Belle Donne Italiane Chapter 1

She often woke up sobbing.

Tommy's birth mother Angela had died ten years ago of cervical cancer.

Angie's death hit the entire family hard, especially Tommy's dad Lorenzo Marino (Lou) Genovese.

Lou was also a cop like Tommy, but he had retired last year after 30 plus years walking the beat.

Lou was proud of Tommy having followed in his footsteps, but he had mixed feelings about his working on the Vice Squad.

Lou felt that not only was Tommy putting himself in great danger, he knew that male Vice cops often dressed in drag to help catch the perpetrators.

Like Tommy, Lou was short and thin and got a lot of hell from the boys for it, so he made sure that nobody accused any of the Genoveses of being fruity or anything less than men.

Lou loved his Angie like no man ever loved any woman.

She played the role of mother and father to both Tommy and his younger sisters Gloria and Clara while Lou was out serving the public.

Both of Tommy's sisters had long since married and moved to the West Coast; due to time constraints and their new families, they rarely made it back east to see the family.

The last time was for Angie's funeral – which was painful enough, but it was made much worse by Gloria and Clara's wining and bitching about who was going to take care of dad and who was going to inherit what.

Worse, Tommy's wife at the time, Donna, got drunk and hauled off on Gloria, and a permanent rift developed between Lou, Tommy and their daughters/sisters.

They have not spoken since.

Speaking of Donna, Tommy later divorced her after she cheated on him for the second time in three years.

She was vain and shrill, and belittled both Tommy and their son.

John Salvatore Genovese was now a senior in high school, and he admired both his dad and "Pops" highly.

He was very bright bit a little on the shy side.

He, like Tommy and Lou, had the dreaded "Genovese" curse.

He was quite handsome, almost pretty, with bright brown eyes.