I walk through the long hallway; family pictures and expensive Italian paintings line the walls. Franco and Carmine are in the kitchen flipping pancakes like two old maids. "Where's he at?" I ask, laughing. "Hey, Franco, you look pretty cute with a spatula in your hand. You should get one of those little aprons too. One that says: Cooks, cleans, and keeps my balls in my purse."

A thick clump of steaming pancake batter splatters on the wall near my head, "Eh. Stai zitto," Franco yells, red-faced.

Carmine laughs beside him and waves at me. "Office, go ahead, go right in. Maybe you'll learn a new trick." He winks and pours some vodka into a tall glass of orange juice. "Hey, Corrado? You want breakfast?"

"Nah, I'm good. Thanks," I answer, walking into the back. I knock on the door at the end of the hallway and walk in to discover the reason the two jackasses out front are making pancakes. The maid is on her knees, with my boss's dick shoved into the back of her throat. His clammy hands twist into her blonde hair, holding her so tight to him I can hear her gagging from where I’m standing. A long strand of saliva drips from her mouth.

"Corrado," he grunts, looking at me through squinted eyes. "You want in here? She's good. She's good," he pants, slamming into her mouth. A stream of sweat drips down each side of his face.

"Nah, I'm good," I lean back against the wall, knowing he'll get off faster with me watching. "Where's your wife?" I ask, chuckling.

He smiles his evil smile and grunts out three times, finishing. Jasmine sits back on her heels and wipes her mouth with the back of her shaky hand.

She watches him tucks his dick away like it’s a loaded gun.

"Anything else, Tony?" Her voice trembles and cracks.

"Yeah. Where the fuck are my pancakes? And make yourself busy, I gotta talk to my Corrado." He leans back on this leather chair, kicked his leg out, and shoves her with the ball of his bare foot. She scrambles away out of his reach, probably terrified of what he'll do next. She’s smart to be terrified. Everyone should be terrified of him.

She gives me a red teary-eyed smile as she walks past me, leaving me alone with Tony.

Tony Fretolli.

Tony Fretolli, my boss.

His huge frame leans back and he zips up his fly. His clean white shirt is pressed and probably cost just as much money as something you could drive. Thick salt-and-pepper hair slicked back, his face somber and most times drastic. I am a man you never cross, his expression always says.

I'm not a man who has a soul.

A man who files hatred and revenge away for later just to surprise you with it at the most inappropriate time.

A dangerous greedy little prick.

A self-righteous back-stabbing bastard.

But he has to be since he is also the head of the Fretolli crime family.

Wanted by every office of authority known to man, but no one can ever make the charges stick. Tony Fretolli is invincible. The Feds have been investigating him for over twenty years. He sends all the agents who work on his case Christmas cards every year, along with a bottle of expensive brandy.

"What do you need, Tone?" I ask.

"Got a suitcase full of cash you need to clean at the club, and I want you to give an extra grand each to the girls for the next party, they've been good." He tilts his head and eyes me, pulling a cigar out of his desk humidor. He clips the end, smells it and lights it, and pulls in a long deep drag. "How long have you been out of Attica?"

Attica.

The Attica Correctional Facility is the maximum-security prison I spent five years in for him. Not that he'd know if I was ever really there. His rule: you never visit people on the inside; you just take care of them when they get out. There's an old myth that the mob takes care of your family when you're in jail. It's all bull, you're on your on, and so is your family—so you do what you got to do. But me? I’m the lucky bastard who’s an exception to the rule; Tony Fertolli is my godfather, he trusts me and loves me like a son.

I shrug. "Seven, eight months."

Another pull on his cigar. Smoke swirling in his mouth. "And you took care of that fat rat for me, right?"

He’s talking about one of his business associates, Michael Apton, who Tony thought needed to speak to God, so he sent me. Tony doesn’t need to know how I took care of him, only that I did. And I sure as hell did. "Don't ask me questions you know the answers to already, Uncle Tone."

"Trust is big with me, Corrado. Big. I didn't trust that fat fucker at all. Every time he laughed, his jowls would wiggle in disturbing ways." He laughs out a puff of smoke. "But now, I got people sniffing around wondering where he went. That Patterson fuck, get rid of him, he needs an open-ended vacation somewhere. And your aunt wants you over for dinner. Don't piss her off. It'll give me a friggin' headache."

I shift back, walking to the door. "When?" I ask.

"Sometime today for Patterson. And your aunt is somewhere shining up her flabby ass at some spa in the city for the week. Costing me a fortune. So when she gets back."

"I'm on it," I say, walking backwards into the hallway. Turning your back to Tony is the same as signing your own death certificate. You just don't want to do it.

"Then come to the club after Patterson." He smiles, eyetooth catching on his top lip, making him look a touch more than sinister. "I want details, son." He starts scrawling a note on a legal pad on his desk, his informal dismissal.

I give him a Boy Scout salute and smile. I hear his laughter all the way to the front door.

The first thing I have to do is get to Patterson before anyone else does.

This is what I do. I’m a made man. Born and bred into this life, I had no choice. This is my family.

Being born into this family you might think you could get out, become someone new, but your demons, those things that were bred into you, will always be just below the surface, and the minute you start to think you are good, human, kind, or respectable—those monsters just stick their claws deeper in and drag you back into the darkness.

I drive past the little outdoor cafe right next to Patterson's office and there he is, sitting peacefully reading the paper. We still have nice enough weather to eat outside I guess, even though the leaves are turning and falling early this year.

Patterson is alone. When his eyes meet mine, he runs.

Pussy.

I hate when grown men make me chase after them.

With a sudden wind whipping through his hair, his lips draw back and his arms fling forward, pushing the table over in front of him. Coffee splatters into the air, pages of his newspaper flutter in the wind and the small glass table slams down across the cement, sprinkling glittery shards of glass all over. His hands flail around as he scrambles with his footing and ends up stumbling into the cafe. He sways for a second, pushing past a waitress holding a tray of dishes that crash hard to the ground.

I jump over the table easily and chase after him into the cafe. "Hey, Betty," I smile at the waitress, "sorry about that." I run past her, an arm’s reach from Patterson, but I don't grab him, not yet. I want to let him think he has a chance. "Can I get a coffee to go? I'll be like two seconds," I call out as we run into the kitchen.

Hope she remembers how I take my coffee.

Patterson is an older man in his late fifties, panting and wheezing. I guess he decides his best bet would be to stop me by grabbing plates of food and throwing them at me. Idiot. I’m definitely going to make him clean up this mess before I handle Tony's wishes.

"Get away from me, get away!" he screams, lunging down a handful of steps. Losing his footing, he crashes hard into the wall causing the framed photos that decorate the surface to fall to the ground. "Someone call the police! Please, please help me!" Idiot. This is one of Tony's businesses. Who the hell would call the police on me?

At the end of the hallway there’s a closed door. "Dead end, Patty." I smile to myself, anticipating how the chase will end.

He hurls all his weight against the door, smashing it open and wildly looking around for some sort of weapon to defend himself with.

Laughing, I across my arms and lean against the doorframe; the only exit out.

Patterson fumbles his hands through the desk in the office, flinging papers everywhere. A small screwdriver sits at the edge of the desk, under some of the papers, and he grabs it and holds it out in front of him. "Stay away, Corrado. Stay the fuck away!"

I pull out my gun, aiming it right at his head. "That'd be the stupidest thing you ever did, Patty."

He teeters for a moment, then drops the tool to the floor and holds his open hands up on either side of his head. "Fuck. Corey. Fuck. Why are you here? I didn't say shit. He knows I won't say shit! Corey. Listen to me. Listen!" A wet spot spreads across the front of his pants. The strong smell of ammonia thickens the air. Then the horrible stench of deep dark bodily fluid follows behind.

"Patty, did you just piss and shit yourself?" I’m honestly in shock.

"Don't kill me. Please. Please."

"What the hell do you feed yourself? That's the most foulest smelling shit I've ever smelt in my entire life."

"Let's work something out, Corey. I'm not going to say anything. I…I promise."

"Right, Tony believes you." I don’t even know what this is about, but he must have fucked up big time.

“Look, Corrado, please. I…I…”

He’s watching the barrel of my gun like I’m some old-school hypnotist. “I…I…I what Patty, I feel like you’re wasting my time here and I should get rid of you quick.”

“I didn’t say anything, okay? Okay? But listen, listen to me, okay?”

I scratch my gun at the bottom of my chin like I’m listening.

“The Russians are asking questions, you see? They…they offered me money, a lot of money for information on what Tony’s doing.”

“Lies you tell. Maybe I’ll set your pants on fire. You ever wonder what it would feel like? To get your legs burned up like that?”

“Corrado, now listen to me. Just keep listening.” He’s holding out his hands in front of him, like his palms could stop bullets. Newsflash: They do not.

But I still, like I’m ready to listen to all the important bullshit he’s about to tell me.

“What they’re saying, Corey. It’s big. They’re saying it’s bigger than girls and guns he’s running.”

“You going to tell me he’s running drugs? You’re his best customer, you’ve been for years.” I can’t help but laugh. “We both know what businesses Tony has his hands in.

“No, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. It’s big, Corrado, it’s the Russians and the boys from Chicago and Jersey, all of them, they’re talking.”

“Then you better start talking about what they’re talking about. Right. Fucking. Now.” My tone is steady and the gun at his forehead very persuasive.

“This is huge, it affects everyone, it's more than girls and guns, drugs and shit, it's bio-engineered weapons and he's looking to those fucking habibs for the highest bidder.” His words stutter and trip over each other as they spew from his mouth.

“First off, you’re being racist and I fucking despise that. Second, you’re telling fairy tales, Patty. Tony wouldn’t do anything like that.” Maybe he would, I wouldn’t put anything past Tony. He’d sell his own mother to make a few dollars.

I raise my hand and bring the butt of my gun hurling down to his face. The crunch of bone is loud and brutal.

Patty’s head jerks back, his knees buckle, and his hands fly up to cover his head. “I swear to God. I didn’t say anything. Tell him I didn’t say anything. You gotta believe me.”

Another foul smell hits my senses. I think he shit his pants again.

“I didn’t say anything about the bio stuff…or…or the kids. I swear to you.”

My veins turn to ice in my body. Biochemical weapons and the kids? “Start talking, Patty. What are they asking and what exactly do you know?”

He coughs and spits blood. “I don’t know much and I’m not telling you anything.”

“Tell me what Chicago and Jersey were asking then.”

“They heard…they heard some rumor that he was buying some chemical stuff from off the black market, but not…not only chemicals, people too.”

I need proof. In the last few months I've seen glimpses of things dirtier than normal, but not this. Tony is still trying to keep me outta trouble. I knew he was into the girls dancing and making money with their bodies at the club, and the drugs, but things beyond that I don’t know about.

And why wouldn’t he be into deeper shit, right? This isn’t the 1990s anymore. Today’s organized crime is fucking global and everyone will do just about anything to be on top.

“You said kids, Patty. What’s he doing with kids?”

“I...I don't know what the fuck he does with them. I know he's been making a mint on the legal fees. I'm his fucking lawyer, Corey. His lawyer!”

“Why's he asking me to kill you?”

“I...I saw something. I saw something. He had a truckload of kids. The Russians don't want to do business with him anymore. So he...he went to the black market and for a measly five grand he bought a dozen kids. Most were infants, but two, Corey, two were old enough for him to use. You know he's a sick fuck.”

“He doesn't sell girls, Patty. He's got the club, those girls party willingly.”

“These aren't girls he's selling, Corado.”

It makes my stomach roll. Tony is digging his own grave. I've seen the money laundering, the drugs, even the dancers using their bodies. He's told me to get rid of people. But he's played it smart since I've come back into the family. There's no one thing people could pin on him, not fucking one. He lets everyone else do the dirty work, he just implies what he'd like.

But is he capable of child trafficking? Of biochemical weapon purchasing?

Yes, yes he probably fucking is.

Tony is a sick, sick fuck.

When I was fifteen, my mother let me spend the summer with Uncle Tony. It was the summer after my father was killed. Tony thought I needed to learn how to be a man, learn not to grieve for something that already happened. He took me to a woman with a thick bush who let me come inside her while she smoked a cigarette. Then she got me so high I ended up having to spend a week in a hospital. It threw me in the center of his constant hurricane. I take care of my family. It's what I do. I’ll give him a job, a good career, working for me, he told my crying mother. He’ll never want for anything in his life.

"Corey. What are you going to do? What are you going to do to me?"

"I'm going to make you disappear, Patty."

I take Patty to a place only I know of, this way nobody will ever get hurt with the information of where I hide the bodies. No one questions me. They'd stop breathing if they did.