Giovanni De Luca, known as 'Dito Sul Grilletto' or Triggerfinger, is the final surviving member of the old 'De Luca' family of the Cosa Nostra. He was the Don's second son, and definite favorite. The De Luca family suffered the ultimate wrath of the Cosa Nostra, the full weight of the other four families bearing down on them and destroying them in their entirely due to Don De Luca's reluctance to change from the old ways in the face of New York's trying times.

The other four families moved and plotted against the De Luca's, and ultimately destroyed them after a horrendously bloody war that took place almost in broad daylight. Giovanni survived this war, but not without immense sacrifice. It was during this war that he lost the woman he was to wed, and also gained his extreme abhorrence of the Five [now Three] dons.

Barely surviving the war, and most certainly not winning it, The young De Luca disappeared for several months before returning to New York. He was scarred, a husk of his former self, and out for only one thing; Revenge. He dropped himself at the Amaranth wolves' feet, offered them his services- his expertise with firearms, his knowledge of the Cosa Nostra, his experience in organized crime, his dedication as a soldier...anything he could offer them, he did. He would fly their colors, work for them, be loyal and become a wolf- so long as he got his chance for revenge one day.

Giovanni, nowadays, officially lives in the illustrious Haven, but spends almost all of his time either in the field, or at the Wolves' headquarters to do work. His financial windfall comes from his inheritance of the family funds, legally, even if they had been depleted immensely by the war and all of the property assets seized.

"Amaranth is a curious word to use for a gang, but I like it. It's a flower, sure, but it also means 'A flower that never fades'. Never fades... I think that's a bit beautiful for a gang, but hell- I'm one of 'em now."

"I was young. Full of fire. I wanted to prove I was the best. What I shoulda done was grab Her and left town, hell, left the country. But I didn't know how bad it was gonna be."

Our tale will begin several years back, with the beginning of the hostilities against the De Luca family. Don De Luca was an old-guard, an established and entitled man. He cared not for the new dons of the other four families and their desires to move the Cosa Nostra out of traditional Italian Mafioso ways, and into a new age of, what Don De Luca considered, degenerate crime sprees.

----

"Those fuckers." Giovanni cursed. "Those Motherfuckers..." He slammed a fist into the table he sat at, causing his glass of wine to spill from the table and break upon the hard ground of the restaurant the small crew of mobsters inhabited. He found heat rising to his cheeks as his father, older brother, and the chief soldiers of the clan all stared at him for his outburst.

"Dito, anger is unbecoming of you. Do not have such an outburst again or you will be dismissed from this council." His father's deep voice resonated to the ashamed man's ears from across the table. Giovanni pressed his hands to the bridge of his nose and nodded.

"Forgive me papa, but...They tried to have you killed. Blatantly. Right after the meeting." Gio attempted to explain his anger, to which his father just raised a many-ring-bearing hand.

"I was there Dito, I know what they did, and I know why they did it. They're young. Fiery. Like you, my son. Do not become rash or they will have won."

The don's words seem to have calmed Giovanni down, and the young man looked to his father with both awe at his father's bravery and a naïve hope that they'd win the war that had just started. Giovanni's older brother spoke up then;

"We can't out-spend them. The cops will look the other way whenever they strike, but be quick to crack down on us. That's just a fact we'll have to keep in mind." The older man, nearly ten years Giovanni's senior, coughed into a rag he gripped tightly. "But our boys are veterans, hard and strong. We'll make 'em bleed papa."

The chief soldiers nodded in agreement and murmured vague affirmations of the strength of Don De Luca's men. The Don only offered a wizened smile and laughed.

"You're all so hasty. Calm down-- calm down." The don leaned in conspiratorially to the table, as if the restaurant was not completely empty save for them due to the don's buying it out. "We've gotta be smart about this boys. They used a car bomb, tried to catch me unawares. Luckily for me, poor Luke started the car early and the fools tried to play it off when I accused them after the meeting."

The don splays his hands.

"I say we give tit-for-tat. Go for the heads fast and hard. Teach them why I stand for the traditions and not this...desperation they reek of." The don then gave various orders to the chief soldiers and his eldest son, as if forgetting his 'Dito' was even present. This made Giovanni grit his teeth and sigh heavily.

"Papa, I'm a crack shot. Let me go for the Luciano's. We know where he lives and I'm certain if I get one shot at him he'll be deader than a fish in concrete." Giovanni pleaded with his father, desperate to be of some use to his family.

The Don weighed his gaze on his youngest son heavily, before nodding in silence and rising up from the table. The council was dismissed.

----

"When I killed Luciano is when the cops got involved, and things went downhill fast. If I could take back just one thing, I'd have missed that shot all those years ago."

Giovanni had claimed to be a crack shot to his father, but the truth of the matter is that the scrappy man was, hands down, the most skilled marksman of the De Luca clan. He had already operated as a triggerman for a number of hits in his career, and so he thought that killing Don Luciano would prove as simple as the rest of his hits; Sight on target, pull trigger, then bounce the scene.

He had never been in a war before, to put it simply. He had only been a hitman, not a soldier, up until this point.

He fired the shot at 7:34 AM on a Thursday. Luciano received the bullet straight through the center of his face, where it entered through his nasal cartilage, smashed through the base of his brain, and then tore the back of his neck; the shot fired from on-high, at a downward angle at the unsuspecting Don as he was doing his morning exercise in his pool.

Giovanni packed up his rifle swiftly and began to leave the scene..

-----

"I remember it well. The Don died, and as I began to make my way back home I pulled out my phone to call papa. That action saved my life."

Giovanni swiftly sped down the stairs of the building he had chosen to use as his sniping vantage, and as he did so he fumbled in his breast pocket for his phone. He pulled the phone out and swiftly dialed his father, the rifle-case slung onto his back as he ran down the stairs.

"Papa, it's do-" the young man began, before fumbling the phone from his grip and dropping it down the stairs. He sighed in exasperation, this act of clumsiness not what he had hoped for in terms of how this mission was going, before he leapt down the stairs and stooped to pick up the phone--

Bang. Two shotgun blasts hit the wall where he was standing moments ago, and Giovanni's reflexes kicked in as a primal urge to not-die pumped pure adrenaline into his veins. Hardly a second had passed from the shotgun blasts passing overhead, thankfully from far too close for the spread to hit the stooped man, before Giovanni's revolver was in hand and he hit the dirt, falling partially down the stairs for cover as he returned fire at the two Luciano goons who interrupted his phone call. Two shots, two bodies hit the floor, and Giovanni was breathing harder than he had ever breathed before.

"Mama mia..." He panted, picking his phone up to hear the angry yelling of his father-

"Papa, papa! I'm fine, I'm fine!" Giovanni yelled into the phone. "Gotta go for now, don't know how many more are coming for me. I'll be home ASAP, don't wait up." He ended with a cocky flair, riding the adrenaline hard. He hung the phone up, depositing into his breast pocket once more, as he picked up a fallen shotgun and cocked the heavier weapon, holstering his revolver.

"Jesus...Fuck, okay. Giovanni, you got this." He whispered to himself. "They call you Grilletto for a reason."

He shouldered the rifle, holding it in place as he descended the stairs. A half dozen more bodies hit the ground before he made it out of the building, and thusly escaped to return home.

The Luciano family was the first of the five to break. With the death of Don Luciano, the three rivals to the De Luca family swiftly cannibalized the followers of Luciano and steeled their resolve to face the Old Don of De Luca.

"She was the only thing keeping me going after the first year of the war. My brother had died to a car bombing, and father was in witness protection for safety. I was in charge of the family, and She was the only thing keeping me from snapping entirely."

"Gio, please." The woman pleaded. "Go into hiding, you can't do this, you can't keep fighting your father's battles!"

She was relatively plain. Long black hair, pale skin, bright blue eyes, but...average. Thin, almost bony, and his father certainly had never approved of her- She wasn't Italian. But Gio had fallen in love years ago, when they were but teenagers and had the freedom to elope around the city at night spending his father's cash on their trivial fantasies. But more importantly than that, she made him...feel. She helped him escape the constant fear of death, the constant worry that a car he got into might explode, the fear of a sniper on the rooftop.

She helped him escape his own rampant bloodlust. First his brother was killed, then his father was taken by the police. Giovanni wanted the dons dead. And she helped calm him, stop him from waging open warfare in the streets. Helped him keep things civil, like the traditions dictated. He wasn't about to stoop to their level, to gunning people on the sidewalk. He was going to keep things true to how his father would want them done. That's what she helped him focus on.

"Gio..." She continued. "Please. For me. Come away with me, we'll go to Italy- your grandparents still live there, right?" She tried.

"Dead. Three years ago. Natural causes, they was old sweetie." Giovanni said exhaustedly. "I can't run. If I run, then my brother died in vain and father will have lost everything for nothing." He raised his tired eyes- even now beginning to grow cold- to the woman he loved. "I can't run. It's not the De Luca way."

She went quiet. Held very still, before simply nodding and shutting her eyes tightly. She fell into his arms, and he held her like that. Still and quiet, but strong.

"We'll get married once this is all taken care of. I won't die- can't die. Not when I've made a promise to an Angel like yourself. God would never forgive me for disappointing one of his angels. Remember that, sweetie, okay? I promise, no matter what, that I'll come back to you."

He released her as she pulled back and nodded, accepting his promise.

"Okay. Okay I know. I know. You promise, and I'll hold you to it Gio." She wiped at her eyes and reluctantly kissed the young Don. "You better not die on me."

Giovanni returned the kiss, before running his hands through her hair and lifting a hand, showing her the wedding band he had proposed to her with.

"God as my witness, I'll crawl outta hell to keep my word."

---

"I didn't know I'd be going into hell so soon after I made that promise. I don't know what compelled me to accept the offer of peace talks from the other three dons. Looking back on things now, I should've realized it was a trap- but I was caught up in the old ways. Papa always taught me that when a man said he wanted to talk, that you could show up, talk, then go home without worrying about getting shot. I guess I never learned- Papa himself was almost bombed after such a talk. But still I went, and I guess deep in my heart I knew something bad was about to happen."

Giovanni, accompanied by two of his best men, sat across from the three remaining dons who wanted him dead. In a strange feeling of deja vu, he couldn't help but recall sitting across from his father this very same way...

Empty restaurant, terrified waiting staff, excellent wine, and incredible anger in the air. His triggerfinger was itchy. He rubbed his hands and eyed the other dons tiredly- unlike them, Giovanni had been fighting every step of the war, not pawning the job off on his men. He lead by example, not by virtue of birth. He had to- the men barely knew who he was when he took power.

"Giovanni De Luca." The first man began. "Thank you for coming to this talk. We weren't sure you'd make it."

"Yeah the roads are dangerous as hell these days. Every cop in the city is looking for me, and half the cars explode as soon as you touch 'em these days, eh fellas?" Giovanni interjected dryly. "Cut the bullshit, tell me what it is we're here to discuss. I know you fellas ain't here for peace, not when I'm as haggard and dry as I am. What, you guys outta bullets and need a loan?" He lifted a hand, and the two men who came with him revealed submachine guns within their coats to the other three dons, who all looked immensely amused at Giovanni's ploy of power.

"Nonsense. We want peace. This war is expensive. Paying the cops, paying the soldiers, paying the families of the soldiers you keep killing- eh, our pockets ain't bottomless kid, this isn't the olden days." The second explained. The third laughed heartily;

"Yeah! We were more...here to negotiate. You call off your soldiers, and we don't ixnay ouryay atherfay."

Giovanni frowned deeply; Pig Latin AND a threat. How...understandably Mafioso, he decided.

"What? He's gone, you can't threaten him. Cut the bullshit, you're talking to Giovanni De Luca, not some father's boy."

"Need proof?" The first said calmly. "Here." The man slid a tablet across the table, the screen displaying a few camera angles of a home in sunny Fort Lauderdale Florida. Giovanni's father, in true witness protection form, seemed to be under the guise of a gold enthusiast. Giovanni frowned deeply and stared at the tablet. He shut his eyes for a few seconds, before opening them- his cold, dead, eyes ablaze with fire.

"Drop 'em boys." He ordered, his men reaching to draw their submachine guns- but two hails of gunfire from the kitchen of the restaurant caused Giovanni to dive under the table as his men's bullet-ridden bodies hit the ground behind him.

"Tsk. Now you have to watch your father die, kid. You've got spunk."

Giovanni found himself manhandled by the three dons, who picked him up off the ground and restrained him, keeping his ever-lethal hands away from the guns nearby. They slammed Gio into the table and forced his face at the tablet, where he witnessed several men enter into the home his father was inhabiting and brutally stab him to death on camera. Giovanni's blazing eyes hardened with anger as he watched, and he felt his whole body go hot with rage-

hot with rage? Then why are tears streaming down his face? First his brother, now his father- That was too much. Far too much.

He clenched his eyes shut, sucked in a deep breath, and steadied his nerves.

"Fuck you." He whispered. "Fuck all of you."

He slammed his own body into the table harder, tipping it over and allowing his body to tumble to the ground with the three men holding him. Unlike them, he was expecting the fall. He managed to break free of their holds and scramble to his feet, sprinting across the room as gunfire lit the walls behind him. As he ran he drew his, by now, iconic revolver and returned fire. Two shots, two bodies hit the floor. He finally reached the entrance of the restaurant and stopped, planting his feet and turning to turn his vengeance on the three dons- now cowering behind the table- only to feel something hard strike the base of his skull and blackness envelope him.

"I was an idiot to think there were only two goons there. An idiot to think that it would be that easy. They took my father from me, my brother- they were about to end me then and there too, but it would've been too hard to make it all disappear, even with the cops in their pocket. What had saved me was that I had made it to the door. Civilians saw me gun a couple of guys down, and that dirtied up the scene. They had to get me somewhere quiet to end me. Eyewitnesses are a bitch, ain't they?"

Giovanni awoke in the trunk of a car. He could tell because when he sat up he slammed his head into a steel ceiling, and when he opened his eyes he could only see slivers of light through small cracks. He smelled gasoline very strongly.

He tried to move his arms, but they were handcuffed. He tried to twist his body and kick his legs, but there wasn't enough room for the proper leverage. He felt a dread overcoming him.

Speedbump. Face against ceiling. Now his nose was broken too. God clearly hated him.

Giovanni groaned and turned onto his side to avoid further destroying his face against the steel ceiling of the trunk, and curled up as much as he could as he breathed out of his mouth, blood sliding down his face. He tested the cuffs, then grit his teeth.

"Grilletto, you ain't about to die here. Fuck you, God."

He tried to calm his breathing, and as he did he realized where the gasoline smell was coming from. There were several jerry cans of gas sitting snug in front of him, as well as the box of matches that Giovanni assumed was there to set the car, and himself, on fire.

".....Eh, there are worse ways to go..." He half joked to himself he steeled himself for what he had to do next. He shut his eyes tight, grit his teeth hard, and moved his hands together, grabbing the thumb of his left hand in his right. "alright...Alright...On the count of three... One... Two-"

He cheated himself of the extra second and broke his thumb right then and there, muffling his cry of pain by pressing his face- broken nose and all- into the carpeted floor of the trunk.

He pulled his hand out of the handcuff weakly and gingerly rubbed his left hand with his right.

"Just...Just a little longer Gio..." He said, spots filling his vision. "You... You promised Her..."

----

"Yeah. I blacked out for a few minutes. Who can blame me? I'd been concussed, broke my own thumb, and had a broken nose. Sue me for taking a nap at a critical moment, will ya?"

When Giovanni awoke, he felt a full pain in his face, which he dimly registered as his broken nose. Next, he felt an excruciating pain in his left thumb. Which he then remembered was his own fault. He rolled around gingerly, refreshing himself on his surroundings. Through the smell of gasoline, he could smell fresher air, snow, trees- they'd taken him way out of town, way way out of town and into the woods.

"Good. Good." Giovanni nodded slowly. "I can do this..."

He slid to the jerry cans and pushed them aside, feeling the back wall of the trunk with his right hand. He could feel the section that opens into the back seat and grit his teeth. He gripped the handcuffs in his left hand, stretching the chain out to his right wrist taught, holding it how he could with a broken thumb.

Giovanni admits his first plan was stupid- kick open the back seat and scramble forward to try and strangle the driver? He'd just get himself in a wreck and die in the ensuing fire anyway. Luckily, he realized the idiocy of this plan swiftly and did the next best thing;

He dropped the handcuff and shook himself of his pain, clearing his head slightly. He grabbed the gasoline canisters and shakily undid the lids of them one at a time. He fumbled and dropped one, soaking himself in gasoline and filling the bottom of the trunk in a thin layer of the substance. He rolled onto his back and propped himself up on his right arm to avoid soaking too much in the flammable substance as he positioned himself for the next step of his plan.

With one solid kick, he knocked the back of the back seat open and revealed the rest of the car to himself.

With the next kick, he sent one gasoline can spiraling into the front windshield, splashing gasoline everywhere. Panic ensued in the front seat, but before anyone could retaliate he kicked a second one, then a third one out- and immediately lit a match and threw it into the front of the car.

It took to a blaze immediately. Giovanni will never forget the horrid stench and pain he experienced in that car. The fire spread instantly through the entire vehicle, and they veered off the road- crashing into a tree in a tremendous crash. Giovanni slammed into the lid of the trunk as the vehicle crumpled like a tin can under a boot, and perhaps God didn't hate him after all.

He slammed into the ceiling and the trunk opened up, unable to stay locked from the vehicular damage. Even as Giovanni was blacking out, on fire, and in incredible pain, he crawled out of the trunk and into the snow. He rolled his body around frantically, extinguishing the flames on himself.

He managed to crawl about thirty feet, back to the edge of the road, before blackness consumed him.

"I thought I was dead. I felt like hell. I hurt all over, and could barely move anymore as my hands finally hit the asphalt of the road. I just kept thinking of Her as darkness consumed me. When I woke up four months later, My entire world would be different."

"I awoke in a hospital, a 'John Doe' with no family or connections to speak of. When I was well enough to walk, I left. They couldn't keep me there. I wouldn't have it. I wasn't in New York City, but I found my way back... When I made it home, the Dons had all but destroyed my family, absorbed them, killed them, chased them off... I had nothing. Nobody. A broken body, a broken heart, and... and I learned She was dead. I...I don't want to talk about her. I won't."

Giovanni walked into a new New York City. Things were different, that's for sure. The Cosa Nostra had lost most of their power in the last decades, and the mafia had been all but clinging to life before the war started. Now that two of the five families were gone, the last three were able to consolidate and keep themselves alive...but truly there was nothing to compare to the size and power of both The Lost Ones and the Amaranth Wolves now. Even back when the five families existed, they could barely compare to the two powerful gangs, but now it was all they could do to hold onto their territory.

Giovanni knew he had to make a choice as he walked back into New York, those two years ago. Slip into shadows and stay hidden for the rest of his life, a hollow man...

Or pick a side and rebuild himself. He had his pride. He wanted to kill the Dons, make them hurt for what they did to him...what they made Her do.

The Lost Ones would not serve this end. He needed the Wolves. And they needed him. A Master sharpshooter with years upon years of organized crime and underworld combat under his belt?

He Offered to join. They accepted.

"The Dons had forgotten the 'De Luca' name in the months I was gone. They don't care about me. They forgot about me. They either think I'm dead or too weak and useless to come after them. I've got a new family now- One not so different from my old one. Cosa Nostra, Amaranth Wolf...They almost mean the same thing. Family. Who cares about the different blood- They'll die for me, and I'll die for them. That's all that matters. The Amaranth Wolves are my Cosa Nostra. We are the same thing... And one day, I'll bring the Five...No, the Three...dons under my heel. That'll repay what I owe the wolves. Yeah. That'll do nicely."