Nicholas

 

I fumbled for a moment before I found my voice again. “Marco’s…dead?”

 

“Yep,” Fists nodded.

 

“You’re telling me Marco Esposito is dead. Marco, the boss of the Esposito crime family. Dead?”

 

“That’s what I’m telling you.”

 

“Damn.” That’s all I could think of to say. Damn. The man had built an empire from nothing. Until The Punishers came along, he ran this city with an iron fist. With the notable exception of the members of this club, everyone who had ever challenged him was either buried in an unmarked grave or sleeping forever at the bottom of the lake. He was a Chicago institution, an immovable object. Marco Esposito was God.

 

But, apparently, God was dead.

 

Something occurred to me. Why stop now? Why hold back? “Fists, how the fuck could you be talking about negotiating a peace treaty?” I said hungrily. “Now’s the time to take them down! That rat fuck son of his doesn’t have half the balls his old man did. Let’s strike. Let’s burn that fucking mansion of theirs to the ground.”

 

“Try not to break my shit, Nico,” Fists said.

 

I looked down and realized I’d snapped off a piece of the desk in my bare hands. The wooden splinters stuck out. I set the chunk of wood carefully on top and settled back into my seat, folding my hands across my lap and mostly succeeding in keeping my breath calm and even.

 

“Now is the time, prez,” I repeated. “We won’t get another chance this good.”

 

He shook his head. “No.”

 

“You can’t just tell me, ‘No.’”

 

“I can, I will, and I just did,” he retorted. “I’m your president, and as long as I’m still here, you’re listening to what I say. Got that?”

 

I exploded. “Fuck that and fuck you. You know why I joined this club. I came because I wanted every Esposito to bleed for what they did to me. If you’re telling me to stand down just because you’re too scared to fight, then fuck this whole joint. I’m out. I’ll go fight them myself.” I stood and spun angrily on one heel, headed for the exit.

 

“Sit down, Nico,” he called tiredly just as my hand closed around the doorknob. I paused for a moment, curious what he would say. “There’s more to it.”

 

I turned back to face him. My eyes were narrowed suspiciously. Fists was a tricky, manipulative motherfucker when he wanted to be. There was a reason he was The Punishers’ president, the same reason he’d survived so long in this bloody turf war. He knew how to play the game.

 

“Start talking,” I said.

 

“First, you sit.” He pointed at the empty chair.

 

I eyed it for a moment, then decided I owed him at least the benefit of a few more minutes’ worth of attention. But I wouldn’t sit for long. Who knew how long this window of opportunity was going to last? “I’m sitting,” I growled once I had settled back down.

 

“Now, before I tell you what’s happening, I want you to answer one more question for me.”

 

“I told you before, I’m done playing games. If you don’t tell me the plan, I’m leaving right this fucking second.”

 

“Just one question. It’ll be quick, I promise.”

 

“Fine.”

 

“How much do you hate them?”

 

I let the question sink in. How much do I hate them? The first thing I thought of was that night I’d spent in the chair in the basement, the same one every Punisher had sat through on his first night with the club. The ghost memory of the pain still haunted my body. The pain was almost like an old friend, lingering around in my veins and nerve endings just to remind me of what I’d gone through.

 

Why had I stayed? Why did I suffer through the pain? I’d held that vial in my hand the entire night. I must have looked at it and decided to drink it a thousand times. But a thousand times I’d stopped myself right on the brink of giving in. Why go through all that?

 

Because of Smalls.

 

I drifted back into the memory of his dying body cradled in my lap. The motherfuckers had beat him senseless, just to inflict pain. He didn’t make a difference to their war one way or another. We were small-time, he and I. One more stolen car would hardly make a dent in either side’s coffers.

 

They killed him to make a point. They wanted the city to think the Espositos were invincible, and they were out to prove that idea, one dead, innocent body at a time. Smalls was a pawn. He deserved better than that.

 

The pain of my wrist was nothing compared to the hatred I felt towards the motherfuckers who’d robbed me of a friend. Hell, Smalls was more than that. If there were such things as guardian angels, he was the closest thing to it. The man had literally plucked me from the gutter, brought me back from death’s doorstep. He fixed me up, brushed me off, made me into a man. A man with hate in his heart and a gun in each hand.

 

“I want to strangle every one of them to death with my own two hands,” I told Fists.

 

He nodded, satisfied with my answer. “Good,” he said. “You’ll need that.”

 

I waited with bated breath for him to continue.

 

“Now, I’m going to explain everything, and I want you to listen closely. It’s complicated, and there’s a lot of ways this shit could blow up in our faces. But if it goes right, you’ll get everything you wanted.”

 

I folded my arms and listened as he explained.

 

# # #

 

Jesus, what a mindfuck, I thought to myself as I rode home on my motorcycle. Fists’ words played in my head over and over again. Each time, the plan seemed more fucked up and convoluted than the last. It was reckless, downright implausible…and, yet, if we found a way to pull it off, it’d be the greatest coup in the history of the club. A strike the Espositos would never recover from. We’d have our enemies at our feet and the city in our hands, all in one fell swoop. But goddamn, the stakes were high.

 

“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.

 

Slowly, we left the heart of the downtown area and moved farther into a slummier part of town. Out here, there weren’t quite as many signs, not quite as many people. The burble of happy crowds gave way to groaning homeless types and the rusty cranking of beat-up cars as they trundled by. I’d never spent much time out this way. It wasn’t exactly an area that was known for being friendly to Punishers like me. Even the bums in this district were liable to be working for the Espositos as lookouts. I kept my head down and followed Bruno.

 

He came to a halt in front of a boarded-up restaurant. The dust and graffiti on the wooden slats covering the windows suggested it had been closed for a long time. There was no front door. Cobwebbed shadows beckoned from within.

 

“Here?” I asked. Bruno shot inside without answering. I sighed and moved in behind him.

 

The interior was brutally dark and had a nasty, musty smell that attacked my nostrils as we walked deeper into the building. We moved towards the back and I began to hear raised voices.

 

“Fuck,” I cursed as I stumbled over some broken furniture in the darkness.

 

“Shh,” Bruno hissed back from up ahead.

 

I couldn’t see him at all. I just followed the sound of his footsteps, moving as quickly as I could behind him. I heard the creak of a door opening and a dim light speared out into the building. I could see a stairway sloping down from the entrance. Bruno held it open and gestured for me to go down first.

 

I didn’t like this situation. Basements meant no alternative exits. There was always the chance this plan had been doomed from the start, that we were being set up. I half expected to walk down and find one man with a gun, ready to torture me until I gave up my brothers and then end my life once I had nothing more to offer.

 

What I saw was almost worse.

 

I reached the bottom of the stairs and discovered the source of the raised voices. Twenty or thirty shirtless men stood in a circle around an open area. They were all sweating, howling, slapping their hands against their thighs or stomping their bare feet on the concrete floor as the sounds of meaty thumps echoed upwards from the center of the circle. A few men shifted, offering me a glimpse of what lay within.

 

Two fighters were squared up across from each other in the open space at the heart of the cluster. They were shirtless and slicked in sweat. One man was massive, nearly seven feet tall, with legs like tree trunks and biceps riddled with anaconda-like veins bulging beneath the skin. Across from him was a much smaller man, not even six feet tall, who lacked the muscle tone and ferocious expression of his opponent. He looked downright terrified.

 

Suddenly, the big man let loose a ravenous wail, smacked his fists against his chest, and charged forward. The little guy tried to move out of the way, but he had hardly budged an inch when the first punch collided with his jaw. I heard the sound of teeth breaking and saw the enamel fragments skitter against the concrete. Two more punches landed in quick succession, each uglier and more powerful than the last. The small man never had a chance.

 

He was still moaning and conscious when the titan he was fighting picked him up overhead as easily as he would a child. Time seemed to pause for a moment as the limp, nearly lifeless man reached the top of his arc. Then the bigger man swung him downwards at full speed. He hit the floor with a sickening crunch. He didn’t move anymore after that.

 

The crowd erupted in cheers and satisfied grunting. I watched as two stone-faced boys entered the circle, picked up the broken body of the defeated fighter, and dragged him off to the side. To my surprise, they just left him there to bleed and whimper. No one attended to him. If he were going to survive, he needed to get to a hospital immediately. But no one seemed to give a damn.

 

So this was a fight club. Money changed hands around the edge of the ring, settling bets on the former round. The air was heavy with expectation and pent-up aggression as they waited for the next fight. The monstrous man who’d dominated the first round still stood in the empty space at the center of the gathered people, not even breathing heavily. The win hadn’t cost him much in the way of effort. I wondered what poor bastard was going to have to fight him next.

 

I noticed Bruno’s eyes on me. I looked over and saw him gulp nervously, but the anxious expression quickly shifted into something more sinister. “What?” I said, eyes narrowing in suspicion.

 

“You are next,” he said in a quiet voice.

 

“What the fuck did you just say?” I demanded.

 

“This is your test. You need to prove you are who you say you are. So you fight him.” He extended a bony finger towards the circle where the seven-foot animal stood waiting.

 

This motherfucker. It wasn’t quite a set-up, but it was damn close to it. He’d made vague comments about having to verify myself to the family, but I never imagined anything like this. Just as I want to argue, I feel the attention of the crowd shift in my direction.

 

“You’re next?” bellowed the man in the middle, extending a thick, grubby finger in my direction.

 

I couldn’t say no. Refusing to fight would be as bad as blowing my cover. Slowly, I walked forward to stand in front of him. The crowd parted to let me through.

 

Inside the circle, the stench of sweat and blood was overpowering. It was hot as hell with all the bodies packed so closely together. Across the ring, the giant cracked his knuckles and rolled his neck. I looked around, waiting for instructions.

 

“No shoes, no shirts,” said a reedy man next to me. His body looked like it was carved out of driftwood, all sinew and bone with hardly an ounce of fat. “No holds barred. Fight until you can’t fight any longer.”

 

I complied, stripping off my shirt and tossing my shoes to the side. My breath was low and even as I tried to steady myself and get ready for what was coming. But I still had one more question.

 

“How do I know when it’s over?” I asked the skinny man.

 

He grinned, revealing a bloody gap where his front teeth should have been. “When one of you is dead.”