“Do you got the stuff?”

            “What the fuck do you mean, the stuff? You asked me to come to plan the next move,”

            “So I did. I assume that means you didn’t bring the stuff?”

            “No I didn’t bring “the stuff” you idiot”

            “Very well. I believe we can beat them. Very simple you see, we turn them on themselves. Have them fight each other.”

            “Yes, they can destroy themselves much easier than we can destroy them. But how?”

            “Easy. We let nothing on in the beginning. We get close. My father always said, keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. So we get in close. Real close. So tight they think it’s for real.”

            “What if it turns into the real thing?”

            “It won’t.”

            “Then it’s done.”

            “Nice doing business with you. Next time kindly bring the stuff”

            “Fuck off.”

  Bruno thought back to that conversation he had had with Gino. That was a long time ago. Back before everything had happened. He recalled it like a dream. But he had to try to remember, the judge wouldn’t like it he told him he didn’t remember what had happened. But everything was so blurry. Or was it that he didn’t want to remember. That’s what Cecilio’s lawyer had told the judge. That he didn’t want to confess. Ha! Bruno had plead guilty to all 48 murder charges against him. He couldn’t sincerely remember.

He did remember how all of this shit started. Gino Giovanni. Or Cecilio Paulo. Or maybe even innocent Tito Frederico. No, it was definitely Mr. Giovanni. Him and his fucking narcotics. That ole boy owed everyone any sum of money you could think of. And with his wise-ass brain he could get it all back, but first you had to fund his operations. Bruno, had become a friend of Mr. Giovanni. At that time it wasn't even friend, only acquaintance. He had become acquainted with him through Paulo. Many useful connections came from Paulo. But Paulo lacked the bravery and the guts to be second. No one other than Bruno ever did know his second-hand man. In fact Paulo actually did think he was second in command. But Giordano was. And no one ever knew his name or had even seen him. He was an assassin. Assassino Giordano was what Bruno called him. Giordano was Bruno’s hit man. Oh yes right. You may not understand any of this, which is necessary to understand the previous paragraph, unless you first know this.

Things kicked off early on. Bruno was born in 1980 in a poor town in Maine, a couple miles from the Atlantic ocean. His parents had moved from  Sicily in 1964. They learned English from a family member, who moved there a year prior, from a tip that the prosperous country of America, would give Bruno a better life. Things turned out worse than Sicily. They had moved because they needed jobs and the local government was more corrupt than ever imaginable. America seemed the obvious choice to raise little Bruno. But Bruno had other plans. In grade-school, he was in trouble for getting in fights, and even starting brawls, with many kids. He was expelled in sixth-grade for smoking under the bleachers at the stadium. His parents were then baffled when he brought home one-hundred dollars in one day, and he had been at the park all day! The truth was, he sold cigarettes to the other children, each one cost twice as much as he paid for it, so he got quite a profit. In 8^th grade he was old enough, and had enough money to travel, via bus to other schools to sell.  Business was good, if you could call it a business. Does business have to be legal? Probably not. Whether it had to be legal or not, that’s what he called it.