IT WAS to be the ultimate hostile takeover. On July 30, 2013, Tyrone Mercanti is in China on business.

That business was running the sprawling and successful shoe empire that had been started by his father Michael exactly 50 years before with a repair kiosk in the Dianella plaza.

Today, Michael was about to put the boot in.

Accompanied by his wife Yvonne, his other sons Jamie and Jason, his solicitor and his IT man, the 80-year-old patriarch marches into the Gladstone Street, Perth, offices to take back what he had built.

At that very moment, then chief financial officer Larry Thomas is talking to Tyrone on the phone.

Jason snatches the phone out of his hand and tells brother Tyrone — the brother who had once pleaded to a judge not to send to Jason to prison — that he is now talking to the new owners of the business.

He then hangs up.

The extraordinary scene is the culmination of a tribal split in a family whose name had become notorious in WA because of the one brother not there on the day.

Troy — WA’s most infamous bikie — was not present because he was still in prison, serving a near seven-year stretch for the brutal treatment he dished out to his partner Tammy Kingdon over their 16-year relationship.

Camera Icon The parents: Yvonne and Michael Mercanti. Credit: PerthNow

But even though he is not there in person, Troy’s thuggery — and his mother’s ultimate decision to tell the truth about him in court — was also at play on the day a family once so committed to each other tore itself in two.

Mostly, though, the family feud was about trust. Or two trusts in fact.

Michael Mercanti, born in Italy in 1933, was a cobbler by trade. Despite English being his second language, by his mid 40s he had built a thriving business.

On the advice of his trusted accountant, he was advised to establish a family trust to to run the retail shoe repair business because of the associated tax advantages.

As the business expanded from retail into wholesale in the mid 90s, with Mike’s Multi Service kiosks in shopping centres all over Perth, so another separate trust was established to run that side of the firm.

Michael’s defining trust, though, was placed in his youngest son Tyrone.

Camera Icon The entertainer: Jamie Mercanti. Credit: PerthNow

Straight out of school, Tyrone had begun to walk, and work, in his father’s shoes. His eldest brother Jamie was the barrel-chested showman, fronting Slim Jim and the Fatts. Jason was on a similar dark path to Troy.

And so in business terms, Tyrone was the “golden boy”.

In about 1996, Tyrone becomes general manager of the business. In 2001, he is made director of the two trusts. And in 2004, he is appointed by his parents as managing director of the companies.

For nearly a decade following, Tyrone and his parents defy the notion that blood and money don’t mix.

The business grows. The families live in houses facing each other on a well-to-do Karrinyup street, and share breakfast every morning.

Elsewhere in the family though, things are not as serene.

Three days before Australia Day 2005, Troy — a leading light in the Coffin Cheaters — is meeting with Scorpion Boys gang member Nabil Dabag in the bowels of the Metro nightclub in Northbridge. There are no pleasantries.

Camera Icon The prodigal son: Jason Mercanti. Credit: PerthNow

Instead Troy is stabbed and slashed by Dabag, and he retaliates by shooting his rival five times.

Despite being acquitted of a wounding charge by a jury, Troy’s reputation is sealed in the eyes of the public and police, who rarely took their eyes off him thereafter.

They are also watching Jason.

Just months after the shooting, he is charged with lying to the Australian Crime Commission.

Asked by the ACC about flights he had taken from Perth to Sydney, Jason said he had never carried more than $10,000.

In fact, they already knew he had carried $200,000 and $75,000 in cash, after secretly searching his bags.

He was later jailed for eight months, despite a personal plea to the judge from his youngest brother. “He’s no longer a coward, he’s a hero.” Tyrone said. “Troy’s a tower of strength and Jason is not.”

Troy’s shows of strength at home are also making his family weaker, from the inside.

On Christmas Day 2006, grandkids are running around Yvonne and Michael’s home, food is cooking, drink is flowing.

Then one punch from Troy knocks out the tooth of his long-time, long-suffering partner.

Camera Icon The golden boy: Tyrone Mercanti. Credit: PerthNow

It was swift, brutal, and witnessed by Yvonne, who was standing between the couple when it happened.

“It was just a normal Christmas, but because it (the hit) was so instant and so unexpected, I probably can’t trust that it can’t happen again because it did happen,” Jamie said.

“It’s very surreal and that day was just off the planet.”

The Mercanti worlds though, keep on turning.

The businesses keep running. Troy is charged with another bashing, and is then bashed himself as part of an expulsion by his Coffin Cheater brethren.

By late 2012, Tammy has finally left, after one beating too many, and his family are also at each others throats.

Growing concerns about money prompts Michael and Yvonne to ask for their credit card bills to be paid by the business. Tyrone turns down the request flat.

Hackles raised, a close accountant friend of Jason is tasked to make some inquiries about the state of the businesses. And then, the legal bombs started landing.

In early 2013, Michael files claims that the handover in 2004 was done “under a mistake or misapprehension”.

Injunctions are filed to restrain Tyrone’s powers as boss.

And the former golden boy hits back, saying the handover was an “advance on his inheritance”, with his parents’ full knowledge and blessing.

In March comes the final straw.

With Troy furiously defending himself against the accusations of domestic violence, Yvonne is called to give evidence against him.

The family fights hard against the request, claiming it could affect her health. But Tyrone’s attitude is not in tune with the rest.

And it widens the chasm.

With Troy jailed, and Tammy in hiding, the family feud hits court — with the hostile takeover prompting Tyrone to issue his own injunctions from China and appoint his own family trust in charge of both business trusts.

Three months later, his parents formally sack him.

On the same day, they give notice for him, and his young family, to leave the home across the road.

Claims and counter-claims of mismanagement, threats, “murky” loans and undue influence swirl around WA’s courts for four years, with the leadership of the business in stasis.

And the stakes are so high, Tyrone employs Julian Burnside to defend him, as he had Alan Bond and Rose Porteous in the past. And it works. In part.

In a Supreme Court judgment in December, Justice Rene Le Miere finds Tyrone is the rightful ruler of the trust in charge of the retail business, which recorded sales of over $5 million in 2012.

That trust also manages a suite of residential properties worth more than $3 million.

Michael is handed back the running of trust that runs the wholesale side of the firm. But the injunctions continue, and are rolled over by Justice Susan Kiefel, just weeks before she is appointed Australia’s first female chief justice.

When that same High Court finally dismissed Michael and Jason’s request for another appeal last month, the legal war was over.

But battles still ensue. Documents show one of Tyrone’s companies, Parris Adele Pty Ltd, was placed into liquidation this year, after a winding-up application was made by the main creditor, who says she is owed $131,167. 03.

That creditor: Sybill Yvonne Mercanti, Tyrone’s mother.