Chapter 34: The Vongola Family
"Looks like Ethan's making his move. We need to pick up the pace — our expansion isn't nearly fast enough." Vongola Primo muttered to himself, irritation creeping into his voice.
He and Ethan went way back — all the way to the Hell's Kitchen orphanage. After Ethan's old man died, the state had dumped the kid there. Ethan spent a year in that place before Fisk finally came and took him in.
Orphanages were rough under the best of circumstances. A Hell's Kitchen orphanage? That was a whole different level of misery.
The federal funding that was supposed to keep the place running had been siphoned off by bureaucrats who couldn't care less whether the kids lived or died. People died in Hell's Kitchen every day — a bunch of parentless nobodies weren't going to move the needle.
On paper, it was a children's home. In reality, it was a farm — a pipeline for human trafficking and organ harvesting.
The staff didn't treat the children like people. Periodically, they'd pick out the strongest kids and sell them to gangs as fresh recruits. The rest were worth more in parts than whole — their organs went to whoever could pay.
When Ethan first arrived at the orphanage, Primo was already the kid running the show — the undisputed king of the playground.
Ethan had taken one look at him and decided the kid was a dead ringer for a certain anime character. He gave him the name on the spot, and Primo liked it enough to keep it ever since.
During that year together, Ethan figured out something was deeply wrong with the orphanage. He and Primo investigated in secret, gathering evidence in the shadows. Eventually, through sheer determination and with Fisk's muscle behind him, Ethan got the kids out.
The Vongola Family had started as exactly that — orphans banding together to survive. When the orphanage burned down, Primo had no choice but to lead those kids out into Hell's Kitchen and carve out territory to keep them alive.
The Family was structured around seven Guardians, Primo included — each representing one of seven attributes: Sky, Storm, Rain, Sun, Lightning, Cloud, and Mist.
That had been Ethan's idea, naturally. Ethan himself wasn't one of the Guardians — he held an honorary Elder title within the Family. Primo represented the Sky, and he was the strongest among them.
Primo had never fully understood what the attribute system was supposed to mean, but he trusted Ethan, and it sounded cool, so it stuck.
Of course, they didn't have any of the supernatural powers from that manga. The Vongola Family members were ordinary people — just tougher and more loyal than most.
By now, the Vongola Family had established itself as a serious force in midtown Hell's Kitchen.
"Looks like my old friend could use some backup. G — you're coming with me this weekend." Primo turned to a red-haired man with a tattoo running down the right side of his face.
"You got it, Primo. Anyone who wants to lay a finger on you goes through me first — over my dead body." G cracked his knuckles.
G was the Storm Guardian — Primo's right hand since childhood, co-founder of the Vongola Family. His specialties were firearms and archery.
"Easy," Primo said calmly. "We're just going to back up an old friend. Nobody's going to hurt me, G."
"Maybe not." G's expression darkened. "But the other gangs aren't going to see it that way. We should prepare. You know our numbers — we've barely got enough people to hold what we have, let alone project force."
That was the Vongola Family's chronic problem. Most of their members had come from the orphanage, and Primo refused to recruit anyone whose intentions weren't clean. Principles were expensive, and the price was a perpetual manpower shortage.
"It's fine. Just you and me — everyone else stays on our turf." Primo's voice went steel-hard. "Hell's Kitchen needs its own school."
He meant it. As someone who'd grown up without parents, without safety, without anyone giving a damn — Primo understood better than most what Ethan's school could mean for this neighborhood. If a place like that had existed back then, he thought, would things have turned out differently? Would he and his people be living normal lives right now — college degrees, regular jobs, the whole deal?
Maybe. Maybe not. But the kids coming up behind them deserved the chance to find out.
"Understood." G didn't argue. When Primo made a decision, G backed it — no questions, no hesitation. That was how it had always been.
Meanwhile, Ethan was sitting in his building's lobby without a care in the world, eating watermelon slices and shooting the breeze with his security guard — one John Wick.
He had no idea that every major gang in Hell's Kitchen was currently scheming about how to deal with him.
Not that it would've mattered. Even if he'd known, Ethan wouldn't have lost sleep over it. In a country this free, danger was a constant — Hell's Kitchen just had a higher concentration of it than most places.
If anything, Ethan was hoping they'd make a move. Without provocation, he had no clean excuse to go after them. The Mexican cartel in particular — a crew with absolutely zero moral floor — had been on his hit list for months.
Would the gangs collude against him? Ethan was betting on it.
Even when the power gap was obvious, people never willingly gave up what they had. Especially not gangs who strutted around like they were invincible. Men like that didn't acknowledge reality until reality cost them something they couldn't get back.
Ethan was clear-eyed about what this weekend's meeting really was. On the surface, it was a discussion about enrollment and logistics for the community academy. Underneath, it was a sorting exercise — identifying who could still be reasoned with and who was beyond saving.
Any gang leader who cared only about their own bottom line and not about Hell's Kitchen's future? In Ethan's book, that was a lost cause. The only one who could save a person like that was God.
And what Ethan could do was arrange the introduction.
"Need me at the meeting this weekend, Boss?" John Wick asked from beside him. He looked at Ethan — so much younger than himself — and marveled, not for the first time, at the weight this kid had chosen to carry. Willing to take on every gang in Hell's Kitchen just to build something better. It was genuinely admirable.
"Why — you got plans?" Ethan's face lit up with gossip-mode energy. "Wait. Do you have a date? John Wick has a date?"
John Wick: "..."
"Don't be shy! We're both guys here, I totally get it. Your wife's been gone a long time now. Look at Wade — he's out there shooting his shot with a new girl every night. I mean, they all turn him down, but at least he's trying."
Ethan couldn't help himself. The man walked around with that perpetual thousand-yard stare — someone had to give him a hard time.
John Wick shook his head with a rueful smile. "I've just been watching Deadpool Dog around the building lately. It made me want to get a dog again. Could be good company for him, too."
John Wick's history with dogs needed no explanation. Seeing Deadpool Dog padding around the lobby every day had stirred something — a familiar ache, and then an impulse.
"Fine," Ethan said, waving a watermelon rind. "Just — please don't get a female. Last thing I need is Deadpool Dog going full Casanova."
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