Chapter 2 — The Killer Isn't Exactly Cold-Blooded
1996. The Bronx, New York City.
Luca looked at the two grinning Goodfellas sitting across from him and felt genuinely, profoundly speechless.
These two guys had no bottom line. None. Zip. He'd known that going in, and somehow it was still worse in person.
He already knew how their stories ended. Henry would eventually get pinched on a drug charge and, rather than do the time, flip on everyone he'd ever shared a meal with — his boss, his crew, his closest friends. He'd put half the Family in federal prison to save his own skin and walk out a free man.
Jimmy, meanwhile, had organized one of the biggest airport heists in New York history — then gotten so greedy about the split that he'd quietly started killing off his own accomplices one by one, because dead men didn't need a share. The surviving crew members had gotten sloppy, started wearing expensive fur coats and buying Cadillacs three weeks after the job, and the heat had come down on everyone.
And then there was Tommy. The third Goodfella. The one who wasn't here.
Tommy DeVito — hair-trigger temper, absolutely no self-control, and apparently he'd already gotten himself killed by the Family for shooting a made man. That was the standing rule: you kill a made member, you don't get a warning. You get a room with plastic on the floor.
So out of the original three, only two had shown up tonight.
Luca filed that away.
"Let me introduce you guys properly," Maurizio said, gesturing between them.
He went through the introductions, then tapped the photograph on the table. "Henry and Jimmy know Cain's operation. They know his spots, his schedule, his people. Anything you need on him — ask them." He fixed the two with a flat look. "You follow Luca's lead. All decisions go through him."
Jimmy — already past forty, visibly older than Luca by a decade and a half — somehow managed to look entirely humble about the arrangement. He leaned forward with the easy smile of a man who was always running at least two angles simultaneously.
"Luca Greco. Man, I've been hearing your name for years." He shook his head slowly, like he was marveling at a piece of fine craftsmanship. "The Peace Ambassador of the Bronx. I'm serious — who doesn't know you around here? It's genuinely an honor to be working with you."
His eyes were warm. His eyes were also calculating about seventeen things at once.
If this guy goes official with the Family, Jimmy was thinking, and I've got a friendly face in that room...
Henry chimed in quickly, raising his glass. "Seriously. An honor. Whatever you need, you got it." He clinked glasses with Luca and drank.
Luca clinked back. Smiled. Drank.
Don't betray me, he thought. That's literally all I'm asking. Just don't betray me.
While the conversation flowed, he quietly pulled up their Character Cards on his mental panel.
[Character Card: Henry Hill][Rank: C][Source: Goodfellas (1990)]
[Skill: Rat's Instinct] When interacting with law enforcement, credibility with cops +10%. When flipping and providing testimony against associates, credibility with cops an additional +40%.
Learning Requirements: Bond must reach Friend or above. Skill Fragments x20.
Luca stared at that for a moment.
Henry Hill. A made guy. A Mafia associate. With a passive skill that was literally just "be a better informant."
Of course.
[Character Card: Jimmy Conway][Rank: C][Source: Goodfellas (1990)]
[Skill: The Cut Guy] Each time illegal income is obtained, cash laundering efficiency +5%, law enforcement detection probability -10%. After eliminating business partners, laundering efficiency an additional +15%.
Learning Requirements: Bond must reach Friend or above. Skill Fragments x20.
Luca read it twice.
The bonus for eliminating business partners.
He closed the panel. Took a slow sip of his drink.
Goodfellas, he thought. Classic. Absolute classic.
Both skills were deeply, specifically designed for betraying the people standing right next to you. And yet — objectively, from a purely practical standpoint — they were both genuinely useful. Especially that laundering efficiency boost.
He wanted them. He'd get them.
He just needed to keep these two idiots alive long enough to hit the friendship threshold.
The drinks kept coming. The conversation warmed up. By the third round, they were laughing about things that happened on the street and talking over each other the way guys do when they've decided they like someone.
"You used to run with Paulie's crew, right?" Luca said, keeping his tone easy. "Paulie Cicero's a good boss. Runs a clean operation. Takes care of his people."
Henry laughed — a little too quickly, a little too short. Paulie was decent. But decent also meant cautious, which meant boring, which meant no drug money.
Jimmy took a long drag off his cigarette and said nothing. He'd been under Paulie for over twenty years. Twenty years of kicking up, of keeping his head down, of watching other guys move up — and at the end of it, he was still an associate. Still on the outside. Because of his blood. Because he wasn't Sicilian. Because no matter how good his numbers were, he'd never sit at the real table.
He exhaled slowly.
Luca let the silence sit for exactly the right amount of time, then said, almost offhand: "Whatever happened to Tommy? I thought there were three of you."
A flicker crossed Jimmy's face. Something complicated. "Tommy passed. Last week."
"Hell of a thing." Luca raised his glass. "Rest in peace."
They drank.
Executed by the Family, Luca noted internally. Right on schedule. Poor bastard never learned to keep a leash on himself.
He steered the conversation back to the job. Within the next half hour, he had everything he needed: Cain Jones's regular schedule, his drop locations in the Bronx, his network of buyers — including a Russian outfit operating out of Brighton Beach and a Japanese crew with connections running up to the Upper West Side.
Luca listened. Filed it all away.
And through the whole briefing, something kept nagging at him. He'd studied Cain's photograph on the table, and there was a familiarity to the man's face he couldn't quite place. Round. Soft. The particular expression of someone who'd gotten away with things for so long that impunity had become a personality trait.
He knew that face from somewhere.
But no Character Card had popped on the panel. Which meant Cain wasn't a major player — at least not in any story Luca had access to.
He let it go for now.
Tuesday. A hotel in the South Bronx.
The lobby had seen better decades. The carpet was the color of dried mustard. The chandeliers flickered in that particular way that suggested the bulbs had been dying slowly for years and nobody felt strongly enough about it to replace them.
Luca watched from the black sedan parked across the street as Cain Jones climbed out of an SUV and waddled through the hotel entrance, surrounded by a ring of guys who were very clearly armed and very clearly not subtle about it. He left three men at the door and took the rest upstairs.
Up close, the sense of familiarity was stronger.
Still no card.
Not a main character then, Luca decided. Just a guy with an unfortunately familiar face.
Jimmy turned around from the passenger seat. "So what's the play?"
Luca picked up his suppressor and threaded it onto the barrel with the calm efficiency of someone assembling a sandwich. "You and Henry stay down here. Watch the exits. If anything moves on the street — cops, another crew, anything — you call me immediately."
Henry stared at the gun. "You're going up alone? There's a lot of guys up there, Luca."
"There are." Luca checked the chamber. "But harmony and goodwill go a long way. I'm optimistic Mr. Jones and I can reach a mutual understanding."
Henry looked at the suppressor. He looked at Luca. "...You say that while screwing a silencer onto your gun."
"I'm an optimist who prepares for disappointment." Luca slid his jacket on, checked that his backup blade was seated properly, and pushed the door open. "Call me if you see blue lights."
Jimmy watched him cross the street and disappear through a side entrance.
"He's something else," Henry said, after a beat.
"You know what they used to call him?" Jimmy said, lighting a cigarette. "Before the whole Peace Ambassador thing?"
"What?"
"The Butcher." Jimmy exhaled slowly. "That's not a nickname you get from being friendly."
Henry was quiet for a moment. "You think he'll be okay up there?"
"I think," Jimmy said, watching the hotel entrance, "that those guys upstairs are the ones who should be worried."
Twenty-eight minutes later.
The hallway outside the fourth-floor suite looked like the aftermath of a very decisive argument. Seven men were down. Two more were propped against the wall in what might generously be described as a sitting position, though neither of them was making decisions anymore.
Luca stood in the center of the room, gun pressed to Cain's temple, phone already dialing.
Cain had both hands up. He was sweating through his shirt collar. His eyes kept flicking to the doorway and back, like he was calculating the odds of making a run for it and arriving at numbers he didn't like.
"Hey, buddy," Cain said, keeping his voice steady through visible effort. "Let's talk this out. I've got product in the bedroom closet — top shelf, uncut, worth sixty grand easy. Walk away, it's yours. No hard feelings."
"Mr. Jones." Luca's tone was genuinely warm. Almost apologetic. "I told you when I came through the door that I was here to deliver a message. All I needed was five minutes of your time. I really didn't want this."
"You killed eight of my guys."
"Nine, actually." A pause. "They escalated. I responded proportionally." He pressed the phone to Cain's ear as it connected. "Someone wants to say hello."
Cain blinked. "...Hello?"
"Cain." Maurizio's voice was flat, conversational, the way a man sounds when he's been doing this long enough that anger is just background noise. "You remember me?"
A long silence.
"This is Maurizio Conti."
Cain closed his eyes briefly. Of course it was.
"I thought we had an understanding," Maurizio continued. "I thought you understood that New York isn't your city. And yet here you are. Again. So I'm going to give you a very simple question: is today the last day I'll ever have reason to think about you?"
"Yes," Cain said immediately. "Absolutely yes. I'm just passing through, I swear to God—"
"Good. We understand each other." There was a brief pause, and then: "Luca — clean it up. Take his merchandise. Leave him breathing. Make sure the lesson sticks."
"Understood." Luca ended the call.
He looked at Cain pleasantly.
"You heard the man," he said. "So here's where we land: you take your remaining people, you get in your car, and you drive south until New York is a memory. The merchandise stays. You walk. That's a genuinely good outcome for a Tuesday afternoon."
Cain stared at him. "You're taking everything."
"I'm leaving you your life. In my professional opinion, that's the better asset." He lowered the gun and stepped back. "We done here?"
Cain looked at the bodies. Looked at Luca. Looked at the bedroom where the product was.
"...Yeah," he said, quietly. "We're done."
By the time Cain turned around, Luca was already gone.
He found the closet. Found the case of product he'd just offered as a bribe. Also gone.
Cain sat down heavily on the edge of the bed.
New York, he decided, was no longer his city.
[You eliminated 9 armed drug traffickers and persuaded their boss to permanently vacate New York territory. You defended the peace of the Bronx.]
[+15 Skill Points][+5 Skill Fragments]
Luca fed every Skill Point into Firearms Mastery.
[Firearms Mastery: LV5 — 72/100]
Twenty-three Fragments total now. Close to a full exchange.
He took the fire escape down, the product case under one arm, and was halfway to the second-floor landing when his phone buzzed.
"Luca!" Jimmy's voice was tight. "DEA just rolled up out front. Like four cars. Get out of there now."
Luca moved to the window at the end of the landing and looked down.
Four unmarked sedans. Plainclothes agents fanning out across the entrance. And climbing out of the lead vehicle — blond hair, gray suit, wired earpiece, the particular walk of a man who operated like the law was both his job and his personal entertainment — was someone Luca had not been expecting.
The panel lit up.
[Character Card Discovered: Norman Stansfield][Rank: S][Source: Léon: The Professional (1994)]
[Skills: Beethoven's Fury | Bloodhound's Nose]
[Bond: Stranger]
Luca stared at the card for exactly one second.
Then he turned and moved very quickly in the opposite direction.
Stansfield. DEA Agent Norman Stansfield. The man who had massacred an entire family in their apartment and then stood over the bodies humming Beethoven. The man who kept popping pills out of a prescription bottle like they were breath mints and whose definition of "police work" included concepts most internal affairs departments would describe as felonies.
S-rank. Naturally. Because of course it was S-rank.
Those skills, though—
He filed that away for considerably later.
Right now, the priority was the fire escape, the alley, and not being in this building when Norman Stansfield started asking questions.
[Power Stone Goal: 500 = +1 Chapter]
[Review Goal: 10 = +1 Chapter]
If you liked it, feel free to leave a review.
20+chapters ahead on P1treon Soulforger