew how I was whenever someone started poking in my shit. For a little while, I had shit come into his ports and there was no contact.

I didn’t need to know him.

At least that’s what I told myself because I didn’t need any more relatives. I had front row seats to what family did to one another. If that wasn’t enough, I met Stevie’s father. The man was ready to sell his daughter up the river so he could breathe another day. I decided then that I was better off not getting to know the Caselli side.

Luci came to me.

Walked into one of the Case House properties with his hands in his pocket, cool as shit, requesting my presence. Duke had this nigga up against the wall with a gun to his neck, and he didn’t even bust a sweat.

He smirked with a mouth full of diamonds and told him to bring his cousin out. I watched from the surveillance room and knew it was Lucipher. I allowed him to come to me. He put the pieces together, followed the breadcrumbs and found me.

Duke brought him to me, and we sat in the room staring at each other. I used to think I got all my looks from my pops, but now I realized that I was equally my mother and father. Me and Luci looked like we were related.

He wasn’t my exact twin like Don, but you couldn’t deny we were family.

Other than a cousin that he mentioned we had in Texas, he didn’t mess with any of the other family we had. His father told him about us way before he passed and told him they were better off keeping away.

Said that we were rich, and that Constance chose where she wanted to be. The shit that fucked me up was that his father had no clue his baby sister had been murdered before he passed away.

When I told Luci that my mother passed, the nigga was broken up. Started calling her auntie and shit, like he knew her ass.

That day, in my office, we acknowledged what had been unspoken between us: we both knew the other existed.

Before he left my office, he let me know that whatever I needed he was there. We were family and he would bleed for us.

The nigga just met us, how the fuck was he this loyal? I was skeptical about everyone, because who the fuck would bleed for family they just met?

Because he was kin and shared the same last name, I had to watch him more. I was the type of nigga who had to watch you for a minute before I could let my guard down. Even then, I was still always watching and observing. Duke was like my left lung, and I still watched how the nigga ate his fruit.

Anyone who ate an apple like he did should have been committed, but he was loyal and hadn’t proven otherwise.

Luci could say one thing and be on a different type of time. My own uncle told me one thing and forced me to believe another, while knowing he murdered my parents. Trust was something that had to be earned, and once it was earned, it had to be evaluated yearly.

I treated trust like income verification time in NYCHA. Once that fucking blue book came around, everybody knew they needed to prove their income to keep their rent low. That was how that shit ran over here with loyalty.

My family meant everything to me, so I kept him a secret. The only person who knew of him and had met him was Kora. It wasn’t until Don took more of an important role within the family that he found out about a lot of the skeletons I kept hidden in the closet.

“Too tight,” I coolly scolded my tailor, as he tried to pin my slacks.

He quickly sprang into action, removing the clip.

“Putting on that daddy weight.”

I looked in the mirror at Duke. “You said I got a fat ass?”

Don choked on his water, as Duke shook his head.

“The shit that goes through your head. You spoke to Steve-O?”