Meadow: A Sopranos Fanfic

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Reuben was a 2nd generation son to parents who had been well to do in Cuba, but who'd struggled to make a life for themselves after arriving in Miami after the 60's exile off the island. He had heard from an aunt that the reason they had named him Reuben was after his mother's favorite singer at the time, Reuben Blades. The artist had been a symbol of revolution throughout all of Latin America, having produced an amalgam of music focused around the liberation of Spanish colonies and freedom from the hands of American subjugation.
Reuben was supposed to have lived up to his name and fulfill his destiny as a Marxist revolutionary just like his father had done before him, when he had been regarded as a hero after secretly treating Castro's soldiers just before the ousting of Batista from La Havana on December 31st, 1953. Even though Fidel's revolution lost it's way years later and the situation in Cuba forced him to take his family into exile, Enrique Santiago was sure his son Reuben would fulfill his destiny someday and make his people proud.

Reuben never even got close to it.

Instead, he became infamously known in the underworld set in and out of New England as "The Cuban," a smuggler of fine things, a liaison between the gangs, a distributor of drugs, and most importantly, a friend to the Italian families of New York, New Jersey, Chicago and Cleveland.  Now, in 2019, with most of the families suffering from a vacuum of power, Reuben Santiago was still all of those things, only now he was so much more.
The end of the Cosa Nostra's hay day was marked by RICO predicates and statutes that cared nothing for civility and honor. At the end of the day, it was that code of honor which had become their undoing. The feds would spend nearly a century taking a sledgehammer to this thing by targeting made men and making them offers they could very literally not refuse; life in a box or giving up their friends in exchange for their lives. Before RICO, a made man was expected to do a 10 year bid standing on his head, but tell them that they were going away for life? Away from their families and friends stemming from charges that normally wouldn't have lead to more than a dime behind bars? Even the toughest wise guy would open his mouth like an African Yellow-tailed parrot singing a rat, is a rat, is rat-at-tat-tat.
Adding insult to injury, the rackets were near gone now, taken away and legalized by the man. It's any wonder there wasn't an app for legalized prostitution, he thought, and then remembered  TINDER was a thing now.

The reason why Reuben and his men, just like the Russians and the Colombians and the Mexicans and the Arabs and god knew who else, had taken over this thing is because they had no trouble with discarding code and honor and simply coloring outside the lines.
That's all there was to it. To stay alive in this business now meant that there couldn't be any honor amongst thieves, which was funny despite itself, seeing as that until RICO, there had been.
Reuben was glad, however, that today his job solicited a rather meager use of his talents as for today only, he was simply a knower of things and a broker of a meetings. His only function on this particular day would be to divulge information, yes, but this information was just as confidential as the dosier on JFK's assassination at the Pentagon. And today, he was the motherfucking Pentagon. In his mind lay something that had never been uttered before in a sit down and which had been kept secret for 12 long years. Today would be the day where he would tell the new boss of the New Jersey DiMeo crime family who had been responsible for the killing of their old boss, Anthony "T" Soprano.
The reason for his willing to tell them was simple, it's what Hesh Rabkin, his former mentor, had asked him to do before his death if a new boss was ever crowned. Unbeknownst to anyone, even Reuben. Hesh himself had been given the order by the former Boss, Silvio Dante.

The Cuban was simply waiting on the aforementioned boss, Paulie "Walnuts" Gualtieri, two paralegals, a driver and Tony's actual daughter to arrive before going up. On his end he only needed one person, his valet and main runner, a young 17 year old named Giancarlo Antonio de La Paz. Giancarlo wasn't lethal in any way shape or form. He wasn't muscle, he wasn't ruthless and he wasn't in the game as directly as Reuben was. He was just a good kid Hesh had asked him to mentor the same way he had Reuben, before his own death at the tender age of 90. And so Reuben had done just that,