The Blood Feud, Chapter Two

The Blood Feud

Chapter Two
The First Chapter

The Lupino family and the Luvidecci family were not always embroiled in a feud. In fact, there was a day, before the age of mobile phones and televisions and mp3 players, where both families looked to be linked in the Holy sacrament of marriage.
In the summer days of 1949, Imperia was presided over unofficially by two families of equal noble heritage and importance: The Lupinos, whose very name suggested their fierce family loyalty and aggression to any opposition, and the Luvideccis, a Calabrese family who had migrated slowly North in the days when the Papal States unified Italy for the first time.
The youngest of the Lupino family, Salvatore Lupino, a handsome, strong built man who was commented on looking more Athenian than a native of Imperia, had yet to marry, to his widow mother’s dismay. It was not for lack of opportunity; every unwedded virgin in Imperia had father’s desperate to marry them off to the Lupino heir, who was not only a natural hunt and good hand on the farm, but was of pure noble descent.
His mother’s family had ties gong back to the Roman Scipio horsemen, great knights of the Empire long before decadence took its toll on the powerful Italians who had helped shape the world. The family name had, however, been changed to allow them slip into hiding after an unfortunate event regarding a great, great ancestral grandmother of Salvatore.
Back in the days when loyalty was an object purchasable with gold, a young woman, an ancestor of Salvatore Lupino, of name Flora Impini, was accused of witchcraft by her uncle, who was a known conman at the time in Imperia, before Sicilian Omertà had made its way up into the north of Italy. The girl was drowned in a pool, and her family, though of noble descent, outcast.
Nonetheless, such nameless fear of witchery had evaporated with time, and so the Impini bloodline had mixed in with the Lupinos, and Salvatore was the last descendant of Flora Impini.
Now at the same time, the youngest of the seven Luvidecci daughters, Tia Luvidecci, was too in search of a groom. She was considered by many to be the most beautiful girl in Imperia, and songs were sung in the taverns of her golden hair as she’d skip, light as a feather, through the daisy fields to where her family kept their goats, to milk the bleating mothers and feed the young kids, then skip back to the town with her buckets of fresh milk, which her older brothers would churn into cheese to be sold at market the next day.
Salvatore met her in the mountains one winters morning. He often brought his dog, a half wolf, not unlike Salvatore, he duly noted, high into the mountains, where he’d sit and meditate in complete silence in the sanctity of nature, allowing his wolf-dog to hunt the rabbits that popped their heads out of their burrows every now and again.
In the seclusion of nature, Salvatore would find himself outside the simplicity of his daily routine. It was here, in the silence of the mountains, that Salvatore met Tia. She had wandered far from the fields, absentmindedly, and had gotten lost in the maze of tracks and sidetracks that wound up into the mountains.
Salvatore came out of his silent trance as his wolf-dog came running back to him. He fell to his knees and embraced the dog, rubbing her neck and head. The wolf-dog, he instantly could tell, had been startled by something, and footsteps, softened as they were in the dust, revealed to him that a stranger was encroaching.
No sooner had Salvatore gathered up his belongings when Tia Luvidecci appeared in the track that lead into the secluded clearing where Salvatore had sat. Bewildered, but thankful at finding another human being, she inquired as to the route home. Salvatore, stricken by passion as soon as he laid eyes on the beautiful girl, offered to lead her back to Imperia.
A month later, Salvatore asked Tia’s father for his daughter’s hand in marriage. Luvidecci, honoured that the noble prince of Tuscany had selected his youngest daughter as his bride, happily accepted. And so in the warmth and loving care of summer, under the shades of the Lupino orchard trees where Tia and Salvatore came to spend their evenings together alone, the two fell deeply in love with each other over the course of the next few months.
The wedding was set for the February of the next year, and so both families busied themselves, as families do, with the toils and festivities and jovial preparation that preceded a wedding.
During the winter of 1950, however, a dark Luvidecci secret would be uncovered by the most unlikely of sources; non other than Salvatore Lupino’s young cousin, a boy of name Guido Lupino. The future Capofamiglia of the Lupino house.
It was so, be it by the ironies and cruelty of Fate herself, who sits with Time and Death in their clock tower, or be it by the trappings and wild passions that were so depicted of Mother Nature and her sister Aphrodite, Tia Luvidecci had a terrible secret, that would have outcast her from her very family had ever it been discovered. A secret that, through the workings once again of ironic Fate, would surely have earned her the name of Lupino.

Tia Luvidecci, the much talked about beautiful, pure and innocent Imperian virgin, had a strong lust for the very animals that had given her fiancé his family name. So it was the goddess’ unbreakable will; the girl had a strong affinity for the animals, and they had never reacted frightened if ever she approached; nor did they live up to their nature depicted by the human race for centuries and attack her. It was as if, in the eyes of the pack that so haunted the doorstep of the Lupino clan, Tia Luvidecci herself was of the race of wolves.

At first, when Tia was only thirteen, the dreams would come. As puberty and the passage to womanhood began in earnest in the young child’s body, so did the infernal passion that so fuelled her dreams for so many years. The dreams of the wolves in the hills, of what would happen if ever she was to go there, if ever she was to present herself to the pack.
When she was sixteen, her older brother took her hunting into the mountains for rabbits. Tia did not condone the slaughter of the innocent little creatures, but the opportunity was such as to let her away from the constant regime of household chores that Italian society burdened the young girl with; these were the days of the fascisti, during Hitler’s deadly and inhuman war on all the world, with Mussolini following him to the inevitable gallows.
She and her brother camped out in the hills that night, unbeknownst to them overlooking the Lupino residence, which in turn overlooked the sweet town of Imperia. She did not know what made her do so, but so it would seem the goddess of sweet passions was at play that night, for her hands of silk coaxed Tia out of her tent and gently whispered in her ear the idea to wander away from her sleeping brother, and so Tia, as any human would when facing the goddess of lust incarnate, listened.
She found herself, maybe half an hour later (in those days, they did not carry watches around so simply), sitting alone on a rock verge, beneath her naked feet lay a drop to certain death. But it was not him at work that fateful night; Fate, Mother Nature and Passion, sisters and daughters in the families of Gods, each collaborated in his stead to seal the fates of the Luvidecci and Lupino families. Death would have his time in later years.
Just before sleep reached out to close her young eyelids, a sound behind Tia woke her from her stupor. She turned around and, placed there by the goddesses that were tricking her that night, was a lone wolf; standing majestically with a beautiful coat of silver which shone like sun-kissed water in the bright moonlight.
Heart pounding, mind freezing up in terror, Tia sat still as she could on the cliff edge. She felt the cold eyes of the wolf on her, yet it made no move to come nearer or retreat, just stood eerily still, silhouetted in the moonlight. Tia may have waited an hour, but the mind slows down time when we are frozen with fear. As the clock went, five minutes of nothing past between herself and the wolf.
Finally, sucking up all the courage that remained in her body, Tia decided to approach the wolf. Passion played her sweet lyre, and coaxed Tia to remember the dreams. Those dreams, which at times of doubt and loneliness Tia found herself living for. In her mind, this moment was like a realisation of those dreams, a moment of reality in a passion that had been based on mentality for over three years.
Heart now pounding out of lust more than anything else, Tia approached, on her knees, the wolf. Her eyes were good in the dark, especially in such moonlight, and they quickly registered with her mind that this wolf that stood so still before her was a male. She got as close as she dared, her knees turning to jelly at being this close to the almost mythical animal, and after another few minutes of doubt, uncertainty and fear, she slowly stretched out her hand to touch the canine’s muzzle.
Tia’s heart leapt for joy when the animal embraced the soft touch of her skin, walking a few steps closer to her, so now she was right next to it. Tia realised then that she was about to lose herself--never had she imagined this sudden reality of hers ever being a possibility. But now, it was, and putting all her faith and trust in the spirits that had guided her so far, Tia, entire body shaking with uncertainty, reached down to the buckle that fastened her skirt, and removed it and the material around her waist, so she knelt at the wolf’s stead half naked from the waist down, a slave to Passion’s embrace.
The freedom that the goddess of nature so enjoys was breathed into Tia now, who found herself without fear, adrenaline pumping through her veins and defeating all worry in her mind. Gently, so as not to frighten the wolf, she began to caress him, making sure to get his approval before making her intentions clearer.

Nine years later, where such excursions had become habit for the girl, she was to be discovered.

At the age of fifteen, Guido Lupino showed none of the traits that would make his family in the decades to come. He was of a gentle nature, at peace with the forest and the animals that resided therein. Even now, many years before his three children would be born, he lost himself in the woods, not unlike his older cousin Salvatore, just to get a feel of freedom in the forested glades that the goddess so provided the mountainside.
One night Guido walked, an empty shotgun crooked under his arm, away from the beaten path--he had a natural sense of direction, and even as he wandered further and further through the dark forest, well away from the track, he could feel its presence, almost throbbing, whichever way he turned, so that his inner compass would never allow him to become lost.
He climbed quite high into the mountains, further than he had ever ventured previously, before sitting himself down and taking a few minutes to rest. Though he handled the shotgun, he did not load it, for it was too dark to properly hunt in the undergrowth of the goddess’ lair.
Young Guido Lupino’s sense of hearing had always, since his childhood, been phenomenal, and so thanks to the gifts granted him by Mother Nature, so he heard, not too far away from where he sat, movement in the bushes.
Clutching the shotgun firmly in his hands, more for comfort’s sake than actual protection, he rolled over onto his belly and started to crawl on his hands and knees towards the source of the sound, which had emanted from behind a set of nearby bushes.
Just under the shrubbery was a slight dip, which, to Guido’s delight, he found would allow him to slip under the bush and so get a perfect view of whatever it was that had so piqued his curiosity, while remaining himself invisible thanks to the trickery that darkness so plays on the eyes.
As Guido pushed his shoulders under the bush, he now heard heavy breathing a few meters ahead of him. Even though his heart leapt with adrenaline and hormone fuelled excitement at the realisation that it was the voice of a young girl, he kept himself calm and therefore steady under the treacherous twigs and leaves around him that could all too easily give away his location.
Even when his shoulder blades were under the bush, Guido’s head was too high off the ground to peer under at the goings on beyond the bush. With an inaudible grunt of irritation, Guido leopard crawled deeper under the bush, dragging his boots underneath with him, so that his chest and legs how hugged the soft earthen ground beneath him. He crawled to the edge of the dip, resting his hands against the small mound and keeping his nose and mouth below the lip of it so that they were invisible; only his eyes dared look through the tiny gap between the bottom of the bush and the lip of earth.
It was now he saw, in a clearing, illuminated by the bright silver moonlight, the fiancée of his cousin Salvatore, Tia Luvidecci, completely naked even at this time of night in the open air, in the passionate grasp of what looked to be a large dog to Guido’s unsure and smitten eyes. As a boy of his age was attuned to do, he made no attempts to stop the beautiful young girl, for he felt a strong lick of lust in his stomach, ordering him to remain rooted to the spot he lay on, and take in the site of the girl making love to the dog with his eyes.
Guido lay there for an indiscernible amount of time; he did not feel time pass. All he knew was that, eventually, the dog…or was it a wolf? Guido couldn’t tell…lifted itself off of Tia and the girl fell to the floor, panting in the relaxed and happy state of post-orgasm.
He saw her smile in the moonlight, rolling over onto her back and stretching out in the cold night. Guido gulped hard, regaining enough of his senses to know that he should get down from the mountains, lest he be discovered.
He came back down rapidly, sliding down the steepest side of the hill so as to get away from the strange apparition as fast as possible, and put it out of his head. So close was his cousin now to the wedding of this girl, the Guido suddenly felt a strong call of duty over his head. Did he speak to his cousin about what he had seen? Or, in favour of their marriage, did he keep his mouth shut and never reveal Tia Luvidecci’s terrible secret?
It was the first choice that Guido Lupino would have to make in deciding the fates of the Luvideccis, and it was not to be his last. Next morning, before even the cock crowed to announce the start of a new day of labour, he left the house to head down the hill to the town of Imperia, where he wished to speak to the local chieftain, Rico Bunzini.
Bunzini was not the kind of Mafioso so publicized and talked about in the press, who had come to label the Sicilian organization as the “Mafia”, after they had risen to great power in the United States before the war. He was a humble and kind man, who could always be found on a weekday morning sitting outside a local tavern, where he’d pass pleasantries on to the passers by, who by now recognized him as they took their habitual route through the centre of the town.
Guido knew where to look for him, and knew it was him he had to speak to. Rico Bunzini was a problem-solver of sorts; or so he had earned a reputation among the population of Imperia as being, during the hell of the war.
The story went, that in the winter of 1943, a young couple took in a family of refugees. Jews; hiding from the cold grip of Nazi imprisonment and persecution. This couple took in the Jews and bathed them, clothed them, fed them and provided lodging in their basement while the Nazi storm troopers marched through the tiny town, at random smashing in house doors to search a house for anything the fascisti would find offensive to their hellish Germanic beliefs.
On the ninth day of this searching by the Germans, the neighbours of this young couple could no longer bear the wait: they feared that should the Jews be discovered in the basement of their neighbours, the entire town would be held accountable, and several of the men punished severely, as was the German’s habit.
Unsure of what course of action to take, they went to a close friend of their’s, by name of Rico Bunzini, and asked them how they should approach the Germans with this delicate information. Bunzini was horrified, and ordered his friends to take a seat in his living room by the fire (his house was quite large for a rural Italian of the time) while he shared with them his beliefs and doctrine.
After a talk for many uncountable hours about various topics which bore no relation to the problem at hand, Bunzini stood as if about to ask his guests to leave, but then said, with words that haunted the minds of his visitors;
“Are you German? I know that you are not German, otherwise you would not come to me in this time of need; nor would you speak Italian, or work so hard in the olive groves to produce fine olive oil, a testament of our rights to this fertile land. Are your neighbours German? I know, likewise, that they are not, for if they were their cold hearts would not be big enough to accept a family of starved, half naked and beaten Jews into their house, with the prospect of certain death lingering over their heads. What your neighbours have done is the sign of a true Italian; compassion and honour even in these dark days.
“You speak ill of these neighbours, however, and think that their ‘foolishness’ is below you; you are not reckless enough to allow the salvation of the Jews under an Imperian roof, if your arguments are to be believed. Where do you feel your duties lie? Some of us have felt, ill-advisedly, that their loyalties lay with Mussolini, and so they wear their military uniform and believe themselves to be true Italians. Others, like yourselves and myself, know rightly that our loyalty is to this land, and the people she so proudly bears, not single-minded political idealisms that deny us our most basics rights to speech and liberty.
“Now I will tell you what I believe about the fascisti. Their days will end; some time, maybe in ten years, maybe in one hundred years, the Swastika will burn, and the Reichstag in Berlin will crumble away like dust. Mussolini, too, in this country, will be outcast, maybe even killed. All those who follow, therefore, in the footsteps of the Axis war machine walk a blind path to oblivion--for these fools, there will be no salvation.
“For us, for the people of this country, downtrodden on by the government, it is in these days that we will rise anew, and rebuild this nation, and all the nations of Europe set upon by the jaws of the rabid Nazi wolf, into a more glorious future than can be dreamt of now. For that reason, your duties, in this time…especially in this time…of need, need be to yourselves and to your neighbours and to this town.
“A loyalty exists south of here, expanding upwards from Calabria, having originated on the island of Sicilia. It was so written as a code after years of dominance over the Sicilian people by many different nations, with no concern nor care for their traditional values. To preserve their tradition, their honour and their loyalty among neighbours--to preserve, in essence, what it meant to be a Sicilian--they invented a law: the Code of Silence. Omertà. And so it was said, by men much more powerful and wiser than I, that no Sicilian--no Italian--may go to the authorities with information against another Sicilian--another Italian. This way, not only were feuds settled the way all feuds should--between, and only between, those directly involved--but it meant that the government imposing their laws on the Sicilian people were rendered powerless, as law was upheld by each individual person.
“So if you want advice on what you should do, all I can say is this: in this time of occupation by a foreign army, more than ever do these Sicilian ideals of Omertà apply to the common Italian people. Each and every one of us must know our place, and our place is beside each and every one of our neighbours against this tide of adversity.”
Rico Bunzini’s words were taken into careful consideration, and the neighbours who had come to him did not denounce the hiding Jews to the German soldiers that took up residence in the small town. There was a time, however, when the German soldiers decided to perform a door to door sweep of the town. Bunzini, in an effort to keep the Jews hidden, posted some of his men in the house they stayed in, to keep suspicions averted. When the Germans were sent South to fight the invasion from Sicily in 1944, Bunzini was hailed as a genius and great hero of Imperia, and so rose to a powerful position among the locals.
It was for this reason that Guido Lupino now went to him, where he sat at his café off a main street of Imperia. There he told Bunzini everything that had transpired; his cousin’s engagement to Tia Luvidecci, their very passionate love for one another and finally the girl’s infatuation with the wolf in the mountains.
Rico Bunzini listened to the child’s claims, without speaking, without passing a comment or a judgment. When Guido Lupino had finished speaking, silence descended at the table where he sat with Rico Bunzini. A few minutes may have passed, where Bunzini thought over the story as told to him by the Lupino boy. The pain apparent in the brown lobes of the child told the man that he had been fed no lie that day, and so he took a deep breath and spoke softly to young Guido.
“I feel that you are speaking the truth to me, Guido,” came his voice in a soft Greek accent, for he had schooled there years prior.
“I’m only telling you what I saw, and what I know…” Guido stuttered in the presence of the Imperian legend.
“Then let me tell you what I know of this Holy matrimony, for I hear much in my days here. Tia Luvidecci and your beloved cousin Salvatore Lupino are made for each other, by the angels of God. I have seen them dine in my café on several occasion, and overheard their table conversation, where your cousin would verbally caress the young girl with his wit.
“I have seen both walking, hand in hand, through the Imperia streets, young Tia Luvidecci embracing him softly in the failing light. I have seen them, I have heard them, I have known them both, and I can tell you that Tia Luvidecci and Salvatore are both very much in love.
“Now I know what young Tia has done is dishonourable, and is a disgrace to both the families involved, but part of me feels that she understands the bearing of her lust, and when she is settled in the arms of a husband she will refrain from continuing her passion. Therefore I will offer my advice--and may I remind you, this is only advice--that you take no action, you say no word to no-one, and you allow the marriage to continue unadulterated. My lips of this matter will be sealed, if yours are too.”
Guido accepted his superior’s advice; it made sense to him, for he knew Tia well and knew how much she loved his cousin. So it was settled. When Rico Bunzini was to be jailed for life a year later, the secret of Tia Luvidecci was to die with Guido Lupino.


Two days before the wedding was when Guido would see the girl next; the first time since seeing her with the wolf on that fateful night. Try as he did, the boy could not take his eyes off of her, for he remembered clearly everything that had happened, he remembered the sight of her beautiful body, he remembered the look of pleasure and passion on her face, and he remembered the dog. The wolf. Whatever it was, he could remember it and see it as if it was in front of his eyes.
Tia Luvidecci caught his stare, and she knew then that he knew. On that night, the night she promised herself would be but her last, she had heard the next-to-inaudible movements in the bushes where Guido Lupino spied from. She had even seen, just for an instant in the moonlight before the grip of sweet orgasm overtook her, a sight of the boy’s ashen face, affixed with wonder at the sight before him.
His eyes, fixed as they were hawk-like on her face of honey that day, affirmed her suspicions, and sent a deep chill of fear shooting through her veins, colder than the coldest ice. She did not sleep that night, she was panicked as to what would happen to her if the boy opened his mouth to anyone. She cried for many, many hours into the twilight of early morning. When her tears subsided, she sat up in bed, cursing herself and the goddess of lust for tricking her into throwing her life to the dogs like she had. To the dogs. As she thought about it, she felt a flush of shame hit her cheeks--how could she let her emotions and desires play with her like she had?
She did not come out of her bedroom all day, to her families confusion and irritation. It was a day before the wedding, and all of Imperia was readying itself for the celebrations to come. Many of her family members came to her door to try and coax her out, including her best friend, the maid of honour, but none succeeded. Tia Luvidecci was shut off from the world in shame and foreboding.
News reached Salvatore of his fiancée’s behaviour late that night. He made a move to go to her house and comfort her, and speak to her about what was bothering her, but it was three minutes past the mark of twelve; the day of the wedding. For that reason his family forbade him to go to his soon-to-be wife. And so another thread on the tapestry of Fate was woven in to seal the fates of the Lupino and Luvidecci clans.

Tia Luvidecci, at five past twelve, took a rope which tied her curtains to the wall and hung herself. She would not let herself be shamed by the families. She would not face the man she loved if he knew what Guido knew.

At nine the next morning, her father entered the room to see his daughter hanging from the high rafters in her bedroom; a sight that no man of any creed should have to behold.

News travelled to all involved quickly. The two families met up in the residence of the Lupino’s, for the police took up the Luvidecci residence to investigate the obvious cause of death. While the women of both families mourned in the living room, the men in the dining room discussed the possibilities behind the death.
Tia’s father, who had always been a man of violence, was quick to blame Salvatore himself for his daughter’s suicide. Salvatore’s grandfather came to his grandson’s defence, and made comment that it was not the Lupino’s fault if Tia chose to disgrace her family by sending herself to the depths of hell. The remark struck a fuse between the two men, and two days later, the two father’s got into a brawl in a tavern of Imperia. Lupino was hospitalized, while Luvidecci was arrested by the police. Neither man spoke to each other after the incident; and so it was set.
The Lupino and Luvidecci families were to feud for the next fifty years.