by April Lust
“Cosimo Esposito is the new boss of the family,” Fists had begun. “He’s an opportunistic son of a bitch, and we know he’s had illegitimate side businesses growing under his daddy’s nose for years. He’s desperate to be successful. But, most importantly for us, he doesn’t know how to fight a war, and he doesn’t want to. All the bastard wants is money. We’re gonna let him have that—for now.”
“How so?” I’d replied, a growing sense of thrill building in my stomach.
“We negotiate a peace. Let him think it’s favorable to them. On paper, it will be. We back off any contested areas, agree not to strike at any of their business operations, and pull back everything into our own core territory.”
“So what’s the point of all that?”
“We’re putting him to sleep. If all that motherfucker cares about is dollar signs, by all means, he’s welcome to them. He can have the prostitution rings, the drug running, whatever the hell he wants. While he’s focused on that, though, we finish pulling off the biggest deal we’ve ever done.”
I knew what he was talking about right away. The Japanese. A Chicago contact for the Yakuza in Japan had reached out to us a few months back with interest in us helping them broker a deal for high-powered chemical weaponry. The fee they were willing to pay was astronomical, enough to give us a mountain of cash to spend at our leisure. But talks had been slow as the violence with the Espositos ramped up again for the umpteenth time. We weren’t sure whether we’d be able to secure the site of the deal, and we weren’t willing to expose ourselves to a Esposito ambush with that much firepower and cash getting ready to change hands. It would end badly for everyone involved.
“The Yakuza,” I’d said.
Fists had nodded, confirming my suspicions. “If that goes through, we have enough money to buy whatever we want. We’ll fund a massive campaign to hunt down every last rat Esposito out there.”
I worked through the scenario in my head, playing out all the possible angles. There was a window, sure. But even if Cosimo was being lulled to sleep, I still didn’t see how Fists would be confident enough to pull the trigger on the arms swap. Cosimo might be smart enough to maintain the surveillance and espionage systems his dad had put into place. There was no way to be certain, and I told Fists as much.
“That’s where you come in,” he’d replied.
“Me?”
“We need an inside man.”
The air had practically rushed out of the room, taking every bit of sound with it. My pulse thundered in my ears. Hate, confusion, and adrenaline were rushing through me in equal measures. An inside man. Me. How the fuck would that play out?
Fists had seen my hesitation and pressed forward. “We need someone to infiltrate their organization and keep their finger on the pulse. Let us know what’s happening, run interference, and make doubly sure we can pull off this Yakuza deal without a hitch. Then, once you’ve worked your way inside, you’re in prime position to lead the counterstrike after we’ve got the cash flow.”
“You want me to play nice with Cosimo Esposito,” I’d said quietly. “You want me to be his friend.”
“I want you to get close enough that he thinks you’re about to hug him, right before you stab him in the back.”
I took the long way home as I replayed our conversation. I wanted to work out some wrinkle that would throw the whole thing in jeopardy, so we could start over from square one. This shit was patently ridiculous. I wasn’t James fucking Bond. Spying, sneaking, pretending, that was shit for the comic books, not for real life. And this was as real as it got. There were millions of dollars and hundreds of lives at stake. It would all be dependent on me to keep it safe. There had to be another way.
I’d tried a dozen different arguments to sway Fists from his plan, but he wasn’t going to be convinced. “This is the only way,” he’d said. “And it’s the best way.” Throwing the full extent of our current resources into the war would end in a bloody stalemate with no guarantee of any degree of success. But once we had that money, our options would be limitless. We could buy out lower ranking family members, sway local businesses and smaller gangs to our banner, or even hire mercenaries to beef up our ranks before attacking the Espositos head on. There were a million ways to play it once we got to that point. But it all hinged on executing the deal. That was the corner we had to turn.
Well, fuck. If that was the way things had to be, so be it. I was going behind enemy lines. I just hoped I would live long enough to have my revenge.
# # #
When I awoke the next morning, I was calm and steady. “You’re going to have to scrub everything,” Fists had warned me, “your whole life needs to disappear. They can’t know who you are or where you’ve been. The second they find out you’re affiliated with us, it’s over.” Prospects had come by the apartment to take away all my things. Fists had arranged with a few local cops we had on payroll to fake arrest me, so there was a plausible reason for my disappearance just in case the Espositos happened to have eyes on my neighborhood. I buzzed my hair short and traded my leather kutte with The Punishers’ patch for a pair of jeans and a t-shirt that would blend in anywhere. I was disappearing, one piece of me at a time.
I looked around my apartment. Except for the bare mattress I was sleeping on, it was empty. Dust had begun to colonize in the corners. The closets yawned, wide and bereft of anything but a few loose hangers. There was no trace I’d ever lived here.
I got up and strode to the bathroom to splash some water on my face. Blue eyes gazed back at me from the mirror. I ran a hand through my air, marveling at how unfamiliar it felt to be cropped so short. I could have been anybody.
I locked the door behind me as I left the apartment. Fists and Luca were waiting out front in a small, unmarked sedan. I remembered that car; I’d boosted it a few years prior. We used it on random errands for the club from time to time when we wanted to go around without drawing too much attention.
As I slid into the backseat, I saw Luca’s beady eyes focus on me in the rearview mirror. He smiled that meaty, gawping grin of his. “Hey, Batman, ready to go undercover?”
“Just drive,” I muttered.
He shrugged and pulled out down the road.
Fists looked back at me from the passenger’s seat. “You feelin’ all right, Nico?” he asked.
To be honest, I didn’t know what I was feeling. Every emotion seemed to be in competition with the next. This was the culmination of more than a decade of waiting for the right moment to do what I’d spent so many night dreaming about. I should have been happy, or excited, or, at the very least, a little bit energized.
But there was no guarantee of success. This plan was dangerous as hell. It would require the best of me. I had to be on my feet, keep my awareness up, and manage to pass information back to Fists and the rest of the club as often as I could. Plenty of chances to get caught.
“Never better,” I grumbled. He nodded and shifted back forwards. We drove the next few miles without saying a word to each other. Luca reached to flick on the radio, but Fists gave him an icy glare and he stopped with his hand halfway to the knob. It wasn’t that kind of moment.
I watched out the window as the city passed me by. This had been my home ever since I left the foster care facility. These streets were my streets. These bums were my bums. I felt like I was losing it all. If I left behind everything I knew, what was left?
I knew the answer. My anger.
Just like that night in the basement of the clubhouse, that first agonizing night, I was relying on my anger to power me through this ordeal. I could run away at any time. That was the antidote in my hand. But I knew I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. One thing mattered, and one thing only. Soaking the ground in Esposito blood.
“Stop here,” I said suddenly.
Luca ground to a halt. “What?” he said in surprise.
Fists looked back at me with a curious eyebrow raised. “We’ve gotta meet up with our contact,” he said warningly.
/> “It’ll be quick,” I told him. “I promise.”
I stole out of the car before he had a chance to say another word. I crossed the street quickly, head down and hands stuffed in my pockets, then mounted the curb and hustled across a patch of grass. It was a freakishly cold morning, cold enough that an icy sheen lay across the green blades. My footsteps crunched as I slushed through.
The traffic on the highway overhead morphed into a giant’s yawn when I stepped underneath the concrete arch. For anyone else, this rough-and-tumble patch of dirt, garbage, and upturned shopping carts nestled at the foot of the overpass might have been meaningless. But it meant something to me.
I pushed aside the rotten, decaying sleeping bags hung up on the clothesline. There it was. A ramshackle wooden cross had been thrust into the earth above the gentle swell of a dirt mound. Smalls’ final resting place.
I opened my mouth to say something and immediately felt stupid. If this was a movie, maybe some sad music would have been playing as I gave a heartfelt speech. But it wasn’t anything like that. It was just a quiet moment with the cars rumbling past and the swish of the breeze filtering underneath while I stood in front of Smalls’ grave and remembered where all of this had started. With him. Because of him. Because he saved me.
Now, his killers would pay.
“I’ll get ’em, shorty,” I said. It was a stupid thing to say, but it was all I had. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my ID. It was the last piece of me I had. Stooping over, I laid it on the ground next to the cross and kicked a bit of dirt on top of the plastic card. Then I turned and went back to the car.
“Everything cool?” Fists asked as I got back into the vehicle.
“Let’s go,” I said, ignoring his question. We drove.
# # #
The man in front of me was a ratty, shivering wretch. He looked emaciated, skin turned into a bony white from hours spent doing God knew what. Judging by the looks of him, he was an H junkie. The pallid tone of his face was probably earned the hard way, through days and weeks spent cooped up in a drug den with a needle in his arm.
“Bruno,” said Fists coolly by way of introduction, “this is our guy. He goes by Nicholas.”
“Nicholas,” Bruno repeated, licking his lips. He turned his pale eyes onto me. They wouldn’t stay in one place. His pupils, ultra-dilated, zoomed around and around in their sockets crazily. Maybe I was wrong about the H. Based on the wild motion, he could have been adding some speedballs to his drug diet. Either way, he was a mess. “Nice to meet you, Nicholas,” he finished. “It will be a pleasure working with you.” The way he said the word pleasure was disgusting. It slithered from his tongue like earthworms, wriggling around in my ear. I hated this bastard already. Matter of fact, I hated the whole damn situation. But it was what had to happen.
“You know the deal, right?” Fists asked. One of his eyebrows twitched upwards, waiting for confirmation.
“Yes, yes, yes,” Bruno said in a hurry. His head bobbed up and down rapidly. He licked his lips again. “Very simple. Nicholas is our new friend.” He grinned evilly. His teeth were like a yellowed and crooked row of tombstones. I shuddered.
Of all people to help me weasel my way into the Esposito organization, we had to go with this guy. I didn’t trust the bastard as far as I could throw him. Less, actually. He weighed at most a hundred pounds dripping wet, so I could probably chuck him a good distance. That might even be a better plan than the one at hand, which involved more trusting than throwing. What a shame.
But we had to use Bruno, because we had leverage over him. The dumb fuck had been caught stealing from a minor warehouse we used to offload whatever low-risk cargo we had to stash for a while when the police started snooping too closely.
A few of our guys had stumbled on him with a trunk full of Punishers’ contraband, and the motherfucker had started squealing immediately. He’d offered to turn over every piece of Esposito information he knew. He had drug shipment routes, upcoming contracts, and a whole mess of other shit he was willing to reveal in exchange for his sniveling excuse of a life.
Fists had had a better idea, though. We’d let him keep his hide intact, but, in return, he had to get me in. Well, who better to kick start a betrayal than a betrayer, right? At least, that was how Fists had sold it to me. I didn’t like it, but, once again, he had me in a corner. I couldn’t see a better route. So Bruno it was.
The mechanics of introducing me to the family were relatively simple. I would be a new recruit, a distant cousin from out of town. We had a general idea of how their recruiting apparatus worked. Grill a new guy a little bit, give him some minor jobs to test his mettle, and if he passed muster, things generally went smoothly from there.
It wouldn’t be hard for me to pose as someone else. I was an outcast to begin with. I had no past.
“You know what’ll happen if you fuck this up, right, friend?” Luca said from where he stood behind me. He was cleaning his gun. It was an unnecessary display of force; this ratty son of a bitch was already full of gratitude for our mercy. But Luca couldn’t help himself. That kind of shit was just in his nature.
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Bruno shot back nervously. “It will be nothin’ but smooth sailing. Nicholas won’t lose a hair on his head.” He smiled again. I wished he wouldn’t.
“That’s what I like to hear. I’d hate to have to break you.”
“Anyway,” I interrupted just as Bruno somehow managed to turn a shade paler. “What now?”
Bruno leaped at the chance to change the subject. “Ah, yes, now I take you to meet the boss.”
“Cosimo?” I said. I would have been stunned to get inside access that quickly.
“No, no,” he replied. He shook his head back and forth like a wet dog. “The boss of my unit. A capo, he is called. His name is Giovanni.” Another lick of the lips.
“Giovanni,” I mused, rolling the name between my lips. This was the man I needed to impress.
“Bruno, give us a second, would you?” Fists asked.
Bruno spun immediately and walked out of the alley. I heard the spark and catch of a cigarette as he leaned up against the wall facing the street.
Fists turned to me once Bruno was gone. “You ready?” he said, eyeing me up and down.
I didn’t blink or fidget. “Yes.”
“I hope you wrote up a will,” Luca shot in. “Make sure all your loved ones are gonna get your precious stuff.”
“Fuck off, Luca. You’re not helping,” Fists barked.
He raised his hands in self-defense. “I’m just sayin’, this is dangerous shit. You’re goin’ behind enemy lines. Who knows what could happen? I wish the best for you, of course.” He went on, “but I’m a realist.” He placed a hand on his chest like a professor lecturing. “A man must face reality, no?”
“Luca, shut the fuck up,” I said evenly. He shrugged and went back to piecing his gun together again. He thought he was a funny motherfucker sometimes.
I’d never been a big fan of gallows humor. But I had to admit, he wasn’t wrong. There was a damn good chance I wasn’t coming back from this. One slip-up, one mistake, and I’d have my head staked on a pole in Cosimo Esposito’s front yard. The underworld I operated in didn’t take kindly to traitors.
I’d be damned if that happened, though. This business would end in one way and one way only—with everything the Espositos had ever touched being burnt to the ground.
“Time to go,” Bruno called from the front of the alley.
“One sec,” Fists said. He put his hands on my shoulders and looked me square in the eye. “Good luck, brother,” he told me.
I could feel him putting all the certainty and strength he could into his voice. I didn’t need to be convinced. I knew what was happening. I knew what we wanted. And I knew what the outcome would be.
I was going to get revenge, or die trying. There was no such thing as an in-between.
Fists nodded once more, then he and Luca turned and left
the alley at the other end. I took a deep breath. One last moment of silence before plunging into the breach. I was leaving everything behind. The life I’d spent so many years putting together from nothing, it was just ash in the wind now. From this point forward, I was whoever I needed to be. The goal was all that mattered.
I tightened my belt and walked out towards Bruno. Game time.
“Let’s go,” I growled as I emerged from the alleyway.
Bruno looked me up and down. “No weapons on you?” he asked.
I shook my head. I knew better than to come strapped into the Esposito stronghold. All I had was my fists. That would have to be enough for the time being.
“Let’s go, then,” he said, and he started to lead the way down the street.
I followed him for a few dozen blocks, weaving between pedestrians and street vendors. The sun had set an hour before, and the last of the light was vanishing from the sky. Neon signs flicked on, advertising bars and restaurants, while the people of the city flooded its streets in search of whatever it was they were looking for.
