A Lifetime to Die

The darkest of secrets sometimes linger for a lifetime. When they are finally exposed they can be like the discovery of an ancient tomb, perhaps better left alone, although never ignored. Aristotle Mercury’s father knew too much, so he was silenced. With the help of his friends in the Russian mob, Aristotle’s Uncle Jacob is able to move in and take over as the new head of the now successful factory that his own brother created. The year is 1968. As the Red Army’s tanks roll into Wenceslas Square in the very heart of Prague, a seventeen year old Aristotle learns the horrible truth about his father. Five years prior someone else was murdered in his place to make it appear as if he was accidentally crushed under a factory press. Since then his father has been alive and imprisoned in the notorious Prague Institute for the Criminally Insane. In a daring rescue Aristotle retrieves his barely alive father from the bowels of the terrible prison. After a short time his father succumbs to the ravages of his imprisonment, but not before he divulges the location of the evidence which proves he owned the now thriving factory, and of Uncle Jake’s murderous duplicity in stealing it from them. With the Russians taking over the country, and the mob closing in to eliminate the only living heir to a burgeoning fortune, Aristotle flees Czechoslovakia and makes his way to America, vowing to one day go back and even the score. He settles in New York, in Greenwich Village. He’s honest and works hard to learn the new ways of a strange land. Soon he befriends his eccentric landlord, the elderly Mrs. Schroeder. Telly, as his new friends in America like to call him, ignites a withered spirit of adventure in the lady who still believes in the good in people. She owns some property, and Telly has a talent for building. They both learn Telly also has an eye for the deal. Together they develop first her land, and then other land in the exploding New York real estate market. Telly’s ambitions lead him from the posh boardrooms of New York to the lucrative shores of New Jersey, where he’s almost killed as he constructs the world’s largest casino. Never too far from his mind, always there to haunt and motivate him, Telly dreams of the day he will finally return to his homeland and exact vengeance on his Uncle Jake. In a sweeping saga of familial betrayal spanning three decades of intertwining lives, Telly Mercury finally gets his chance for justice. But does righting the wrongs of a demon filled closet come with a price too high? Secrets are sometimes better left untold, in spite of their screams from across the years to be heard. His own salvation hanging in the balance, Telly must somehow accept that forgiveness trumps retribution, and money truly can’t buy happiness. And just maybe, as it is with his Uncle Jacob, forgiveness is the worst possible epithet for a life lived in the accompaniment of the unquenchable thirsts of greed and murder.