by April Lust
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.” Prosp
ects 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.