The sun was smiling down on us, and all of Philly was there, from the mayor and the chief of police to Frank, the sanitation worker and Ricky the heroin addicted bum. Argyle gave a magnificent 45-minute speech about the good his shops would do for the city and another 15 minutes ranting about the abomination that is putting pineapple on pizza. He ended his speech with an extremely toothy smile and began to cut the ribbon with the ceremonial scissors which happened to be dull, so that was an ordeal. Once we finally cut the ribbon, the crowd began to pour in. A fine day for Little Caesars and therefore the world.

Philadelphia, Philadelphia was ours, or so we thought. It was 11 P.M. when we I received a call from a local officer. According to witness' three men walked into our new pizza shop and ordered six dead bodies and a torched business. By the time they finished firing their semi-automatic rifles, four teenage employees and two associates acting as security lay dead. Once the bodies stopped twitching they brought in canisters of kerosene and dumping it all over the store. They must have escaped through the back since the witness' say they never exited once they brought in the cans of fuel, all they saw was the shop go up in flames.

I put down the phone and ran out of my apartment sans shoes. Argyle would want to hear this news face to face.

Music. Bubbles. Death.

It had been a rather long day and so Argyle had decided to take a break from it all, drawing a bath he dipped his feet into the warm water and slowly made his way inside. There was a knock on the door, but one that he would worry about later, for now, him and his favorite bathing companion took a trip down memory lane. Ah. What perfection. The knocking only became louder and louder each passing second, but there was nothing that could get in the way of his hour of relaxation.

And then the door broke down.

"What the fuck..."

Before he could finish his thought, Kane stood in the doorway staring into the bathroom not sure whether to go deeper inside or keep himself at a distance as to not accidentally see anything that could not be unseen. He explained the situation as quiet as possible while also standing twenty feet away, but Argyle had heard enough.

This was not a time to sit idly by, but rather a call for immediate action. Jumping up from his bath unexpectedly, only a single layer of bubbles kept Kane from an experience he'd never forget. Grabbing his embroidered robe and quickly working himself into it, he walked over to his window and looked out of it for a moment. They needed a plan.

"Who can we get on this?"

That's when he noticed the robe wasn't exactly tightened shut, as two people stared in from the street-side. Wrapping it up, he grinned down towards them sure they had liked what they saw. Twirling around, he walked over to his door and turned the knob, both men knew exactly who would be able to help with this. It was a bit unconventional, but right now was not the time for conventional thought.

They needed firepower.

It was around 11.30 p.m. when the restless worker Pinocles finally arrived in front of the new HQ, with a truck full of new furniture. Argyle's order was to finish at noon, but the number of trucks necessary to haul the furniture was severely underestimated. Pinocles, while sitting in the driver's seat yelled at his bodyguards. 

"Come on you lazy bastards. Move your asses and take these to the second floor. Move it!"

"What am I paying you for?"

The first two picked up a big leather sofa, and the last one lifted two chairs, but before they would enter the HQ Pinocles stopped him.

"Hey Peter, wait a minute..." 

"You see those guy there, coming our way?"

Right across the street, two tall and slim figures appeared from the dark.

"Holy shit..." said Pinocles

"Hey Peter, get inside man, go with the others." 

"Are you sure boss?" asked Peter.

"Damn it man, I said now! Go!" said Pinocles and started walking towards the two shadowy figures. He opened his arms to greet them.

"Boss! What a lovely surprise!" said Pinocles

The two people in front of him were the owner of Little Caesars 🍕 and next to him was his good friend and co-worker Kane. They both stopped in front of him, and Pinocles started talking before they could even catch their breath.

"If you came to see how we managed to decorate everything, you're in for a huge surprise. Only the best for the best! Wait until you see what a hell of a bar I made for you! What's with the poker face boss?" said Pinocles

Argyle was starring at Pinocles while he was chattering, without giving him any response. After Pinocles had finished, they all stayed awkwardly silent until Argyle broke the tension.

"Come to my office in ten." said Argyle.

Pinocles was left wondering what had happened to make Argyle so unusually silent. When the movers came back, Pinocles asked them to take the truck and leave. He walked inside the HQ and locked the door behind him, to make sure they wouldn't have any unwanted visitors this night. He knew his boss needed him for something important.

A few orders had already been given out before arriving at Argyle's office, just the basics, though. More protection anywhere we had money tied up at and a couple more guys on the streets making sure everything was quiet. Argyle entered and closed the door to the office. Kane leaned against the unpolished oak; he could hear Argyle spinning in his chair trying to force an idea, to get out of this mess.

"Here's the situation Pinocles, about an hour ago I got a call from a friend down at the station. They torched the new shop and put down everyone in it, and I mean everyone. Not just our guys watching the place but also the kids working part time there just trying to pay for school ." said Kane in a heated tone.

"I ain't good with these types of things, but these fucking dogs have to be put down for what they did tonight, and we're going to do it quickly, so any ideas." said Kane as he slumped into his chair. 

It was going to be a long night.

Kane's words left Pinocles stunned. After a moment of silence, Pinocles started walking around the room. They waited outside Argyle's office, while he was inside making some calls. He reached for a big cigar from his pocket and lit it up. 

"I am empty of ideas...I hate it when I don't know what to do." said Pinocles

"Perhaps we should call our contacts in the force, see what they found out." said Pinocles

While pondering their next move an associate approached the door.

"He's busy." said Kane.

"It's about the guys after us." said the associate.

Pinocles gave a slight nod to the man and opened the door to Argyle's office.

They had come to an agreement, there was something going on in Philadelphia and Argyle's bottom line was the target. The decision came quick and with ease, they would find who had done this and shut down their operations -- permanently. Grabbing one of his most favorite torches from his desk, he turned it on for dramatic effect, finding out who these people were would take a lot of time and sleuthing around, perhaps even going through the entire city asking questions one by one personally; and not to mention the contacts that would have to be put on flying out to the other cities to gather information there, it would be an extremely costly affair that could run into the hundreds of thou-

"Hey boss, we caught someone outside. They were hiding in a garbage can trying to gather intel. They've already sung half of their operation to us and Eddy has only had him for ten minutes. You ain't gonna believe what's going on..."

It was a new family trying to set up shop, the Domino's Crime Family. They had only been here for a couple of months working as secretly as possible behind the noses of the larger family, but they were finally getting a bit too keen on expansion and it was bad for business, they would have to move and fast before this got ugly.

"Time for some fun.", Argyle said with a crooked smile. It was about to get a little... fuck, I can't think of a pun related to pizza, but the point is this was about to become an extremely dangerous event and Little Caesar's had the drop, now all they needed was to gather the rest of the crew and take advantage of the costly mistake.

Standing in front of the clouded mirror she admired the new bodice the boss had just purchased for her. Smiling widely she felt it complimented her voluptuous form and matched her red hair. After Argyle had hired her  and  her showed the pizza kitchens she  was nearly mortified she could not work in a kitchen, it would ruin her lovely complexion, not to mention what all that steam in the kitchen would do to her hair.  So he set her up as the madame of the first Pleasure hall in Philadelphia .  She sat down at her vanity and started brushing her hair. Stroke stroke stroke, a hundred strokes ever day to keep it healthy.
 
A sudden knock and one of Argyle's guards bursting in  startled her.  She reached for the small pen knife on her vanity table , but laid it down as soon as she saw who it was. " Dang darlin' just burst into a girls room why don' ya, thats  a good way to get ginger snapped don' ya kna." Her southern drawl was thick as she spoke. He was slightly out of  breath from traversing the stairs in large leaps. "The.. boss has.." He paused to catch his breath. "Called everyone... to a.. meeting."
 
"Then  quit gabbin' at me sounds like its time for serious work." She quickly wrapped her  hair in a bun on top her head leaving a few tendrils of hair to frame her face, then placed her top  hat over. As she stood her heels brought her to just eye level with him, the guard stood there mouth agape and wide eyed as his eyes languished over her curves. Smiling she coyly  lifts her hand, pivoting  her wrist  as she points to her smiling eyes. " My eyes are up here darlin." She laughed as she pushed past the still gaping guard. 'Let's not keep the boss waitin." Her voice trailed after her as she sashayed out the room.
 
She sauntered  into Argyle's office, "Sorry I am late boss, but you can't rush perfection."

Chocola awoke to the sound of someone breaking into her house, and to no one's surprise it was one of Argyle's bodyguards. He told her that Argyle was summoning everyone for something but she wouldn't find out what until she was there. After making the usual "Argyle had someone break into my house instead of knocking" arrangements, she began to head over there.

When she arrived at his office, she knocked because she knew how doors worked, however she knocked extra hard and way too much for dramatic effect. 

"Please don't tell me you've called me here to taste a new type of pizza..."

She said with a sigh as she walked into his office. 

As more people made their way into the already tightly packed room, he hoped the man with the bag tightly wound over his head would not be claustrophobic.

"Why... why isn't he moving? He's too calm."

Ripping a couple of holes into the bag, Argyle soon came to the realization that the man had died from suffocation and now they were back where they started at the very beginning. Sighing to himself for a moment, he went to spin around and give the bodyguard a rather negative tongue lashing when he noticed a gleam in the man's pants pocket.

Domino's Pizzeria - 24th Street

What the hell? He knew Domino's had been a fledgling new family who did some illegal drug dealing and harmless prostitution here and there, but now they were encroaching onto a territory that Argyle held close to his heart. He pointed to Kane and motioned for him to walk forward, before handing over the slip of paper that had all of the information.

"We need to get here. Fucking now."

That's when the dead man gasped and dramatically said two words before falling back into his deep deadly slumber, a name that hadn't been said in the city of Philadelphia since they were forced out of the area.

"Papa Jonathan..."

This was bad. He told the rest of the family to stay back and make sure nothing happened to the operation, they had to go make a delivery, and they would do it in fifteen minutes or less.

Papa Johnathan, there wasn't a man walking the streets of Philadelphia that could match the violence that man possessed. This motherfucker was a pair of bloody brass knuckles personified. You'd think that after twenty years of being nothing more than a memory that it would be ridiculous a man's name could elicit such fear, but this was not just some man. Papa was the king of Philadelphia, and it seems he had returned to reclaim his crown.

Walking down the steps from Argyle's office Kane pondered if Papa was really back or if someone was playing some sick joke. He vowed that when he returned he would string up anyone associated with Argyle, from his family to the members of little caesars to the lowly pizza delivery boys. With most people, that statement would be hyperbole but coming from Papa; it was a god damn promise.

Kane reached the front door and looked back to Argyle. He was saying his goodbyes to the rest of the gang. He turned and walked to the entrance. Both men turned to each other and simply nodded, they knew what needed to be done. They only hoped Papa would be there so this mess could be ended sooner rather than later.

"You think it's really him." asked Kane shortly before entering the vehicle.

"Let's go find out." said Argyle as he closed the passenger door.

Outside Domino's Pizzeria - 24th Street

"Here we are. How do you want to play this." said Kane.

"Hard and fast." said Argyle cocking back the hammer of his handgun before swinging open the passenger door and sprinting to the front of the pizza shop.

"ARGYLE! Wait, fucking hell." exclaimed Kane.

This god damn mad man must have been hopped up on crazy breadsticks the way he entered the pizzeria.  Then again there was no need for caution since it was well into the night and there was no potential for civilian casualties, like teenage employees just making an honest living.

Argyle attempted to kick in the door in dramatic fashion but he didn't think it out all the way since his foot struck the glass portion of the door, his entire foot and halfway up his calf went straight through the glass. Yet, he was not deterred. He hopped forward, spun around and placed two shots dead center of the man scrambling for a gun near the register. Argyle shook free his once jammed leg and proceeded to do a sweet slide over the counter.

Kane made it into the pizzeria just in time to witness Argyle's glorious slide. His trance was broken by automatic fire as bullets whizzed past him. He took cover behind the counter and blindly fired over it to give Argyle a chance to move on to the next room. Argyle used the opportunity to sprint into the kitchen where he was greeted with a shotgun to his face. With quick thinking, he was able to slap the barrel to the side before it fired. Disoriented from the blast, he managed to hip fire his pistol at the man.

The gangster laying down suppressive fire at Kane soon realized automatic fire wasn't a good as he quickly ran through his two magazines. Kane peeked over the counter to see the gangster reaching for his sidearm, so he popped up and shot at the thug until he emptied his clip. He looked at the counter and pondered if a slide over it would work for him as well as it did for Argyle. Kane quickly decided against it and walked around it like a normal human would.

"Hey are you alright..." said Kane.

"Uh no, I don't think I'm alright Kane. I'm pretty sure my calf is sliced in half, and there's a very loud ringing in my ears." said Argyle as he attempted to get up from his little siesta on the floor.

"Well, we're done here. Let's check out what's in the office at the back of the shop." said Kane as he picked the pump shotgun from the floor.

Kane walked, and Argyle limped to the back office, but a few steps from the door several shots came from within the office that penetrated the closed wooden door. Both Kane and Argyle dove in opposite directions, Kane managed to land on his back, and as soon as the office door began to creak open, he fired three rapid shots with the newly acquired shotgun. After several breaths, all that was heard was the man in the office dropping to the floor with a thud.

Both men rose to their feet and walked to the office. Kane pushed open the door with the barrel of the shotgun and confirmed that the man could no longer be considered a threat with another shell to the fallen man's chest. Kane turned to Argyle and gave the thumbs up. That's when he saw that Argyle was clutching the left side of his abdomen, blood steadily dripping from where his hand was to the floor.

"I-I uh think I'm losing quite a bit of blood here Kane...." said Argyle weakly before slumping to the floor.