Chapter 23

Il Giuramento nel Fumo e Sangue
(The Oath of Smoke and Blood)

Part 1 – Le Cœur Noir

The atmosphere at Le Cœur Noir mirrored the smoky, jazz-drenched streets of the French Quarter. Inside, red lights and smoke thickened the air while giggle water spilled across tables, bodies alligatoring in a stupor of glee. The ceiling fans hummed like lazy accomplices to the seductive sound of the ivories. The bar was in a haste—caught between ecstasy and the swaying of hips.

Frankie sat in his usual corner, observing patrons lost in a carnal unison of whiskey and flesh. A cigarette balanced between his fingers, he took a drag, eyes fixed on the silhouette of smoke he exhaled. He liked the rhythm of smoke—how it seemed to dance along with the jazz pouring from every wall.

It curled. It lingered. Then it vanished. Just like promises in New Orleans from men who carried no word of honor. Among men like Frankie, honor was more than a promise—it was a signed document, invisible but binding. When someone broke their word, Frankie was the one called to slice the beef.

People liked to see Frankie as a good man. But this bothered him. He did not see himself that way—not while he owned a blind pig crawling with mafiosi bringing their molls and goomars. Maybe he had been a good man once, long ago, back in Naples. But good men did not last in New Orleans. The city forced you into survival mode. Loyalty was the only currency more valuable than gold.

Carollo had taught him that. If you had no word of honor, you were not a man—you were less than that. So you did as you promised.

Frankie saw Carollo as a second father, the man who had saved him when he was just a seventeen-year-old ragazzino hustling scraps to keep his family fed. Carollo made sure they were taken care of. For that, Frankie owed him. And now he had a place in Carollo’s crooked kingdom of mafia kingpins.

That kind of debt doesn’t disappear with giggle water. It sinks into the skin. And if one dares to walk away, the price is always clear. Una vita per una vita.

So Frankie played his part—the destro braccio. The muscle. The enforcer. The cleaner. The man who sliced the beef without question. Frankie never challenged Carollo’s orders. He simply did what was required.

Still, there was a difference between loyalty, survival, and salvation. He knew it every time he thought of her. His Mylène. The one he would give up everything for. The one he would burn the world for. For her, he would spill blood without hesitation. For her, he would set the whole Quarter ablaze.

But in the end, when the smoke cleared, what would be left? Just Frankie Giuliani, a cigarette butt, and the ruin of his own choices.

Part 2 – The Forever Debt

Frankie remembered what it was like being seventeen—a poor ragazzino with nothing but hunger in his belly, his entrails rumbling as if a hurricane was preparing to land and wipe everything in its path. New Orleans was a cruel city, not meant for strays who couldn’t afford protection, especially foreigners with a funny accent like his.

Anytime he opened his mouth, his Sicilian heritage came out, the words rolling like song. He haunted Basin Street and the docks of Storyville, where the city chewed up the weak and spit them out, bones scattered on the cobblestones.

Carollo found him there, hustling for enough to buy a loaf of bread. “Tu… il ragazzo con il capello blu,” Carollo called out, cigar in one hand, eyes scanning him up and down. “You look like you could eat. You wanna eat? Then you work for me.”

The red Ford Model T door creaked open. Frankie didn’t hesitate. The rumble in his gut had to be silenced. He had a mamma and a sorella to care for. His father had been gunned down in their città natale by a stray bullet when rival families fought over territory. At seventeen, Frankie was already l’uomo della casa.

Sono l’uomo della casa, he told himself. La mamma mia e la sorella… they are my responsibility.

A hungry boy doesn’t ask for a menu. He takes what’s offered. And what Carollo offered was survival: a table full of food, rent for his mother and sister, coins for his pocket. Carollo noticed the fire in his eyes, the way this ragazzo had balls. He could be molded. Loyalty like that wasn’t easy to find.

That was just the beginning. One night running numbers, the next greasing wheels, then hauling crates, then standing guard outside juice joints where men went in but didn’t always come out. Every task pulled him deeper into the underworld, climbing the chain rung by rung.

It wasn’t kindness. It was survival dressed in red velvet. Loyalty for loyalty. Una vita per una vita.

Carollo became a second father—but a father of a different breed. Not the kind who kissed your forehead goodnight, but the kind who took you drinking to harden your gut, who placed a knife in your hand and taught you how to cut, who pressed a pistol into your palm and made sure you never missed.

Frankie learned fast. Too fast, even for Carollo’s liking. But it was what it was. By twenty, Frankie was no longer just a boy who owed Carollo. He was his braccio destro—the right arm, the muscle, the blade that sliced the beef when promises were broken and debts went unpaid.

Part 3 – The Glass Siren’s Plea

Frankie would never forget the night Ophelia Cabernet walked into Le Cœur Noir. He was surprised to see a good gal in a juice joint, dressed to kill.

Her lipstick was smeared, sweat dripping down her chest, her dress clinging to her breasts. Frankie knew that look. He had spent enough nights in dark alleys of the French Quarter, enough liaisons under broken streetlamps, to recognize a woman who had been kissed and devoured.

His eyes slid to one of his goons—Salvatore Botticelli—shirt unevenly buttoned, curls damp with sweat, and the same shade of lipstick stamped on his collar. The same shade staining Ophelia’s lips.

“Nice lipstick shade,” Frankie said in a mocking tone. Ophelia thought he was jealous. He wasn’t. He was just surprised to see her there.

The more he watched, the more he saw her desperation. Tears streaked her face as she choked on her words. “Help me. I know he has someone!” she cried, voice cracking, nearly swallowed by sobs.

Frankie looked again. Really looked. And felt nothing. Not because she wasn’t beautiful—she was. Any man with a pulse could see that. But beauty meant nothing when the soul beneath it was rotting. Underneath the rouge and sequins, something fractured made his stomach turn, as if he’d caught the stench of spoiled fish.

Her vibe was off. Wrong. He couldn’t name it, but he knew it unsettled him. He pitied her, yes. But pity is not love. And pity never turns into lust.

This Ophelia was different from the woman who had first walked into his joint weeks earlier. Now she wore her hair like Mylène, mimicked her gestures, her voice, even painted her face with rouge in the same places, the same shade of lipstick. It made Frankie’s gut twist.

“It smells like sour milk… or perfume gone bad,” he muttered to himself.

Mylène, to him, was purity wrapped in silk—a wounded dove, betrayed and broken, yet strong. A woman who deserved protection, not possession. Whoever this Vittorio was, he had already become Frankie’s sworn enemy.

Ophelia, by contrast, was a cruel joke. A counterfeit canary, singing a melody that wasn’t hers.

Frankie wasn’t cruel, but he couldn’t lie to himself. He gave her the courtesy of silence, the dignity of not humiliating her, but inside he knew: he wanted her far from him.

Some women you burn the world for. And others you let wander aimlessly into the night.

Part 4 – Nel Fumo e Sangue

The smoke inside Frankie’s juice joint thickened until it felt like a second skin. Le Cœur Noir was not just a place for patrons to lose themselves in the mist of jazz, sirens, and whiskey. It was much more than that. Frankie had lived in the shadows so long that the smoke didn’t make him flinch anymore—it clung to his shirt, seeped into his lungs. It was the thin veil that kept him blind, oblivious to the world outside. Maybe this selective blindness was a survival tool.

Carollo’s voice was the soundtrack to that haze, always lingering in the background. Una vita per una vita. A life for a life. An eye for an eye. Frankie built his world around the phrase as if it were holy scripture. Una religione che è santa. La religione dell’uomo siciliano.

Carollo had given him a chance to fight for his life, teaching him everything about the business—how to make bones, which wheels to grease, which poor bastard to set up when things went wrong.

His loyalty to big pappa Carollo wasn’t a choice—it was etched into his marrow. So when Carollo ordered, Frankie obeyed. A true Sicilian soldier.

Numbers collected. Crates moved. Beef sliced. Blood spilled across the docks. He never asked why. He never needed to. Survival didn’t leave room for questions.

But Mylène made him question everything. She was the siren that pierced the haze, the only one he could see through the dense smoke—her trail marked by clove, orange, and cinnamon. The only pure thing in his world. He could close his eyes and see her beside that golden coffin where that bastard had sealed her: a saint painted in sorrow, a dove with torn wings he longed to nurture back to health.

He would kill for her. Even if Carollo stood in the way, Frankie would be the first to cut him down. That made Frankie dangerous. For her, he would burn the Quarter to ash, just to prove he was worthy of her love—pure, untouched, untainted by evil.

And yet the blood on his hands never washed off. Every man he cut down in Carollo’s name. Every copper he carved like a flank steak when they caught him sniffing at crates of hooch. Every coin collected in “protection.” Every scream silenced in back alleys. They all followed him.

Frankie knew he wasn’t a hero. Not even close. But he wasn’t a villain either. He lived in the middle—between smoke and blood, loyalty and damnation.

And still, he chose her every time. Even if it meant giving himself up.

Part 5 – Foreshadowing the Cost

As Frankie lit another cigarette, his lungs felt heavy with the dense smoke. Sitting alone in his usual booth, he reflected on the thin veil that had once blinded him to his surroundings, the veil that let him do what he had to do to survive and protect his mamma and sorella.

Sono l’uomo della casa, he reminded himself. It had been his duty, his responsibility, to take care of his girls.

He finished one cigarette, lit another out of habit more than need, and watched the smoke cloud fade and die, drowned by the sound of the ivories.

He knew this couldn’t last. One day the smoke would clear, and he would have to answer to Dio nel Cielo—the God his Catholic faith told him was forgiving and merciful. Frankie clutched the diamond-and-gold cross that always hung from his neck and kissed it.

“Dio, te lo prometto… per lei brucerò il mondo.” God, I promise you—I will burn the world for her.

But he knew: the façade the smoke covered would one day collapse. Beneath it stood the naked ruin—the debts, the bodies, the blood. Every choice he had made was now tallied deep into his marrow.

Carollo’s creed had kept him alive. Mylène’s love gave him reason, gave him hope. But both paths led to blood. There was no map out.

Frankie took a drag from the cigarette he had almost forgotten he’d lit. Slowly, heavily, he exhaled, watching the haze vanish into nothingness, empty and vapid.

Maybe that was all he was. Smoke. Some men are born heroes. Others are born villains. Frankie Guliani was neither. Men like him lived in the middle.

🕯️ Felt the pull? Let her haunt someone new.

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One soul. One shadow. One whisper.
Mylène remembers the ones who speak her name.

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