The Cadillac drove across the dark streets of New York, headed towards Long Island. The man drove it in a fury, his thoughts focused on the idiocy of his Don. "The Old Man is going senile. He does not wish to expand. He does not wish to take by force what is rightfully ours" the man fumed. "Well then I don't need him. He is history, it is time to move on into the future with the next generation of mobsters. My generation." The man lost himself in his thoughts of glory and wonder.

Eventually, the car drove through a set of wrought iron gates and into the courtyard of a picturesque mansion. Four bodyguards shut the gates behind the Cadillac as it passed through, each wielding a sawed-off shotgun. Th car finally drove into the garage and five men stepped out of it, the scornful wise-guy and his bodyguards. The small party entered the mansion and the wise-guy headed straight for his office where he walked in and shut the door. 

The wise-guy then pulled out a bottle of whiskey and proceeded to empty it by the time the sun rose. Little did he know how wrong he was about the sunrise. Outside the mansion, unbeknownst to the wise-guy, a group of men dressed impeccably in dark suits, fedoras and complete with face masks sneaked towards the wrought-iron gate. The leader of the party signaled his men to stop moving then stepped towards the gates stealthily. When he was close enough to hear the voices of the wise-guy's four bodyguards, he reached into his pockets and drew out two Lugers, complete with silencers, aimed carefully, and with rapid succession planted two shells into the heads and necks of the four bodyguards. 

The four men perished without even knowing what hit them. The leader then signaled his men to proceed and they passed him a length of rope and a steel hook, using which the party scaled the wrought iron gates and marched towards the mansion. When they were half-way across the courtyard, the party split, with the leader moving towards the rear-end of the mansion and his deputy leading the rest of the party towards the front door. Upon reaching the rear, the leader spied the wise-guy's office window and used the rope and hook to scale the wall and reach it. When he was up, the leader looked into the room and saw the wise-guy, sitting at his desk in a drunken stupor and he waited.

Back downstairs, the deputy lit a stick of dynamite and tossed it towards the mansion's front doors. The guards at the door were so flabbergasted, all they could do was stare at the dynamited with their jaws hanging while the fuse burned. The explosion roared across the entire neighbourhood and the front doors were blasted off their hinges along with every poor soul within the bomb's blast radius. The deputy and his men marched in through the gaping hole in the wall, brought their tommy-guns to bear and sprayed the interior of the mansions with lead, giving no regard to whether they hit flesh or wood. The racket was sufficient to rouse the wise-guy from his drunken stupor and he rushed out of his office, revolver in hand only to see his men get gunned down. He took aim with his revolver and started taking pot-shots at the deputy and his men, but alas his drunken state made him incapable of hitting even a barn door, let alone a man crouching behind cover.

Meanwhile, the leader seeing the wise-guy rush out of his office knocked open the windows and stepped into the room. This was the chance he had been waiting for. He walked out of the office and saw the drunkard raging and yelling at his men while taking pot shots at them. Calmly, the leader pointed his luger at the wise-guy's back and fired. The wise-guy stopped in mid-sentence as he sensed a force, equivalent to a sledgehammer strike his ribs. He dropped his revolver and slid to the floor, barely breathing. The leader then walked over to the limp form and turned him over to face him so that he could address the wise-guy. He could see a mixture of passions in the dying man's eyes. Hatred, dear, anxiety, regret all milled together in a cataclysmic storm of feelings. 

"I am sorry it had to end this way my friend" the leader told the wise-guy sympathetically. "You should have known better than tried to go against the Don". So saying, the leader planted a round between the wise-guy's eyes and ended the wretched man's suffering.

Even though this is, but a work of fiction, it is not very different from fact. It is up to you now my friends. the choice is yours. Will you choose to walk along the path of esteem and honour that will eventually lead you to glory and everlasting fame? Or will you choose to spurn those who took you in for a few short moments of grandeur, and then perish like a dog.

Tell me your thoughts.

WhereWasI sighs,

What is pride? Pride is a sense of self-satisfaction from one's actions. Pride is a good thing, and like any good thing there can be negatives from having too much, but that's not a reason to try to make it out to be a negative thing. The most prideful men in the history of mankind were probably Iskandar and Gilgamesh. Do you think they could have accomplished half of what they did if they didn't love what they did and think so highly of themselves? And what did the people of their time think of them? Despite the fact he was a vicious tyrant in the beginning of The Epic of Gilgamesh, he was so loved by his people that they actually diverted the route of the Red River to bury him under it around 2500 B.C. and it was basically confirmed later on by a group of German explorers who found what appeared to be his remains. Let me make sure you get that, they diverted a freaking river with 2500 B.C. technology to bury the guy... As for Alexander the Great, the people the ruthless tyrant conquered actually were usually pretty quick to take up arms and follow him into his next battle. He didn't just conquer their bodies, he usually also conquered their spirits despite the fact he was so full of himself that he named pretty much everything after himself. They were so much bigger than life that we're still retelling their stories thousands of years later and historians believe their people were some of the happiest in history.

So let me ask you, is pride really a bad thing? Or is it just self-satisfaction in what you do and what you believe you're capable of? Is dynamite a bad thing in the right hands? Or is it just a tool?

I'm with Aristotle in believing it's the King of Virtues despite being constantly confused with arrogance.