Death, so called, is a thing which makes men weep. And yet a third of life is passed in sleep.

-Lord Byron

 

Inside of a small diner in Salisbury, North Carolina sits a man who doesn't belong. If you were a resident of this town, and you were to look upon him, you'd believe him to be just like you. With his clean shaven face, and even cleaner shaven head, flannel shirt, beat up blue jeans, and boots, this large man certainly plays the role of a normal, blue collar, Southern gentleman, and he's even managed to perfect the accent.

If you were to get a peek inside of that clean shaven head, you'd find a very contrasting person lurking about.

The thoughts that he has are unimaginable to most. For this man, murder is not immoral, or unfathomable, but rather a way of life. For him, homicide used to pay the bills. For him, homicide was business, and as the saying goes, business was good.

There's a saying that Frank always rather liked: Find a job in which you do something you love, and you'll never work a day in your life.

For Frank Vincent, murdering at the behest of Don Sigleone was that job, and in loving what he did, he truly never did work. He's committed countless murders, is responsible for deaths that were regarded as accidents, and did the job with a the kind of care and tenacity that is usually reserved for more noble causes.

Yes, Frank Vincent was the greatest assassin to ever live.

That was until his family found out what he did to put food on the table.

He never really loved his wife or his son. In fact, he never really loved or liked anyone.

Early on in his life, Frank Vincent was aware that he was different from everyone else. He knew that he could never feel the way about his parents the way they felt about him. He could never feel for his brothers and sisters the way he was supposed to feel.

His parents were immigrants, FOB from Ireland, and he was just one of many children they were blessed with.

Things weren't easy for anyone in those days, but Frank had it the worst of all the children, at least in his own mind. He was neither the oldest nor the youngest, but lost somewhere in the middle, where parental attention hardly found it's way.

He was almost three years old when his parents brought home another child from the hospital, and he was suddenly not the baby anymore. He used to sit in his little sister's room, leaning against the wall and staring at her as she slept in her bassinet, the same bassinet that he used to call his own. The baby was the only one who got a room to herself. The rest of the Vincent children (five boys at that time) had to share a room, and Frank being the youngest, was often subjected to beatings at the hands of his older brothers.

One night, he tried to kill his sister by smothering her with a pillow. He wasn't jealous of the attention that she was getting, but rather, he wanted his room back. He found it easier to smother one baby than to kill five bigger, stronger boys. His father happened upon the baby shortly after Frank had killed her, and was somehow able to resuscitate her. SIDS, or Sudden Infantile Death Syndrome was the doctor's explanation. "She's lucky to be alive", he had said. "How unlucky for me," Frank had thought to himself.

The way most people think of family is not the way Frank Vincent thinks of family. In fact, the way most people think is not the way Frank Vincent thinks. To him, family is nothing but a word, and it defines a group of people you're forced to suffer until you get out on your own.

The same can be said about rules and laws. To him, rules are for people who need to be governed. Frank Vincent does not need to be governed, for he is better than other people.

And, for the most part, he truly is.

Frank Vincent has an IQ of 160, and could've easily been a physicist or engineer. He is also a gigantic man, who stands at 6'6", and weighs somewhere between 240 and 250 pounds. He is handsome, and if you were to have a conversation with him, you'd find him to be polite and insightful.

If you were to look at his FBI profile, you'd find that Frank Vincent is a sociopath, and for thirty years, was the Italian Mafia's best, and most ruthless hitman. He killed with no conscience, followed the orders he was given, and never once showed it on his face. Most hitmen crack after years and years of murder, and eventually are found by their wives, hanging in the basement. Frank never cracked once, and if it weren't for his wife, he'd still be killing.

The tragedy of the situation, according to a report from a high profile former head of the CIA, is not that Frank Vincent killed so many people, but that the military didn't get their hands on him first. He'd have gone from notorious mafia hitman, to decorated war hero.

After years and years of killing for the mob that started in his late teens, Frank took on a wife late in life, realizing that it would help him seem normal. Not to his coworkers, mind you, for they knew that Frank was unusual, but as long as he did his job, they didn't care about his personal life. He married Christina Sheehan in 1984, and on September 3rd, 1985 she bore him a son, whom they named Ace Edward Vincent. Frank wasn't sure what to expect when he held his son for the first time, as he felt nothing during the pregnancy. All of his "friends" (according to them, not him) told him that his life was going to change, and that children have a way of softening a man's heart, but when Frank held the child he felt the same thing he'd always felt: nothing. Frank might as well have been holding a stranger's child, or a rock, but he knew what he was supposed to feel, so he pretended to cry. Everyone bought it, including his wife, who obviously didn't know him at all, for if she did, she wouldn't have agreed to become his wife in the first place.

Underneath the facade, the good looks, the green eyes, and the fabricated emotions, Frank Vincent is a monster. He is credited for almost one hundred murders, but he has killed many more people than that.

To give you a true peek into the real madness that is his psyche, I'll give you an example: Sometime in 1975, Frank bought a new gun, and to test it, he drove to a black neighborhood in West Philadelphia, pulled up next to a man walking down the street, and shot him. He looked at the gun as he drove away casually, satisfied with it's performance.

This is the way that Frank Vincent sees the world, and human beings in general. The world is his, and we're all just living in it.

 

I nod my head along to the beat that Chris Adler provides as I listen to my Lamb Of God cd, which was given to me when they agreed to sponsor me and allow me to use their song "Omerta" as my entrance theme.

They're an amazing metalcore band who utilize a lot of sudden tempo changes and vicious riffs to create the skull crushing sound they're known for.

But, that's neither here nor there. Here is a Gulfstream jet making it's way from Milan, Italy towards Johannesburg, South Africa.

And yeah, you read that correctly. A Gulfstream jet, provided to me by none other than Mr Modo Risin, along with a couple of pilots and a stewardess. Having Drake Komodo serve as your beneficiary has some serious fucking perks.

Now that I'm thinking about the plane, I glance around quickly (making sure to avoid eye contact with Bree), and stretch out. The mere fact that I can stretch out is a miracle. Like cars, I don't exactly fit inside of airplanes. A long flight, like this one, would usually put me in bed for a day as I nursed my lower back.

But in a Gulfstream, even Yao Ming could stretch out. This fucking thing is unbelievable. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that the lap of luxury could be so goddamned confortable.

My thoughts are broke as someone taps me on the shoulder, and I hope to God that it isn't Bree as I remove my headphones and turn to face them.

"Do you think we could toke up on this motherfucker?"

Collin inquiring about smoking weed is about as surprising as Paris Hilton getting arrested for cocaine possession, wink wink.

"I don't know," I reply. "It's Drake's plane, man. I wouldn't."

The look in Collin's eyes tells me he doesn't give shit if this plane belongs to the fucking Pope. He wants to get high.

"Drake doesn't smoke weed?"

"No," I respond, shaking my head. "But he drinks like a fish, or at least he used to."

Collin smiles and nods.

"See man," he says as he pulls out his infamous Altoids can. "Everyone's got their vices. He won't fault me for mine."

He opens the can slowly, keeping his nose close and savoring the smell of Italian-bought marijuana. Who the fuck knows where it came from, as I'm pretty sure that the majority of the world's weed is grown in Mexico and Canada, but Collin has convinced himself that this very weed was grown in a tomato patch with the finest Italian herbs and spices, and then handpicked by some guido with a moustache, like in a fucking Bertolli commercial.

"You're fucking ridiculous," I mutter before turning back around. As I do so, I lock eyes with Bree for a split second, but I quickly glance away like a fifth grader whose just been caught staring at his crush.

I'm fucking ridiculous.

Last week I was ordered by my boss (my real boss, not Aidan Collins) to find and kill a man who murdered a Mafia Lieutenant and went into hiding. As I've mentioned before, finding people is what I do. Murdering them, not so much. However, refusing Tony is an automatic death sentence, and I'll be damned if I'm going to die so that some murdering piece of shit can live. Self-preservation ruled, and I took the job.

When I found him, I was ambushed by one of his boys, knocked unconscious, and stuffed in a trunk. They abducted me, drove me to secluded forest, and then tried to kill me. Obviously, they fucking failed. I fought back, shot one, and then broke the other's neck. It was self-defense in every sense of the word, but I cannot stop thinking about it, and more importantly, regretting it.

After the entire ordeal, I was physically exhausted, sleep deprived, and mentally broken. Thoughts that I'd suppressed for years began to resurface, and I almost broke down in tears. However, breaking down in tears is something that the Irish don't do, and I choked them back.

What I did instead was confess. I confessed everything to the woman I found lying in my bed (I had no idea she'd be there. She showed up to seduce me.), like a fucking moron. If secrets were currency, I'd be dead fucking broke.

When I say that I told her everything, I mean I told her everything about myself. I told her shit that I didn't even remember happening!

I told her about getting chased home by Honorio Johnson every day after school when I was in 2nd grade. I was seven, he was eleven, and we were in the same fucking grade, which should tell you two things: He was a fucking moron, and he was twice my size. It was like getting chased home by John Coffee. He hated me and used to beat the shit out of me every day before, during, and after school. He tried to stab me once, but some older girls happened upon us and scared him off. I seriously hadn't thought about that since it happened, but I told Bree all about it in surprising detail that night.

How's this for suppressed? I told her that when I was 7 years old, I found a squirrel that had blown itself to pieces by jumping onto a transformer, and I put it in my cousin's pillowcase while she was sleeping because she made fun of me for picking my nose. That's some pretty deranged shit, right there.

Of course I told her about Lidiya, and all of the fucked up shit she put me through. One time, she invited a dude (that she was cheating on me with) over, and convinced me that he was her cousin. I knew it was a fucking lie, but I was a naive, lovesick 17 year old kid who wanted his girlfriend to love him, so I pretended to believe it. Even thinking about that now, I get sick. What a fucking pussy I was.

"Did you tell her about the murders?", is what you're asking yourself. "Please tell me that you didn't say anything about that!" Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but Ace Vincent spilled his guts, and when you spill your guts, you don't leave anything out. Yeah, I told her about the murders. I didn't tell her where they happened, where I left the car that I torched with them inside of it, or who they were, but I told her enough to earn myself a life sentence if she were to testify on any prosecution's behalf.

The kicker, for me at least, is that I told her about my parents, which is something I've never told anyone who wasn't a representative of child services (this will make more sense later) or a detective (as will this). Even as I was describing my childhood and the end of it, I was trying to stop, but I just couldn't. Hell, I'd never even told Lidiya what happened to my parents, at least not the truth. I made up a lie about them dying in a car crash when I was little, and she never inquired further.

And now that I've bared my soul to this girl, I feel naked. Any type of defensive barrier I could put up would serve no purpose. There are no shields to hide behind, no drapes to pull shut over the windows. She knows Ace Vincent, the real Ace Vincent. The man who is terrified of very few things in this world, all of them hidden behind his tough exterior, at least to everyone else in the world.

She knows that I hate flying, roller coasters, and riding in cars that women are driving. She knows that I've spent the majority of my adult life partying and being controlled and abused by a vapid whore who treated my heart like a fucking floormat. And worst of all, she knows that as a child, I witnessed my father shoot my mother in the chest, turn the gun on me, and pull the trigger.

 

Frank Vincent pays for his meal, and then leaves the diner. Tucked under his right arm is a magazine that a contact of his phoned about and instructed him to pick up.

On the cover of said magazine is a picture of his son, who is now a grown man, standing face to face with an unknown (at least to him) black male, the two of them staring eachother down. The headline reads, "Ace Vincent and Jayzon Williamz: War of the Words!".

Frank isn't your typical father (or person, as I hope to have established earlier), and is not happy to see that his son is following his dreams. In fact, he's not happy to even see him alive. The boy should've died thirteen years ago when his mother did, but the little weasel had the kind of luck that would be much better described as a miracle.

 

It's a particularly dull evening (dull for Frank, as murdering five men with a gun wouldn't be dull for anyone else), Frank comes home to find his wife sitting on the couch, weeping openly. He doesn't care that she is crying, or why. He is hungry, so he heads towards the kitchen.

As he passes her by, he glances into her lap, seeing the .45 (his .45) laying on it.

"Where'd you find that?"

He reaches for the gun, be she quickly recoils.

"Don't you fucking touch me!", she screams, pushing him backwards and standing up, grasping the gun with her right hand.

 

"I got a visit from a man today," she yells, brandishing the gun in his face. "He told me a few things about you, Frank!"

He isn't sure how to respond.

"What man?", he asks, keeping his eyes on the gun. If she points it at him, he's going to kill her without a second thought. Wife or not, no one threatens Frank Vincent. Besides, "wife" is just a word. He doesn't feel anything for her; he never has. She served her purpose and made him blend in with the rest of the population, and even provided him with a son to carry on his name. His name being carried on is actually the only thing Frank really cares about. Not the name of Vincent, but the name of Frank Vincent. In Frank's mind, everything he does is the right thing, and he stands as a shining example of what every person should hope to become. "Who?"

Christina shakes her head, still confused about everything.

"He said he was with the FBI," she says. "He said that he wanted me to know the truth about you so I could get myself and Ace out of here."

"The FBI-", Frank growls, quickly grabbing the gun out of his wife's hands. He points it at her head, the barrel barely touching skin. "-and what did you tell the FBI, Christina?"

Most women would have fear in their eyes at this point, but Christina cannot feel it. All she feels is heartbreak as the man she's devoted her life to for almost twelve years holds a gun to her head and speaks to her with the kind of menace usually reserved for killers in movies.

It is in this moment that Christina, devoted wife to Frank, and loving mother to Ace, realizes that she doesn't know the man she loves; she doesn't know him at all. In fact, the man she loves doesn't actually exist, and is just a suit that the man now pointing a gun at her head wears to fool everyone else into thinking he's normal.

"All this time," she says, her head dropping and shaking in disgust. Disgust with him for turning out to be a psychopath; disgust with herself for ignoring all of the signs. For ignoring the blood stains, for ignoring the emotional disconnection, for ignoring his lack of interest in his own son's life. Her son, who's sleeping upstairs, unaware of the events that are transpiring in the living room. She hasn't a doubt that after killing her, Frank will turn the gun on the boy. It is now that she finally feels fear.

"What did you tell him!", Frank screams, jabbing her in the cheekbone with the gun.

"Nothing!", she screams. "I didn't fucking say anything!"

Her thoughts are constantly on Ace now, and surviving this ordeal so she can make sure Frank doesn't get to him.

"What did he tell you?", Frank asks, as he begins to pace back and forth. For the first time in his life, Frank is afraid. Not of the FBI, or being arrested, but of prison. In prison, he'd be stuck in a small cell, and kept away from his work. In prison, he'd be told when he could eat, when he could shit, and when he could see the sun. In prison, he wouldn't be able to kill, at least not for very long. If they truly do know of his crimes, and if they truly do know what he's capable of, he'll be kept in solitary confinement for most of his life. Solitary confinement for the rest of his life is not something Frank Vincent is interested in.

"That you're a killer," she says, eyeing the gun. "That you kill whoever Don Sigleone orders you to."

Frank smirks. His wife will never trust him again. She'll probably divorce him after selling him out to the Feds. Hell, she's probably sold him out already.

"Well, my dear,", he says, walking over to the window and peeking through the curtains. No cops, no unmarked cars. "He was right."

In a flash, Frank raises the gun and points it at her, pulling the trigger. A round strikes her left breast, and she slumps into the couch, dead. He looks at her eyes as the life drains out of them (a moment he always savors. In Frank's opinion, this is what it feels like to be God. To take a life, and watch a person's soul disappear in front of you.), then realizes she wasn't looking at him when she died, but at the staircase. Frank spins around and sees his son holding the railing, terror strewn across his face.

"Ace-", he says softly. "Mommy's just playing a game." Frank assesses the situation. He hadn't initially wanted to kill the boy, as molding him into his own image would fulfill his God complex, but the boy is now damaged goods. He's seen his father murder his mother, and he will never trust Frank or view him as a Daddy again. If he won't view him as a father, then Frank has no son, and if the boy is not his son, then he is simply a witness to a murder, and Frank knew better than to live witnesses alive.

He raises the gun and takes aim at his child's head.

The plane has landed, and as we exit, the sweltering heat of South Africa hits us. Collin, Bree, and myself all yell out a collective "Goddamn!". We walk down the stairs, head for the limo, and I allow Bree to climb in first. I try to let Collin climb in behind her, but he stops dead in his tracks.

"I've gotta make a call," he says, pulling his phone out of his pocket and turning it on. "I won't be long."

"Alright," I say, fully intending to stay out here and away from a confined space where the woman who knows all of my secrets is sitting. Collin looks at me, then at the car.

"What the fuck are you doing?", he asks.

"Uh," I mutter. "I boned her back in Italy and it's getting kind of awkward."

Collin smiles, shaking his head and dialing a number on his phone.

"I fucking told you, man," he laughs. "I told you not to fuck that girl."

I nod.

"You were right," I say, trying my best to sound sincere. "Maybe we should fire her."

Collin huffs, clearly not in aggreement

"Are you fucking serious?", he asks, setting his phone aside for a moment. "That girl has taken an ass beating on your behalf, not to mention she's getting over immensely with the male fans. I don't give a fuck how awkward it gets, you swallow your pride and deal with it. We're not going to find anyone better than her."

Collin turns back to his phone, and then back to me. I feel like I've just gotten taken to the woodshed.

"Now get the fuck outta here, this call is private business between me and Tony."

I raise an eyebrow, but don't want to question him. I don't know what kind of business he has going to Tony that doesn't involve me, and I don't care. The less I have to deal with Tony, the better. I turn around and face the car door, take a deep breath, and I enter, sitting down across from Bree.

Her eyes are trained on me the entire time, but she doesn't say a thing. It's not as if she hasn't been avoiding eye contact with meme since it happened, in fact, she's been trying to get me alone ever since that morning ended, I've just been lucky enough to have Collin by my side at all times.

Now, as I face her, I can't help but feel ashamed. This girl has done a lot for me since joining up with myself and Collin, and I'm treating her the way a 2nd grader treats his girlfriend. Man, I need to grow the fuck up.

"Bree," I say quietly, forcing the word out of my mouth. "I-"

She raises a hand and smiles.

"Please, you don't need to explain anything," she says. "I know how hard that was for you, and I knew you'd need time before you could speak to me again."

I nod, and she gets up and sits down next to me.

"You're a good guy, Ace," she says, rubbing my back. "But you're also a very reserved guy, and opening up like that is probably something you've never done before."

"Something I never wanted to do either," I respond, hoping she doesn't take offense. "I don't want you to see me as the guy who pretends to be a good guy but is really a piece of shit. I'm the latter, and I can't pretend to be the former. I'm an asshole, straight up."

She laughs.

"No, you're not," she says. "You're a good guy who pretends to be a bad guy so that you can keep yourself secluded from the rest of the world."

"Good guys don't kill people," I say, shaking my head. "Their fathers don't kill their mothers."

She grabs my face and looks me in the eyes.

"That's what this is about, isn't it?", she asks. "You're afraid you'll turn out to be just like him."

"That I will turn out to be like him?" I respond, sarcastically. "After what happened in Milwaukee, I am him."

She kisses me on the cheek.

"You're wrong about yourself," she whispers into my ear. "If you were really like him, you'd have no regrets. I was there when you came back, and I heard the sorrow in your voice when you told me. A killer doesn't feel sorrow. A killer justifies it to himself, and you're sitting here condemning yourself. You are not a killer."

She leans back and takes a deep breath.

"Now it's time for you to let it go."

I shake my head.

"I can't," I say. "I can't stop seeing their faces."

She slaps me in the face.

"No, stupid," she says, sternly. "The confession. You have to let it go. Collin is going to realize something is going on with us."

"Oh-", I mutter, my eyes darting to the side.

"What?"

"I told him that we fucked and that's why shit is so weird between us."

"Asshole."

I nod.

"I told you I was."

"He really thinks we're fucking?"

She presses the automatic lock on the doors. I raise and eyebrow and look at her, sure of what's going on, but unsure of why this is about to happen.

"That's what I told him," I say, glancing back at Collin, who is twenty yards away from the car, still talking on the phone.

"If we're going to pretend we're having sex," she says as she slides her panties off from underneath her skirt. "I'd like to at least have something to base my performance off of."

She grabs my shirt, leans back and pulls me on top of her. Looks like assholes finish first.

Frank opens up the door to his vintage, rusting pickup truck and climbs inside. He throws the magazine onto the passenger seat, then reaches inside of the glovebox and pulls out a phone. He dials a number (from memory, as only an idiot would program numbers into their phone and leave behind that kind of evidence), then presses it to his ear.

"Did you see him?", the voice on the other end asks.

"You weren't bluffing," Frank counters, his eyes locked on the rearview mirror. "So where is he now?"

The man on the other end of the line laughs.

"Frank, we've been doing this for thirteen years, so you should know how it works."

Frank clenches his teeth. The piece of shit on the other end has the upper hand on him for the first time since Frank went underground, and from the sounds of it, he's going to relish every moment.

"Fine," Frank says between clenched teeth. "What do you want to know?"

"I want a big fish, Frank. I want to know where Hoffa is."

Frank laughs. This asshole is asking for the location of Jimmy Hoffa, the former head of the Teamsters who disappeared in July of 1975, never to be seen again. His disappearance is one of the greatest mysteries in American history. Frank was 25 when he killed him, but was given strict orders to make sure Hoffa's body was never found, so he fed him to a pack of dogs. The body was never to be found. The bosses wanted Frank to make sure to leave his head in a place where they could pay it a visit.

"You want Hoffa in order to tell me where Ace is?", Frank replies, not wanting to lose his greatest bargaining chip. "I'm gonna need something better than that."

"I've got a person on the inside with him right now, Frank."

Frank isn't sure what that means. Why would theFBI have a CI following his son around?

"Does he know?"

"Obviously not."

"Why are you following him?"

"Hoffa, Frank. Give me Hoffa and I'll tell you everything."

Frank takes a deep breath and weighs his options. He could track Ace down on his own, especially considering the fact that now he's famous, but the feds would arrest him before he got to the boy, and Frank would rather die than go back to jail. On the other hand, Frank could give them Hoffa, but he'd have to be granted absolute immunity. Sure, he'd lose his last big bargaining chip, but he'd be free to finally finish what he started thirteen years ago.

"Frank?"

"I want a full pardon, Lee. I give you this, I'm out of the program, and I'm my own man."

"That's going to depend on the value of this information. Everything checks out, you'll get your pardon. It doesn't, then you can stay confined to that shithole down South."

Frank shakes his head. He knows better than to give them this without something in writing, but he's tired of rotting away down here. He doesn't have much longer to live, and he has even less time to right his greatest wrong. His body won't hold out much longer. Cancer has a way of confining people to beds before finally ending their lives. Frank wouldn't be able to get at Ace from a bed, and certainly not from a coffin.

"There's a junkyard in South Detroit. You go to that junkyard, and you ask about the 69 Charger. The owner will take you to the back, and to a Dodge Charger that was brand new in 1969, and still in mint condition in '75. It had no business being in a junkyard. You open up the trunk, and you lift up the mat, and you'll find his head. That's all that's left of him."

"Why keep the head?"

"I don't know, and I don't care. Those were my orders, and I followed them. I figured that the bosses wanted something left of him to piss on."

There is silence on the other end of the line. Frank assumes Agent Lee is writing it all down.

"Do we have a deal, Lee?"

"I'll call you back if this all checks out."

Lee hangs up on him. Frank turns the phone off and puts it back in the glovebox, confident that the information will check out. As he shuts the glovebox, his eyes happen upon his gun. A .45 that ended his wife's life 13 years ago. A .45 that should've ended his sons'.

Frank pulls the trigger, but the barrel suddenly points upward, and the round misses the boy by inches.

"Run!", Christina screams at her son as her hands grip the gun tightly, keeping it pointed towards the ceiling. "Run and get help!"

Ace heeds his mother's words, and makes a break for the front door. Within seconds, he is outside, sprinting down the street.

Inside of the house, Frank yanks the gun away from his wife. He punches her in the face, then points the gun at her head and pulls the trigger. This time, she actually dies.

"Ace!", he yells towards the open door, quickly darting outside and heading for the house next to his own. He runs up the steps and knocks on the door, but gets no answer. "Ace!", he shouts. "I know you're in there!" He shoots the lock, then kicks the door in and enters the house.

"Fuck!", he screams as he finds the house dark and empty. He turns around and leaves, but the cops are already outside with their guns drawn. No way did they respond to the shots fired this quickly. Christina must've been wearing a wire.

"Put the gun down!", they scream at him in unison. For a moment he entertains the idea of going out guns a' blazing, but that moment quickly passes. The instinct to survive takes over, and Frank drops the gun on the ground. He looks over towards his house and watches as an army of FBI agents rush inside to his wife's aid. As he's tackled to the ground and handcuffed, Frank spots his son in the backseat of a squad car. An agent runs up to Frank and kicks him in the face.

"You're fucked, Vincent!", he screams. "You're getting the chair for this!"

As the cops lift Frank to his feet, he flashes a smile to the agent.

"How'd you get here so fast? Was that cunt wearing a wire?"

The shakes his head.

"They both were, you cocksucker."

Frank quickly turns to look at his son, shocked by the betrayal. Not shocked because it broke his heart, but because his ego wouldn't allow him to fathom anyone crossing him, especially his son.

"Your family knew what you were, and they were trying to get away from you. We were going to help them."

Frank laughs.

"You were trying to help them? Whose idea was it to have her confront me? You were using them as bait, and I fucking took it."

The agent looks down at the ground, not able to mask the shame on his face.

"You should get a fucking medal," he says, spitting on the ground the agent's eyes are fixed upon. "I'm done talking, take me to jail."

As the cops escort him towards their patrol car, Frank stares down his son, all the while talking to himself.

"You little piece of shit. You think you can put me behind bars and live to talk about it? I don't care if it kills me, you're going to pay for this."

Ace feels his father's stare upon him, but is too afraid to meet his gaze. The cop in the front seat looks at him in the mirror, and tries to think of something to say to the child in an attempt to comfort him, but nothing seems appropriate.

"What's going to happen to me?", the boy asks.

The officer lowers his head.

"I don't know."

I zip up my pants, and buckle my belt as Bree adjusts her skirt and puts her panties back on. Collin has been knocking on the window for the past fifteen minutes, trying to talk us into letting him in. When that didn't work, he tried to see what was going on by pressing his face against the glass, but thanks to the heavy tint, the only thing he got to see was the faded outline of my big, white ass.

I unlock the door, and Collin quickly opens it.

"Let's go, man," I say. He doesn't get into the car, but stays outside, leaving the door open. "What the fuck are you doing?"

"I'm letting the stank out. It smells like the inside of a sardine can in there."

"Please, it doesn't smell like anything," Bree says. "Grow the fuck up."

"You grow the fuck up!", Collin yells. "You're not the one who stood out here in this fucking South African heat, sweating your ass off, nervous that some asshole with AIDS would show up and rape him while you two were in there boning!"

"Okay, well you'd better get into the car before Mabootu, the South African-serial rapist gets a hold of you and sticks his bloody AIDS dick in your eye or something."

Collin gets into the car and looks at us both, shaking his head in disgust.

"You should both be ashamed of yourself," he mutters.

"You should stop being such a faggot," Bree responds.

I laugh, happy for the first time in weeks. Things are looking up for me at this point. My career couldn't be better, as I continue to successfully chase the Universal title, and my fanbase keeps growing. My personal life is actually starting to work out, as thoughts of Lidiya are pretty much nonexistent at this point, and as Bree continues to prove that she's the coolest woman on the planet. And my secret life (you know, the forced killings of other people?) seems to be done with, as Tony doesn't have any enemies overseas, which is where I'll be spending the rest of the year.

Yep, things are looking up for Ace Vincent. Gray skies are clearing up and I'm putting on a happy face.

Little do I know that someone in this car is going to betray me.

Little do I know.