“What Once Was Promised”
Sixteen-year-old Domenic Bassini sets out alone for America from his small village in Italy in 1914. He falls in love during a brief onboard afair with the beautiful Francesca, the wife of a man with Sicilian Mafia connections. But he loses her and arrives in Boston instead with an orphan stowaway named Ernesto Lentini in tow.
Domenic and Ernesto stay at the home of old family friends in Boston’s Italian North End neighborhood, sharing a room with their son, Joe. Domenic becomes like a big brother to Joe and Ernesto, who become inseparable friends.
As the years and decades pass, youthful rivalries and fateful decisions lead to unpredictable and sometimes unsavory outcomes. Between moments of joy and great tragedy, the three friends’ lives take very divergent paths amidst the turbulence of factions vying for, power in the early 20th century Boston where the lines between politics, crime and policing are blurred.
But after all that has kept them apart, can Domenic, Ernesto, Joe and even Francesca, come together to settle the score with those who have spent a lifetime fighting against them?
7 PM
November 7, 1951
Swampscott, Massachusetts
It had been nearly forty years since Domenic Bassini last held a gun of any type. That last one had been an old single-shot rifle his father would sometimes let him carry when they would go up into the mountains surrounding the village of Torre de’Passeri in his native Italy to hunt rabbits and deer. They would always take along one of their huge mastiffs to ward off the brown bears that lived in the mountains, as the old rifle would have been of little use if one decided to set upon them.
He could still feel the comforting weight of that rifle slung over his shoulder and the rocky terrain beneath his shoes with soles so thin he could feel each small pebble. He could smell the spindly pine trees that struggled up through the hard ground reaching toward the sky that in his memory was always blue. He could still taste the air so fresh it would fill his lungs with life, making it so no matter how long they walked he would never tire. Strange that he should recall all this now, so many years later, in this dank and musty basement.
Somehow that bulky old rifle, with its rusty barrel and worn wood stock, seemed far less menacing than the small .32 caliber Beretta pistol he now held in his hand. This weapon was shiny, black and sleek. To him, it seemed it could serve no other purpose than to deliver death quickly and coldly. It would be useless in the fresh air of the mountains. It was meant to rest under the heavy coats of soulless men until called upon to do its work in dark, shadowy places away from God’s sunlight. Places like this.
Yet the gun feels strangely comfortable and almost weightless in his outstretched hand, leading him to think that it must possess some dark seductive power. Or is it because his own heart has grown black and cold? How else to explain his lack of anxiety and the calmness he feels as he aims it at the head of Colin O’Riley.
O’Riley is talking. He is animated as he speaks, his arms flailing in all directions as though trying to regain his balance while falling. His panicked eyes keep darting back and forth between the old man’s face and the gun in his hand. The tone of his voice fluctuates as sharp staccato-like shrills of angry outrage interrupt the low monophonic cadence of his pleading.
But all that Domenic can hear is noise echoing off the stone walls of the basement, the sound muffled by the heavy veil of the past draped over him. The memories are suddenly so vivid they seem much more real to him than this murky present. He clings to the emotions they have resurrected as long as he can so he can remember what brought him here to this deep, dreary pit so close to hell. Then he instinctively reaches for the small wooden cross around his neck and prays. He first asks God for forgiveness. And then for the strength to shoot this bastard.
