History.

[omertae]

History.

World.

In Angelo’s world, angels and demons are real and their influence on humans has been storied over the years. Some angels and demons will ‘rub off’ their powers onto humans, either after a particularly strong interaction with one directly, or when a person or family has had a particularly longstanding relationship with an entity of some sort. Powers from demons are more common than those from angels, as demons are more likely to interact with (or even live among) humans. In the case of humans becoming imbued with powers, it’s not that the entity chooses to give them a power, but rather that there’s an unintentional transfer.

Demons may try to persuade humans to make deals with them in exchange for the human’s soul, and there are ancient arcane rituals that brave humans can try, to bind a demon to them instead. In this case the demon is marked with a brand of some sort, and is magically compelled to do as the human commands. This is incredibly rare: a lot of humans don’t survive the process because mistakes are easy to make and absolutely lethal. Most bindings of this type end for the demon when a contract is fulfilled or when the human dies; as rare as bindings are, it’s rarer still that a human will actually let a demon go.

Childhood.

Angelo is the eldest (and currently only) son of Giovanni “Gio” Salucci, the don of the Salucci crime family, which has a reputation for violence and a history of inter-familial bloodshed. Their main criminal interests are racketeering, gambling, and distribution of illegal drugs and firearms, and their legit front is in restaurants and hotels. The Saluccis have been protected for over two hundred years by a demon named Alastor, who made a deal with one of Angelo’s ancestors to protect the bloodline before they’d emigrated from Italy.

Angelo is five years older than his brother Ludovico, of whom he's been intensely jealous since pretty much since the day he was born. After Ludo was born, Angelo began to act out more, bullying his peers and developing an angry streak and a penchant for throwing tantrums that never really left him. Thanks to Alastor’s involvement with his family, Angelo was imbued with reality-warping powers that first manifested just after he’d turned 9. The first thing he ever did with his powers was use them to slam another kid’s head into his desk, breaking his nose.

His grandfather Raul, don of the family at the time, was exceedingly fond of Angelo, and Angelo adored him. Raul was one of the few Saluccis who had ascended to power without killing another family member, although he was still ruthless in his own way. He only had one son, Angelo’s father, before his wife died, and he never remarried; he only mellowed out as a paternal figure when his grandson was born. When Angelo was about 9, Raul was embroiled in a war with a rival family, the Durantes. While walking his dog with Angelo, Raul was almost shot, and the first early peace talks between the Saluccis and the Durantes broke down because Raul considered it unconscionable that they had almost endangered Angelo when trying to kill him. This drew out the war almost a year longer, with many fatalities, and Raul eventually decided that peace was more important to strive for than petty displays of power. The second round of peace talks were going considerably better, until Raul was shot and killed, apparently by the Durantes. Angelo’s father Gio took over as Don, and immediately began an extensive revenge campaign that spared only Gisella Durante, the only daughter, and her youngest brother, who was only 17 at the time. Gisella flew back from Italy where she’d been living for most of her life and claimed responsibility for Raul’s murder on behalf of the rest of her family, begging for clemency for herself and her younger brother. The Durante family disappeared, the Saluccis took over their territory, and Gio cemented his position as a ruthless don in his own right. Raul’s death completely devastated Angelo, and was his first real experience with loss; it shaped his lifelong fear of abandonment by those who promised to stay with him.

Shortly after Raul’s death, Angelo told his father about his powers, who immediately began to have Angelo use them to psychologically torture enemies of the family. Angelo would never admit this because he’s never spent enough time considering it to even know, but this deeply traumatised him, and pushed him towards a life of violence as the only means of gaining his father’s praise and attention: the first time he used his powers to torture the truth out of one of his father’s enemies was one of the only times Angelo had ever received true, unfettered praise from his father.

Teenage years.

When Angelo was 14 he, his parents and his brother took a trip to Italy to see the village of Zungoli, where their family came from before they emigrated to America. While there they took a detour to see Pompeii. Angelo was saddled with 9-year-old Ludo when he went to explore on his own. Resentful of Ludo and sick of his whining, Angelo used his powers to terrify Ludo. His father, furious with Angelo, slapped him across the face and cut his cheek with his ring in the process, leaving a scar that he refused to have treated properly. He also purposefully tugged at the scar, pulling it wider, until Angelo cried. Angelo has had a lifelong aversion to tears ever since, considering them the epitome of weakness.

When Angelo was 18, he met a young man named Valentino in Italy. The two had a whirlwind romance for a few months during the summer, and Valentino was the first person who ever really loved Angelo. Valentino wanted Angelo to stay with him, and asked him several times to forgo his responsibilities to his family (without knowing the true extent of the Salucci family business) so they could live together. Towards the end of the summer, Angelo, growing uncomfortable with the emotional intimacy, left without any explanation or goodbye; they never saw each other again.

Early adulthood.

Alastor formally introduced himself to Angelo on Angelo’s 20th birthday, and they immediately fell into an intense relationship that has lasted, on-and-off, ever since. Alastor spent a lot of time trying to convince Angelo to agree to a formal deal with him, but Angelo was resistant, insisting that all of his achievements happen on his own merit. Otherwise, Alastor has been the only source of uncritical praise in Angelo’s life, constantly reminding him how important and special he is at every turn; Alastor constantly makes excuses for, ignores, and even enables the worst parts of Angelo’s personality. Since the first time they met, Angelo would go through phases with Alastor: intently obsessed with him and unable to stay away from him, and then recalcitrant and distant, keeping him at arm’s length. Despite this, Alastor remains Angelo’s most valued confidante and advisor, and really his only friend.

Angelo got married aged 22 to Victoria Perrone, a surgeon he’d only known for three months, against the advice of both of their families. About a month after they got married, they both agreed they were incompatible and decided to start seeing other people, but not to get divorced so as not to prove their families right. This conviction lasted four years, until Victoria finally had enough of Angelo and filed for divorce. They have a child together, a daughter named Eulalia, but Angelo is convinced that she isn't his and treats her as such. He pays alimony (thanks to a prenup his mother, a lawyer, wrote up for Victoria before their wedding) and child support, and occasionally is forced to look after Eula or pick her up from school, but besides that he doesn’t engage with his daughter’s life at all. He and Victoria have an extremely distant relationship that is only barely cordial, and becomes intensely antagonistic if they spend too much time around each other.

Ludo.

Over the years, Angelo settled into his role as underboss of the family, with a reputation as his father’s attack dog, and a violent, sadistic thug who delights in hurting others and is not to be crossed. He keeps his sexuality well under wraps, but is a serial cheater and prefers relationships without commitment. After Angelo almost beat to death someone the Saluccis had taken in for questioning, almost killing him, Gio went to his consigliere with concerns about Angelo’s ability to lead the family considering his wafer-thin temper and inability to plan ahead. Although he’d never admit this, another reason for Gio’s discomfort was the fact that Angelo’s lifestyle marked him as an outlier who would never integrate in a way with which his father would be comfortable: he was divorced and had specifically vocalized a desire not to marry again, he isn’t even a womanizer, and he rejects ownership of the only child he has. Meanwhile, Ludo was planning to marry his girlfriend and had expressed a desire for several children, giving him extra points because he’d be continuing the family name and line. Gio decided to skip Angelo in the line of succession and name Ludo his successor.

Gio approached Ludo and suggested that he would be taking a more active role in the business “for the future”. Ludo, immediately figuring out what his father was actually planning, went straight to Angelo for advice. Furious at being passed over, especially in favour of his brother who he’d always discounted as weak, Angelo spoke to Alastor, who – from Angelo’s perspective – convinced him that the only thing to do was to kill Ludo. Finally pushed over the edge when Ludo called Angelo the nickname he’d always had for him since he was a child, Angelo strangled his brother to death. Using a newer development of his powers, Angelo has been able to successfully avoid the repercussions from killing his brother by erasing Ludo from the memories of everyone who ever knew him. As far as anyone else is concerned, Ludo never existed at all.

Binding.

A year or so later, paranoid about his standing in the family and fearing abandonment from his biggest asset, Angelo performed a ritual binding to tether Alastor to him permanently. Alastor was deeply betrayed by this, as binding a demon to a human means that a demon is magically compelled to follow all orders the human gives them, thereby losing their free will in the process. He left Alastor to stew alone for a few days, and then brought him to a family event at which he knew there would be members of the Battaglia family in attendance. The Battaglias had emerged as rivals to the Salucci business in the last few years: their don, Santino Battaglia, was known to believe that the ‘old guard’ of elderly dons were on their way out and was gunning for Gio’s position and his territory, putting Angelo in the crossfire too.

At the party, which was to celebrate the recent renovation of one of the Saluccis’ hotels, Angelo realised that Battaglia had come with three demons, who started a demonic fire and sent everyone running from the building – including Angelo, Alastor close behind, until Angelo realised that his mother might still have been trapped inside. He made to rush back in for her, and when Alastor tried to stop him under his binding directive of protecting Angelo, Angelo dismissed him with the fateful words, ‘Forget the orders.’ This released Alastor from any orders Angelo had previously given him – so, still furious at Angelo’s betrayal, Alastor let him run back into the building, with no obligation to protect him any longer. But, unable to entirely let go of his fondness for Angelo, Alastor decided to chase him back inside anyway. He defeated the demons easily, ensured that Angelo’s parents were unharmed, and took Angelo home.

Angelo also drove to see Valentino again. The meeting went absolutely terribly; Valentino called him cruel and cold-blooded, and was shocked by how little of Angelo he recognised. He claimed the Angelo in front of him wasn’t the Angelo he had loved all those summers ago, but Angelo insisted that he hadn’t changed at all, and that Valentino couldn’t absolve himself of loving him. Angelo also confessed aloud to killing Ludo for the first time, although he immediately erased Valentino’s memories of Ludo, doing some fairly serious mental damage to Valentino in the process. A few days later, Angelo intentionally released Alastor from the binding.

Unbinding.

Back from Italy, Angelo agreed to a meeting with a rival don, Santino Battaglia, who had found out about Alastor and wanted him for himself. He lured Angelo into a trap in the middle of a summoning circle, and then gutted him from the navel to the sternum. Alastor, recognising that Angelo was near death, worked against every demonic instinct in his body and stepped into the circle after him, trapping himself in there and leaving himself vulnerable to being bound by Battaglia, but he was able to teleport Angelo out of there alone to an angel he used to know named Ophelial, who he knew would save Angelo’s life.

While recuperating at Ophelial’s home, Angelo expressed his desire to save Alastor from Battaglia’s binding, and Ophelial told him Alastor’s former angelic name, Alastriel, which Angelo could call to potentially halt Alastor, giving him enough time to kill Battaglia and break the binding. She also suggested that Alastor may be capable of love after all, just unable to realise it. Teaming up with Alastor’s demon friend Seven, Angelo found Battaglia, who had enslaved Alastor and reduced him to an obedient, extremely powerful shell. Battaglia was in the process of having Alastor kill Angelo's father, but together Angelo and Seven managed to beat back Alastor, save Angelo’s father and kill Battaglia, freeing Alastor from the binding but also revealing Alastor’s true nature to his father in the process.

After returning home, Angelo confessed his love to Alastor, who was devastated that he ostensibly couldn’t return it, but after a little while, Angelo told Alastor that he loved him back, leading Alastor to realise it was possible for a demon to love, and that he did in fact love Angelo in return. In a breakthrough moment, during official introductions between Alastor and Gio, Gio moved to slap Angelo and Alastor stopped him, grabbing his wrist. Angelo made the deliberate decision not to hold Alastor back, at which point Alastor broke his father’s wrist, and Angelo told Gio that Alastor would stop him from ever striking him again.

Alastor revealed to Angelo that it is possible for a human to become a demon, which would stop Angelo from dying a very human death and leaving Alastor without him. To get the process started, Angelo made contact with Lucifer himself, who insisted on meeting Angelo and, even in their brief meeting, established himself as something of a replacement father figure to Angelo, more patient and understanding of him where Gio was always dismissive and cruel.

Feeling guilty that he never thanked Ophelial for her help, Angelo returned to her home – leaving Alastor on the edge of her property, as he could come no closer due to his nature as a demon – to express his gratitude. She welcomed him into her home and told him that someone was waiting for him in her garden. That someone turned out to be Angelo’s grandfather Raul, or at least his spirit. Angelo and his grandfather were able to say the goodbyes they had never been able to say to each other before Raul died, but in the course of the conversation Raul confirmed to Angelo that he had in fact been killed by Gio, and not by the Durantes as Angelo first thought.

Angelo returned to Alastor, but they barely had time to talk about Angelo’s conversation with Raul before Alastor was pulled away by a summoning. Angelo rushed back to Ophelial, who used her magic to have Angelo follow the trail of the summoning and end up in the circle too, to hopefully be able to stop another binding from happening. The summoning was enacted by Angelo’s father, who had tried to bring Alastor to him in order to kill him, so that Angelo wouldn’t be able to use him or his power any more. A combination of finding out the truth of Raul’s death and realising that his father was planning to take Alastor away from him forever pushed Angelo to breaking point, and the loyalty for his father that he’d clung to for his whole life finally disappeared. Angelo left the circle and killed his father, freeing himself from his obligations to him at last. It was only as he finally grasped at everything he’d ever wanted that Angelo realised something he’d been violently repressing for years: his brother Ludo was not the problem, and Angelo had killed him for nothing.