The next day, the incident inside of the hotel room was on every local news channel and website “Man Hung from Hotel Balcony” was the headline used to describe what happened.

“Two young Latinx men were seen going into the Midtown hotel room of Oscar Smith, assaulted his wife, trapped their four-year-old daughter in the bathroom, and used a bedsheet to hang the victim off of the balcony by his neck instantly killing him before officials could arrive.” The news reporter explained.

As time continued to pass whenever money needed to be collected the boss sent Johnny and his friend to collect it. They lived together in an abandoned two-story house on the outskirts of Queens. The home didn’t have clean plumbing, air conditioning, or even electricity, but it was home to them. Johnny had one floor to himself, and Axel had the other.

Axel went downstairs to talk to Johnny.

“Johnny, the boss wants to talk to us. Looks like some deep mierda is going down between us and the Mad Dogs.” Axel explained.

“War,” Johnny responded.

“Possibly. The boss has been talking about wanting to expand our territory. Either way, bring your gun.” Axel claimed.

“Yeah,” Johnny answered.

Before going to meet up with their boss, Johnny went into the local bodega that’s run by an elderly Hispanic woman.

“Ah abuela.” Johnny asked.

“Johnny!” The elderly woman shouted as she got up from her chair and gave Johnny a hug.

“Como esta mi amigo!” The elderly woman asked squeezing tightly onto Johnny.

“Do you have a beef patty I could have?” Johnny asked, trying to breathe.

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“Ah! Si! Si!” The elderly woman lets go of Johnny and goes to get the brown paper bag from behind the counter.

Johnny looked along the walls of the bodega and saw several pictures of the elderly woman as a child along with her family running the shop through the generations. The faint music playing over their heads. The customers walking up and down the aisles with baskets full of food.

The elderly woman returned from behind the counter and gave Johnny a greasy brown paper bag with an equally greasy beef patty with cheese in it just how Johnny liked it.

“Gracias abuela,” Johnny said as he left.

After leaving the Bodega, Johnny went to meet Axel at the gang’s headquarters in Far Rockaway. An apartment complex in one of Far Rockaway’s worst projects on Beach 56th place. Walking through the dimly lit halls the roaches scatter all around Johnny. The smell of urine flooded his nose while the vibration of speakers blasting loud enough to be heard from miles away disrupted his hearing. Poorly dressed people leaned against the walls while shooting dice.

Johnny reached the apartment the gang usually met at, inside were several barely dressed women along with random men shooting drugs into the arms of the women for pleasure. In the kitchen, there were people in long white lab coats sturring a strange substance in pots. The one bedroom inside of the apartment was locked, but on the other side, you could hear the bed creaking rapidly and people breathing heavily.

“Where’s Jorge?” Johnny asked one of the men that sat with a drugged women.

“He in the back with the others. Said for you to join in when you got here.” The man relayed.

Without saying anything else Johnny walked towards the back of the apartment where there were several other brown skin men gathered around a poker table. He took a seat next to an older bald man in smoking marijuana, wearing a dirty black tank top, and ripped black skinny jeans.

“Sup Johnny.” The man greeted Johnny as he started to sit down.

“Jorge,” Johnny replied.

“Now that everyone is here let’s get started,” Jorge said while putting out his blunt.

“The word on the streets is that the Mad Dogs are looking to move onto our territory, and I don’t care to find out if it’s true or not. So, we going to hit them first and we’re gonna hit them hard.” He continued.

“What do you want us to do, Jorge?” A member of the gang asked.

“War.” Johnny interrupts before Jorge can answer.

Jorge sat back in his chair to let that one word linger in the air “War”. At Jorge’s command, their gang is being sent to war on his behalf. The tension in the room had intensified and the eyes of all the gang members began to dart around the room while they were trying to remember to breathe.

“It’s as Johnny says, we gotta light em up. Show them how the Street Kings do things in New York.” Jorge confirmed.