Brief

After becoming an orphan, Frank was adopted by Don Cabineri, an Italian mafia boss and the head of one of the most powerful crime families in New York. Groomed from an early age to eventually become the Don of the Cabineri Family himself, Frank’s real nature, however, proves to be selfless and altruist.

What We Liked

- It's action-packed and moves quickly;
- It's set across a number of decades, so the audience feels invested in the story;
- It's largely set in two -- cinematic -- places, New York and San Francisco;
- The lead character is fallible but endearing;
- It revolves around the fascinating subject of mafia and the crime underworld;
- It is a story of revenge, but it's also a story of how hollow revenge can be -- and serves as a
message to the audience about seeking the true purpose of one's life;
- This would make for an entertaining TV series as it takes place across various decades in
which two characters lives intertwine in ways that can be developed within each episode.

Synopsis

In 1930s New York, on the Lower East Side, among the immigrant tenements, lives young Frank Morris. When he is 8 years old, his father, who works for mafia boss Don Cabineri, dies suddenly, followed shortly thereafter by his mother, who fell into a depression after the death of her husband. As an orphan, Frank is taken in by the Don and made to feel like one of the family.

Flash forward to 1962, the story shifts to the other side of the US — to San Francisco, where teenage Scott Easten lives with his mother. They are going to a medal of freedom ceremony for his late father, Roy, who died in the Korean War, protecting his men. Scott’s mother, an army nurse, dotes on him and takes him along with her, while she’s administering vaccinations, to Alcatraz, the legendary prison that Scott is obsessed with. While there, Scott has a chance encounter with Frank, who has, by now, been imprisoned for robbery. Frank notices the dog tags Scott wears around his neck - tags he recognizes as once belonging to Roy, the man who saved Frank’s life in the Korean War.

Frank escapes prison and resumes life as Bruce Mollo, a ghost hitman for the Don. In the meantime, Scott grows up to be a district attorney. He’s obsessed with cleaning up the city and taking out the mafia, which he believes causes death and destruction among innocent families.

The Don is assassinated by one of his close allies, Daballia. So too are most of Frank’s adopted mafioso family. One of them, Giorgio, goes into witness protection, where he is groomed by Scott to testify against the mafia families. Frank wants to use Giorgio as bait to draw out Daballia so he can avenge the Don’s murder. But on the day that Giorgio goes to court, Dabillia orders another hit out. Giorgio is killed. So is Scott, who pushes Frank out the way, saving his life once again, just as his father had in the war.

Frank goes to Daballia’s mansion and shoots him directly. After killing Daballia, Frank drives off, determined to begin a new, clean life. As an epilogue, we find out that Frank’s life has not been in vain, as he had thought. That day when Giorgio and Scott were killed at court, Frank had moved another lady out of the way, and her son had gone on to save a man from falling on the subway tracks.

About The Author

Spiros Gratsias was born and raised in Montreal, Canada. He is the screenwriter of the award-winning short film animation Inverse, based on a story from his book Rootless Roots. He has also written the historical fiction The C Enigma published on Amazon in 2014. Unyielding Destiny is his latest novel.