Matteo Pasquale was not a patient man.
Patience was for men who lacked vision… for those content to wait for fortune to favor them rather than seize it with both hands. Matteo had spent a lifetime ensuring things bent to his will, and he preferred them to do so quickly. He was a man of precision, ambition, and ruthlessness. Every move he made was calculated, every word intentional. He had learned long ago that power was not given, it was taken.
His acquaintance with Antonio Vincenzo stretched back further than he could remember. Decades of loyalty, strategy, and shared crimes, including bloodshed. They had met as young men, hungry and ambitious, fighting their way up from the gutters of Palermo to become influential figures in Philadelphia’s underworld. Together, they had built La Mano
