fuonlyknew

Prohibition is a breeding ground for the rise of organized crime in

America, and for the ambitious, it means building a fortune.

Mia Scalisi, a street-smart showgirl, has big dreams of leaving behind
the small-time supper club she performs at night after night. She
wants to see her name in lights—and maybe even on the silver
screen. And her brother Nick, an ambitious Mafia capo determined
to be the next underworld prince, promises to use the spoils of his
new liquor deal to make it happen.

With the career of her dreams within her reach and friends like Al Capone
and Johnny Torrio, Mia’s future has never looked brighter, and she
turns a blind eye to Nick’s criminal activities and morally
bankrupt ways…until it all catches up with them.

Too late, Mia discovers ambition always comes with a price,

and that price must be paid—in blood.

When her world implodes, there’s only one thing she cares

about after the dust settles.

Revenge.

Deft fingers rolled a jazzy minor scale on a grand piano, the melody distantly reaching up to the second floor of Stems Supper Club in the Levee District of Chicago.
Mia Angela Scalisi, a New York Sour in one hand and a tube of lipstick in the other, cocked an ear to the tune. It was the start of the lengthy introduction to her first number, “Everybody Loves My Baby,” and she was late—which meant she was right on time, though her brother Nick might disagree. He’d given her strict orders to turn the place upside down tonight, and he’d probably be sore at her if he found out she was still preening in front of the mirror in her dressing room and drinking cocktails instead of getting her ass on stage.
Though tonight was meant to be a birthday party for Nick’s boss, Sal Bellomo, who also owned the supper club, it was really about her brother. He was riding high after securing quite the birthday gift for Sal, in the form of a two-million-dollar investment from Hyman Goldberg, a Manhattan businessman of questionable scruples but untold wealth. The investment would allow them to finance a major liquor distribution operation in not only Chicago and New York, but Omaha, Philadelphia, Atlantic City, and Canada, with plenty of opportunity for expansion.
Nick and Sal, and everyone else involved in the deal, would be very rich men inside of six to nine months. The money would be rolling in fast, and in huge quantities, according to her brother. Nick’s successes meant more power and influence for him, which meant better things for Mia.
Like moving pictures. And maybe even sooner than she’d hoped.
Mia cast one more glance at herself in the mirror and tossed back the rest of her drink. Even Lillian Gish had to start somewhere. One day, Mia would tell the story of how an orphan girl of immigrant parents had grown up on the rough streets of New York City’s Lower East Side, become a child vaudeville performer, then moved to Chicago, where she’d become a cabaret princess at Sal Bellomo’s Stems Supper Club, before one day transforming into a silver-screen starlet.
That’d make for a pretty good feature in someone’s gossip rag, she reasoned. And, hell, it was even true. For color, she might pepper in the fact that her brother was a gangster and a veteran of the Great War, and that she had done six months in a miserable dress factory while he was in France killing Jerries to make ends meet.
Nah. He’d kill me if I told anybody he’s a gangster.

Meredith is a writer (and reader) of many kinds of fiction, but in particular
spy thrillers, military-esque suspense, and historical crime. A
native of Lincoln, Nebraska, she is by proxy a Huskers fan (GO BIG
RED!), as UNL is her undergraduate alma mater, and moonlights as an
obligatory Blue Jays fan due to completing her graduate MFA studies
at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska.

When she emerges from her writing cave, blinking in dismay at having to be
exposed to the cruel light of day yet again, she can be found romping
with her two Pomeranians, serving her overlord cat, hanging with her
husband, battling it out with the undead or practicing a new kind of
magery on her PlayStation, or simply huddled in a dark corner
somewhere with just enough light to read a favorite book. Other
interests include baking, cooking, and blogging about new restaurants.