The gang was gathered at one of their hangouts, shooting the breeze between jobs. Donny and Tony sat together at the bar, slightly withdrawn from the others. Their conversation had begun typically, the usual banter and debate between two friends who respected each other, but now it had turned a bit dark. Donny sat immobile, quietly watching Tony while the older man made a confession.

"I'm not too sure about Sammy these days," he was saying, fingers to his temple while curls of smoke drifted somberly up from his cigar. "This deal he's planning doesn't sit right with me. I don't like it."

Donny knew what he was referring to but didn't know what it implied. Their gang wasn't big—seven members, all told—but only three of them knew the exact details of the upcoming job. Sammy and Tony knew, of course, since they were in charge, had co-founded the gang. Luca, Sammy's favorite, was the only crony in on the secret. The others—Donny, Neil, Leonard, and Paul—were being kept out of the loop until the final arrangements were made and the job was a certain go.

"What is it?" Donny asked, sensing an opportunity to glean a bit of this forbidden information.

Tony shook his head. "If I told you now, Sammy'd kill me," he said. "I dunno, Don. If this goes through..." he sighed. "I shouldn't be tellin' you this. Forget it."

Donny paused.

"Is it something I should be worried about?"

Tony snorted. "That's up to you. Knowing you, it probably is. But forget it. I'm talking to Sammy. It may not happen at all, if he gets smart about. Just forget it."

Donny appreciated the warning, but he doubted he'd just forget about it. He knew Tony; he was a good guy at heart. That was the thing they really had in common. So if Tony was troubled, Donny would take it as a good sign that bad things were coming.

And bad things came quicker than he'd expected.

A few days after Tony's confession, the gang was called together at Sammy's house. When Donny arrived, the rest of the guys were already there, and they were looking grim. Donny glanced around the room.

"Where's Tony?" he asked.

"Dead," Sammy said flatly from his place at the front of the room.

"What?" Donny asked, stunned.

"He's a two-timing rat, but it's taken care of now. Sit down; I got an announcement to make."

Donny just stared at him, his blood running cold.

"Si'down," Sammy said again, gesturing to seat.

Donny sat.

"All right, boys," Sammy continued, rising from his seat. "We've got a deal set up."

"This secret thing?" Neil asked.

"Not secret anymore," Sammy said. "Everything's gone through, and I've got a shipment of girls arriving from Vietnam tomorrow night."

"What's that mean?" Donny asked, his head still reeling from the news about Tony.

"Girls sell for ten times what cocaine does," Sammy said. "And these Vietnamese pricks are willing to give 'em up for a couple thou. Tomorrow night, we're meeting at this old hotel I got set up downtown to bring 'em in. All of you. There's too much money in this to leave it up to chance, so you're all gonna be watchin' for cops while the deal goes down."

"All right," Neil said appreciatively. Donny looked at him, not sure what to think of this. This was the deal Tony was unhappy with and the deal he died trying to get cancelled. As Donny scanned the faces of the other guys, no one seemed upset by what they'd just heard, just a bit more serious, maybe. Regardless of the knot his stomach was twisting into, Donny figured he didn't have much choice but to go along with the plan. What was he going to do, make a scene, call Sammy out, and get a bullet in the head like Tony? He just sat in his chair, absorbed the details, and didn't say a word.

By the time he got home, though, he was feeling a little differently.

Donny justified his life of crime this way: what he did was victimless. His role in the gang was essentially message-boy, so he got to keep his hands clean. Things like murder were left to the cold-hearted guys like Luca. And when it came to dealing drugs, no one on either side of the affair got hurt. People paid for cocaine and heroin; if they wanted to screw their lives over, that was their business and Donny wasn't going to stop them. In fact, he did them a service by making sure the stuff he gave them was clean and pure so they knew what they were putting into their bodies. He supported informed decisions. And prostitution was no different than dealing drugs; if women wanted to sell their bodies, he figured they had a right to.

The trouble he was facing now was that it was very possible these women didn't want to sell their bodies.

He sat alone in his apartment, in the dark, staring at the blank screen of the TV. He couldn't focus on anything right now, so he decided silence was the best option. But even in the silence, his mind was busy going to thoughts he didn't want to think about.

Tony was dead. And Tony had had a daughter, Celia. She was five now. She adored Donny. Now that her papa was gone, what was her life going to be like? He wondered how she was handling it. Hell, she was five; did she even understand death yet? Maybe she still expected Tony to come home at night and tuck her into bed. God, it made Donny sick to think about it. And once she realized Donny was friends with the people who killed him—was one of the people who killed him, actually—what would she think of him? She'd hate him. She'd cry. She'd hate him for the rest of her life.

The image of Celia's betrayed, tear-streaked face made Donny get up off the couch. He couldn't deal with this. He was going to bed.

Why should he even care about Celia, anyway? She had nothing to do with him. And yet, somehow, that thought made him even sicker.

At the hotel, one of the many mildly decrepit and abandoned buildings which dominated this block, Sammy reiterated the instructions. The guys would go to their assigned stations scattered at various locations along the block and watch like hawks for any signs of snoopy neighbors, passers-by, cops, or anything else that might screw their deal. Luca even had a sniping rifle which he would man from the top floor of the adjoining, empty office building since it was a good five stories taller than the measly three of the hotel. Once they were all clear on their assignments, they split up. Donny scouted the street from the roof of the hotel.

Around one o'clock in the morning, the girls finally showed up. A moving van turned the corner, its headlights off, and pulled slowly to a stop right in front of the hotel doors, from which Sammy and Neil quickly emerged. The back doors of the van opened, and a petite girl in a shawl and sweat pants was lifted down to the street from within. Neil brought her inside, returned alone, and the process was repeated.

Donny's heart practically stopped. He'd been trying to justify this moment to himself ever since yesterday, but he was not expecting this. These girls looked thirteen! In a disconcerting way, they reminded him of Celia. No way was he OK with this, no way would he ever be. Sammy was out of his mind. Now Donny knew why Tony had died, and Donny respected him all the more for it. Forget whatever Tony had done during his life, God had better have sent him to heaven.

Donny stepped back from the edge of the roof, abandoning watching for cops. Let the cops show up. God, please let the cops show up, for that matter. This was sick. This was wrong. He didn't care anymore about staying good with the gang. Fuck the gang. He had to stop this; he planned to. The question was how.

He looked around. His first thought was to blow their cover, but if he did that, Luca was five floors above him with a sniping rifle. He'd be dead in a second. He looked at the office building housing the death trap. If Donny was going to do anything, he'd have to take out Luca first.

He went to the edge of the roof nearest the office building. There was a three-foot gap between the hotel and it. From here, he had no hope of getting in through a window, but he didn't need to. Luca had gotten in through the back door in the alleyway, so all Donny had to do was climb down the hotel fire escape into that alleyway, go into the office building, and get that gun away from Luca. Armed with this plan, he started moving.

He ran as fast as he could because there were only ten girls in that van, and three were in the hotel already, so he only had a few minutes left if he wanted to do any good. By the time he'd sprinted up eight stories' worth of stairs, he was out of breath but high on adrenaline. When he stepped into the room Luca was stationed in, Luca turned to him, confused.

"What's wrong?" he asked. "Did something happen?"

Donny went to the window Luca was aiming out of.

"How many girls they got in already?" Donny panted.

"Seven. What happened?" Luca asked again.

"Great," Donny said, ignoring the question. Then, without further stalling, he hauled off and landed a fierce uppercut right under Luca's chin.

Luca, caught totally by surprise, fell backward to the floor. Donny didn't give him time to react, just steadied himself and kicked him hard in the face. Luca made a little grunting sound on the impact and stopped moving. For an instant, Donny thought he might have killed him, but his panic subsided as he watched Luca's chest continue to rise and fall with his breathing. Donny paused, positively high on adrenaline, then turned to the gun. He didn't have time to do anything else at this point, so he'd have to settle for a diversion, something that would cripple the deal and buy him enough time to escape.

He pointed the rifle toward the truck, took careful aim, and fired, blowing one of the front tires of the van to pieces. He barely caught a glimpse of the last girl and Neil ducking in terror into the hotel. Donny fired again, blowing out a rear tire of the van, then caught a glimpse of Sammy, staring furiously right at him.

"Oh, fuck," Donny said, abandoning the rifle and darting toward the door. So much for escape time; he was dead if he didn't get out of there right now.

He ran into the hallway and flew down the stairs. Sammy had to be on his way to kill him already, so Donny's best bet was to get to the roof of the hotel and down the fire escape. Five stories to go; he counted them as he descended: one, two, three...

As he rounded the corner to head down the next flight, though, he heard Sammy's footsteps below, racing up to him.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!" Donny said, throwing open a door and running into a hallway instead. He could see the roof of the hotel from here, only two stories down. This hallway ran along the outside edge of the office building, lined with tall, arched windows. He raced down it, toward the back of the building, toward the alleyway. He had to find another staircase.

When he reached the end of the hallway, though, he found himself at a dead end, windows on one side, offices on the other, solid wall before. He spun around, starting to feel truly panicked now, wondering if he had a chance in hell of making it back down the staircase unnoticed. Without having much other choice, he trotted back down the hallway in the direction he'd come, trying to be as quiet and quick as possible, hoping Sammy had bypassed him on the stairs.

Four yards away from his destination, though, the door suddenly flew open and there in the doorway stood Sammy, seething.

"You little fuck!" Sammy shouted, pointing a semi-automatic at him. Donny barely had time to react, hitting the floor as a bullet whizzed by overhead. He scrambled into an empty office as Sammy fired another badly-aimed shot.

"I'm gonna fucking kill you," Sammy declared, following Donny into the room. It was dark, nearly impossible to see in, and there were chairs and boxes stacked in the corners. Donny squatted behind one of these stacks and prayed to God Sammy didn't shoot him.

"Where are you?" Sammy demanded, storming into the center of the room, waving his gun around clumsily in his fury. Donny's eyes were adjusting. He could see the gun in Sammy's hand, the hand closest to him. If he wanted to get out of here alive, he had to get that gun. He shot out from the corner by the door and tackled Sammy to the ground. Another shot was fired, and the bullet barreled into the boxes from behind which Donny had just come. He snatched at the gun and wrestled it from Sammy's grasp. Sammy kicked him off, but Donny had the gun now and was closest to the door. He scrambled up and back out into the hallway, Sammy following on his heels.

Donny ran toward the stairs, nearly tripping over himself in his haste, but he made it to the door and yanked it open. Sammy, however, had caught up with him and grabbed him by the collar of his shirt. Without thinking, Donny tossed the gun into the center of the stairwell, down the center of the spiral, sending it sailing into the void, knocking against the railings and clattering down multiple flights of stairs. Sammy pulled him back into the hallway and threw him hard against the wall.

Donny fought back, but by now he was terrified, and since Sammy was furious and anger had more clarity than panic, his efforts were to no avail and Sammy easily overpowered him. He pressed his forearm into Donny's throat, pinning him to the wall and choking him.

"You're dead, you stupid cunt," Sammy spat at him, then punched him solidly in the face. Donny staggered to side, free of the wall, but Sammy already had hold of him again. He grabbed Donny's jacket, swung him around, and tossed him, full-force, into the line of windows.

In a moment suspended in time, Donny saw the old, grimy glass rushing toward his face, and he turned away from it, putting his back toward it instead. He felt the glass crack and give behind him, felt Sammy let go of his jacket, and then felt the rush of outside air as he passed through, feet no longer on the ground, a sparkling, ringing shower of glass falling around him. His stomach lifted up into his chest, he reached forward as if to catch himself, kicked his legs as if to find footing, but he was well out of reach of anything that might save him. A second passed, then a half second, and crunch, he landed on the roof of the hotel, his entire body screaming in a pain that made his head spin. He didn't even have time to be grateful that he'd only fallen two stories instead of seven before he swooned and fell into blackness.

Some time later, he woke up. He was bleeding, he didn't know from where, but he could feel the wetness of it, the warmth leaking out onto his skin and leaving cold behind within. His leg was twisted painfully, his arm pinned somehow beneath him, but he couldn't move or adjust himself because he simply didn't have the strength. His head felt heavy, lolling back onto the floor of the roof. He gazed dumbly up into the smoggy gray haze of the sky, into the silence. After a minute, at the corners of his vision, he became aware of a flashing blue-white-red, blue-white-red cycling and spinning in the dark.

All at once, he realized it was the police. So they had shown up after all. Well that was great, but Donny had other things to worry about right now.

"Fuuuck," he moaned pathetically, in agony, in pain. He waited weakly in a horrible, unbearable stillness until at last another person appeared—a whole team of them, in fact—crouching beside him, shining lights into his eyes, asking his name, and strapping him onto a stretcher.

He didn't find out until he reached the hospital that the police had responded to a 911 call reporting the shots he'd fired. After that, though, he was done with consciousness. They could wrap him up and bandage him all they liked, but he was in too much pain to be awake for it.

The next thing he remembered clearly, he was alone in a room in a hospital bed. His leg was broken, his arm was broken, he was on intravenous painkillers, and he was under arrest. His good hand was handcuffed to the bed.

The police had told him that all ten of the Vietnamese girls had been rescued, but all the other guys from his gang had escaped. And since Sammy had already tried to kill him and failed, it was certain he would continue to do so until he succeeded, so there was a cop stationed outside his room twenty-four hours.

Apparently, with Donny's somewhat extensive knowledge of the criminal underworld, the cops thought him to be a valuable potential witness and therefore worth protecting. Besides, he had successfully instigated the rescue of ten captive young girls, so they were willing to give him a break, work with him, see what they could do to ease his sentence whenever it was inevitably passed down. In fact—and this is what interested Donny most—should he be willing to testify in court against the criminals he knew or if he were able to provide the police information which could lead to the arrest of a few exceptionally well-known criminals, they were willing to put him into Witness Protection.

He didn't have to give his decision yet, especially not until he was able to meet and talk with a lawyer, but when he considered that his life was now in constant danger, and when he considered all the guys he could get arrested or locked up, and especially when he considered the fact that he wanted to do whatever he could to make up for his part in taking Tony away from Celia, he figured that the next time anyone asked him whether he wanted to become a protected witness, his answer would be yes.