"You're certain?" Cesare asked Ricardo who had accompanied him on his drive around Chicago. They'd had to shake a tail car in the city traffic and were now parked outside a café in the heart of the city.

"Yes, sir. I followed him myself."

The Voice. The man who'd taken Cesare and blackmailed him into being his lackey. Cesare was finally laying eyes on him for the first time as he sat on the patio of the coffee house.

"After we followed him, we had some of our friends in the department make some inquiries. Apparently he's a special agent eyeing a promotion in the district office. He sees interrupting organized crime as his way of getting to the big time." Ricardo continued.

He was well built with an angular face and dark hair. He dressed as every federal agent did, black suit, black hat, black shoes. He'd taken credit for organizing the release of the mayor's daughter who he'd had Cesare and Nikki kidnap in the first place, then he'd taken credit in the paper for the destruction of a local illegal distillery, which he'd had Nikki and Cesare blow up for him. Luckily, the asshole had slipped up and come to the hotel to claim the ransom money for the mayor's daughter himself. Ricardo had tailed him and spent the next few days gathering as much information as he could.

"It's good, Ricardo. It's really good!" Cesare said, finally cracking the first smile in days.

The Voice's name was James Frinette, and Cesare was going to kill him.

They drove in almost complete silence back to the lofts where Cesare knew there would soon be another call placed, only this time, it would be him calling the shots, not some fed. Nikki looked up at him from the couch when he entered the loft with Ricardo,

"We've got him, Nikki. Now we just have to get AT him."

Nikki swirled the whisky in her glass as he spoke. She wanted to believe him...she did. But the last twenty four hours had taken its toll and that, combined with lack of sleep, had worn her down to nothing.

"Good! Okay," she said, feigning a positive attitude she simply did not own. Even if it killed her, even if she rotted away in a penitentiary, she'd decided before the name even crossed his lips that she would personally watch their persecutor die.

The phone rang, and she decided also that that fucking thing would be removed permanently when this was all over. She stood immediately and made her way to it on unsteady legs, not realizing how drunk she'd become. She picked up the receiver and listened, placing it back in the cradle without saying a word. She laughed then, and it wasn't a good laugh. She laughed until tears sprang from her eyes and she slid down the wall in a heap.

"The head of the Chicago branch of the FBI. We're supposed to kill him. Today," she said between fits of giggles. Life had gone completely sideways and surreal, if that was even possible anymore.

Cesare liked to think he'd seen his wife at some of her lowest moments, but the intense uneasiness brought on by her laughter turned his stomach. He moved forward and took her arms as she slid down the wall and knelt beside her. He couldn't think of anything to say, so he looked at her. He maneuvered his face in front of her eyes and held them with his own. He attempted to transmit the assuredness of their welfare into her mind as he took her hands in his own.

Ricardo had moved through the apartment and looked out the loft windows to the street, "Looks like you'll have a tail again, boss." Cesare stood and moved to the window, moving the curtains out of the way as he spotted the black car parked outside the lofts across the street.

"Like hell we will..." He growled before darting from the window into the bedroom. Opening some drawers, he retrieved he and Nikki's pistols and came storming back into the living area. He chambered a round in his 1911 before extending Nikki's pistol to her leaned against the wall.

"Enough of this." He said as she looked up at him, "If he wants blood today, he'll get it."

He turned his head back to his bodyguard, "Ricardo, get the car."

As Ricardo exited the apartment, Cesare took Nikki's hand and lifted her from the floor, asking her with his eyes if she was ready to finally fight back... for better or for worse.

Nikki gritted her teeth as she was pulled into a standing position, her jaw muscle popping out with the effort. Accepting the weapon, she mindlessly checked the cylinder and safety before stuffing it into her leg holster, which she'd never quite gotten around to removing. Following the two men out the door, she accepted a seat in the back, slid low in the upholstery and watching their tail. 

Ricardo, behind the wheel, began casually at first, but as they neared the end of the residential district, he floored the car around a corner and sped off in the opposite direction of downtown, zigzagging through desolate industrial areas before launching onto a highway onramp and pushing the car at maximum speed past other drivers. The tail was good, but not good enough. After they'd gone a few miles in the wrong direction, Ricardo waited for a blind exist and took it, quickly circling under an overpass and re-entering the highway from the other way, effectively losing the tail altogether.

Once back within the city limits, Ricardo steered them to the home of one James Frinette. Dusk was coming, so it wasn't difficult for the three to park a couple blocks away at a neighborhood park before approaching on foot. The home was modest; Frinette hadn't gotten his big promotion yet and therefore still lived with his pregnant wife in a quaint little bungalow in the working class part of town. Just as they approached an outcropping of unkempt shrubbery across the street that poorly accentuated a home for rent, they were met with the miraculous luck of watching as Mrs. Frinette left the home, a book grasped tightly in her hands.

"Where is she going? The library is closed," Ricardo asked. Nikki smiled without taking her eyes off the expectant woman as she got in her car and started the engine.

"Book club. We've got an hour, minimum," Nikki replied, stepping off the weedy lawn and crossing the street after the taillights of the car had faded into the distance. She approached the front door with a determined step, Cesare and Ricardo jogging to keep up with her.

"There's no plan here. No torture. Just go through the front door and fucking kill him, Cesare. End this," she said, looking over her shoulder at her husband. 

Cesare had been cooking up all manner of tortuous ends for the Voice since the day he'd heard it, but now as he stood in front of the door with his wife speaking, he heard the desperate plea for an end to the whole ordeal. Though a bullet seemed too generous, he couldn't deny the shared desire to finally see it finished. He simply nodded to her. She stepped to the side and he rocked back on his left leg before striking the door with his heel, breaking it off the frame and sending it flying inwards.

He was the first one into the living room of the home and he spotted James through the doorway into the kitchen directly in front of him in a white undershirt and blue boxers lifting up a glass to his mouth. Cesare took one step into the house and raised his gun at the man.

BANG!

James darted out of the opening and out of sight into the kitchen as Cesare's bullet buried itself in the far wall of the kitchen. "Shit!" Cesare called as he immediately gave chase through the doorway. The moment he passed into the kitchen he was set upon by James who had retrieved a kitchen knife from the counter out of view and stabbed at Cesare. The knife caught into one of Cesare's sleeves as he raised an arm in defense and he felt himself pressed into the cabinets behind him as the blade dragged across his left forearm. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Ricardo and Nikki follow through the door of the house with guns raised, but unable to shoot with him tangled up with his assailant.

Cesare swung his own pistol underneath his left arm,

BANG!

He could see the spray of blood over the man's shoulder as the bullet entered his stomach. It coated the appliances behind him with a thin scarlet film as he stumbled backwards off of Cesare. His undershirt was staining red as a river of blood began to wash down his leg and onto the floor. The knife dropped to the ground and James tripped over himself backing away from Cesare, slipping in the small puddle of blood on the ground and landing on his back.

"God...oh God.. oh-God-oh-God-oh GOD!" he cried out as he clawed at the growing stain on his shirt with his hands. Nikki and Ricardo rushed through the doorway as Frinette lifted the shirt up and revealed the deadly fountain flowing from his gut. Looking up and seeing Cesare and Nikki, he began to slide himself backwards across the floor desperately trying to put distance between them. A bright red smear followed him across the linoleum floor. "Cesare, please! My wife she's pr-"

BANG!

A scattering of blood and teeth flew across the stove as James' jaw blew apart, leaving a gaping butchered hole in the bottom of his face and reducing his speech to a blood-gargling drone of consonants as his hands jerked upwards for what was left of his chin. Tears began to well up in his eyes as Cesare took a step forward to sure up his aim. A beastial noise flew out of the man's throat towards Cesare as he struggled to breathe, choking on his own blood...

BANG!

Frinette's head jerked backwards and slammed into the stove behind him lifeless as Cesare delivered the final shot. His body slumped into the pool of blood that gathered around him.

Cesare looked up to the back door at the rear of the kitchen and dropped his gun on the floor as he moved straight for it past the body. After spasmodically working the lock on the screen door, Cesare threw it open and stepped outside. He walked two steps to a small patch of flowers before placing his hands on his knees and vomiting. The last week of blackmail, the scene in the kitchen, a new widow and orphan on the way, for what? His hands had been forced and it made him sick.

Nikki grabbed a dish towel and held it under the sink while dousing it with cold water. She then stepped outside as Ricardo moved through the house and made the ordeal look like a robbery, pilfering some jewelry and silverware as Nikki made her way out into the back yard and kneeled next to her husband. Wordlessly, she held the cloth to his mouth while running a hand down his back.

"Baby, there was no other way. She'll be taken care of...do you know what even low-level feds make these days? She's set, her and the kid both. You've freed her up to find a good man....a decent man that won't demand the theft of children, or who'd mindlessly order bombings that could cause civilian casualties. 

"And hey, if it's still wearing on your conscience in nine months? I'll school ours with theirs and make sure a proper apology is forthcoming as soon as they grasp the spoken word, Daddy," she said, standing and walking slowly back into the house.

Miracles happen.