Cesare sat at the green felt table in the dark center of an old flat in the center of New York. He'd done a fair bit of gambling in Las Vegas and Chicago, so when he found this gambling den in New York, he figured it would be a nice way to pass the time. His name slipped to the doorman was more than enough to let him inside. A total of four men at the table, a Philly wise guy and his New York friend, and a Capo from Hell's Kitchen. Cesare didn't bother asking their names, he wasn't going to be making friends, he was planning on taking their money. An hour slipped by and Cesare was up a little from his opening stack. Things were swinging in the direction of the Capo who'd just taken a large stack of bills off the Philly man.

"The fuck were you thinkin goin in like that, Eddie?" his friend berated, "He bet the Turn! You gotta know he's got trips! No one bets on a three on the turn!"

"Fuck off."

The Capo chuckled as he arranged the stacks on his side of the table. Near the far window, the gambling den's security man peeked tentatively out of the second floor window. Cesare watched him as he tossed the blind into the pot. Ricardo hadn't felt good about letting him up here alone, but he'd brushed off his concerns.

"Four hundred to you."

Cesare hadn't even looked at his cards. Pulling at the corners he found himself staring at a pair of Q's.

"Yeah, I'll call that"

He played the long game. Didn't like tipping off that he was holding something until the opponents saw something they liked on the table. Catching flies with honey so to speak.

"Alright, let's seem 'em Fred." the New Yorker said.

The cards flipped methodically onto the felt surface...Ace...Eight...Ace.

'Alright, which one of you assholes has an Ace?' Cesare wondered to himself.

"Check." "Check." "Check."

'No one it seems..'

"Five hundred" Cesare issued, tossing the bills into the center of the table. The other men begrudgingly accepted the tax for the opportunity to see the next card.

Eight.

Cesare heard the knob to the door behind him turn aggressively. The security man heard it too and immediately reached into his waistband for his gun. He could hear the door fly open and watched as the security man's eyes widened. That was all it took. Cesare swept himself out of the chair he was seated in and fell to the floor as the room erupted into a blind cacophonous whirlwind of sound and terror. Warmth covered his back as he pumped his elbows beneath his shoulders to move his body along the floor. Windows shattered and money floated into his path mixed with spent shell casings. The cries of dying men mixed with the retort of gunfire and the dull striking of lead against flesh and wood created a perfect symphony of death behind him. 

Then, as suddenly as it had started, everything went oddly still. Cesare lay flat on his stomach as the warmth crept farther over his back and shoulders now. He realized he was bleeding when the crimson stain crept over the shoulder of his shirt at eye level. His eyes began to dim and all at once he began to wonder again what death would feel like...

...Cesare found himself walking along a familiar Chicago street alone. The road was oddly deserted and he rubbed his eyes because there was a hazy film over everything he saw. Down the road was a figure. A dark one, pressed into the haze of the road.

"Cesare..."

A voice came from the fog in a distinct whisper that caused Cesare to tremble.

"Cesare!"

It came again stronger and with timber in it that he could no longer ignore. He knew it. He'd heard his name from that voice a thousand times over and there could be no mistake.

"CESARE!!"

The last was a pleading cry of distress that immediately sent him speeding into the fog. His mind flashed to a Venetian church. His feet carried him into the fog, pacing, maddened, towards the figure in the dark. The road stretched on forever or the figure receded before him, because he couldn't make up ground. Tears sprang forward from his eyes as his body began to rebel. He strained forward, desperate to find the voice echoing through the empty streets.

As his legs nearly gave out, the fog lifted up and he took a stumble into a clearing, falling onto his knees. Lifting up his eyes, he saw her, Nikki lying just as she was in the church the day she died in the middle of the road. However the terror that gripped Cesare was the effect of the dark figure hovering over her body. An unnatural creature with twisted and deformed arms and legs, obscuring his vision of her as it's fingers prodded her. Cesare took again to his feet and charged it. He felt a strange connection to it, as if it was a force he'd wrestled with many times before...

A few steps and he collided with the creature rolling it with him across the asphalt. Cesare rolled onto it and gripped it's neck with both hands, digging his nails into the pitch flesh. He lifted up and thrust the head into the road again and again. The piercing eyes looked up at him as Cesare bellowed,

"Today I'll fucking bury you in me!"

...It was all white. Everything. Ricardo sat next to the bed as Cesare's eyes opened and took notice of the room. A hospital. A collapsed lung. An extracted bullet. A bribed doctor. A fever dream.

and a missing shadow in his mind.