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For over a fuckingdecade, I work my ass off. I’m nothing. A nobody. Scum on somebody’s shoe.
But it won’t always be that way. I know it as I enter certain circles. I volunteer to help small-time, meaningless endeavors that prove myself to the Crotone organization.
Why the Crotone organization?
Whynotthe Crotone organization?
They shamed my Pop. They striped away his power. They’re the reason—Leandro is the reason—I’m having to start at the bottom.
At the fucking gutter-level.
Humiliated and poor.
“What’s your name?” a big, barbaric kind of guy asks. He’s nicknamed Rhino. One of the more powerfulcaposin the family.
I think on it. “Lucius.”
Up to now, I’ve been ‘hey you’ and ‘some guy.’
“Lucius what?” he asks, puffing on a cigar.
“Mancino,” I answer. It’s fake, not real, just a name that’s Italian, but similar to my Pop’s.
He surveys me under intense judgment. Seconds go by. Sweat breaks out under my armpits. I’m practically ready to back out, wondering if I’m caught. Am I being too damn obvious?
Rhino cracks a grin. “Lucius Mancino. I like you. I’m gonna keep an eye out.”
That’s only the beginning. Rhino’s eye out turns into Leandro’s piqued interest.
Which turns into me worming my way into the organization, working my way up.
Again.
It takes years.
It ain’t something that happens overnight. But, once one person buys into Lucius Mancino, others do too.
I get questions.
Stuff like, ‘The Mancino family. Never heard of it. Where you from?’ and ‘You sure you’re full blooded? Looking sorta pale.’
But I own it. I stand in my lie and craft a whole damn backstory, complete with government documents and identification (things I buy on the black market). By the time five years go by, I’m a made soldier, and I’m on a first name basis with Leandro.
A privilege onlycapostend to receive.
The thing is, Leandro, and everybody else, doesn’t even realize who the fuck I am. Why the fuck I’m here. What the fuck I’m up to.
The fucking threat I pose.
This ain’t no hero’s journey. I’m no hero. I’m a bad guy, and I’m out for revenge.
Leandro besmirched my Pop. He stripped away his rank and made him useless in his organization.
It’s my pleasure to come out of nowhere, and do the same.
Karma’s a bitch.
Nobody needs to know my origin. Nobody needs to know I ain’t full Italian, I’m half Russian, and that mycapofather was deemed a traitor.
