Los Angles. The City of Angles. Due to popular belief, this city is not filled with angles like everyone thinks. Quite the opposite is the case. Gangs have had a foothold in this city since before the 1920's. Sure back then it was more of a civil war of sorts dealing with protesters who wanted a better life and demanded to be treated equally. While the people who lost their lives to those early protests had been few, it set the city on a path that would only increase those deaths in the coming years.

The mob was the first to see the potential of Los Angles. They had set up shop in the late 40's and as time went by they started to branch out into the middle-class neighborhoods. They peddled everything from women to the early introduction of the drug trade.

The sixties were a turbulent time for LA. The Watts Riots had set the stage for relations between the citizens of LA and the police to only become more stained. All in all, LA was starting to be sectioned off and claimed by various gangs as their own territory. As with the need for newer technology became dominant, so did the creation of a newer different type of drug. A designer drug if you will. Easily obtained and relatively inexpensive. Crack cocaine was now quickly overtaking the population of the poor and the rich neither was spared. South central LA had once been a prosperous area. Since the influx of the Mexican and South American immigrants into the area had been massive, they settled for taking the most basic jobs, thus lowering the rate of pay they received. South central LA was now seeing a drop in employment and a rise in major crimes.

In the 80's LA saw an increase in gangs that popped up out of thin air. The Crips and the Bloods were the two major gangs at war with each other at the time. Most of the unknown gangs were members who wanted a bigger piece of the drug trade knowing that it was easy to be had if they started their own gangs. Drugs were dealt with little prosecution from the law. and the ones that were caught and tried usually spent only a short time incarcerated. It was as if they could care less about being caught selling what they offered. Doing time to them was part of the business. If they were confronted by a member of a rival gang, all either a Crip or Blood member had to do to make his point known was to show his handgun and threaten that he was not afraid to use it. The same went for the police. They were fearless.

When he was growing up he like any other young boy wanted to be so many things. Cowboy, Fireman, Astronaut, Fighter Pilot the list was endless. As he grew into adolescence he realized that where he lived those dreams were not to become a reality. He never lost hope, though. That was until his foster mother and father were brutally murdered when he was 13. He lived with them in Hawthorne. A part of South Central LA. A decent neighborhood, but ever since the gangs had moved in and taken the area as their own, life had changed. He still went to high school which was about 3 blocks from where he lived. He hated the walk. He was always approached by a gang member on the way to school or on the way back home asking or rather persuading him to become one of them. At first, he brushed them off and his resistance to their requests usually ended up with him arriving at school with more than the threat. He'd been given a reminder that he was to join or else. His first beat down resulted in a busted lip and a broken nose. Mild for the type of gang he was dealing with. Time went on and the beatings had become more intense. Usually two or three a week. He had just started to recuperate from the first beating and they would be at it again a day later. Since he was now alone, Child Protective Services had stepped in when the school's principal had informed them about the condition he arrived in for the school day. At first, they thought that he was being abused by his foster parents. He would in no way tell them that they were killed because of the gangs that infested his neighborhood it would automatically get him back in the system to be placed with another set of foster parents. The fact that CPS had not picked up on his foster parents being murdered was in his favor. He could say that the system had lost track of him and then he fell through the cracks in that system. And he liked that he did. He would be 14 soon and he had the street smarts to survive in his element.

He had the resources to get by with the cash that his foster parents had hidden. He knew where they had placed most of it around the house probably to protect either him from knowing its location or to keep it safe from the criminal element. Either way, the cash he would not last forever. He had enough to keep the lights on and bills paid for about six months at best. He was resourceful for a kid. Being raised in south central had taught you that. The beatings had continued even with changing his route to school. They were determined to get him into their gang. Knowing that if he did join he'd never leave alive. He was able to find a job through a program that the school had sponsored. He worked for just above the minimum wage. He was able to keep living at the house on West 129th street in Hawthorne. He would not be able to go to college after he graduated next year, but that was okay. He had ambitions and after he left high school he would put his plan into effect. Ambitions that would make him very, very wealthy. The gangs had slowed their attacks in recent years after he had the balls to fight back one afternoon while walking home from school.

"Gringo, won't you ever learn? You'll eventually become one of us." The first gang member told him.

"Yeah, come on there's no need for you to get beat up every other day." Said the other gang member as he came down with a solid right hook to his face.

He looked through his now swelling right eye at his attackers and told himself that enough was enough. He landed a roundhouse kick to the second gang members head knocking him backward and falling on his back, knocking the air from his lungs. As he tried to regain his own breath, he faced the first gang member and struck a jab to his throat almost crushing his windpipe. As he bent over trying to breathe again, he raised his knee to his head. Caught unaware by this sequence of moves the gang member lost consciousness immediately. He walked away and headed home. He had had enough. Three years now and you think they'd get the message. He was going to make it out of this place alive.

Graduation day for him was a dismal affair. He had no one sitting in the swarm of parents that he could call his own. Of all the homes he had been bounced around to when he was younger, the Grabowski's were by far his favorites. It's a shame that they were killed after seeing something they shouldn't have. After walking up and receiving his diploma, he shook the principal's hand and then shook the hand of their special guest of honor the Mayor of Los Angles James Hahn. When he walked the steps down from the stage he was done. Nothing would stop him now from reaching his goals.

For all the hell he went through avoiding the gangs in the earlier part of his life he would never question the path his life had taken when he graduated high school. He was an adviser of sorts. And now that he had built something so profitable that he was placed in a position of power. He held all the cards and for the most part, no law enforcement agency had connected him to any of it. He had created a network of guns for hire. That was his main specialty. Since that had paid him so well he branched out in finding the impossible items that people wanted him to acquire. This ranged from high explosives to priceless works of art and other hard to get items. Of course, the client had paid him handsomely for his efforts, only further increasing his wealth.

This is why he could not pass up the request from one of his clients to obtain a certain type of ammunition. At first, he did not believe the request. There was no way that a company had developed a dissolvable, traceless kind of bullet. That was until he did a lot of research on the topic. What he found amazed him to no end. He would get this type of ammunition and in the process, reward himself with some of it for his personal use. The applications were unlimited. He pulled off the first theft with ease. Lax security and a quick getaway made it possible for him to abscond with 7 cases of 9-millimeter rounds and 3 cases of .40 caliber rounds. Seeing each case of 50 rounds sold to the highest bidder he noticed that the product was now in high demand. So, he decided to return back to the company that made them he did so with the intention and planning that after the first theft they would strengthen their security.

He was almost home free until he was spotted by a woman as he left. Not wanting to give chase due to his recently acquired reward he quickly stored the ammunition in the back of the stolen van for later retrieval. He searched for this woman and since she only had a short head start on him it was easy to find out where she went and who she was. Knowing where she lived it was now time to eliminate one Violet Young. He would use the newly acquired dissolvable bullets so no trace of her death could be tied to him. No, Russell Ganz was no fool. He'd do everything in his power to protect his empire, including murder.

A/N: This story will not be a story that I will be able to post a chapter for every Sunday, but I will try. I do apologize in advance. With three open fics and a full-time job sometimes it's hard to post on time. If this story is something you want to read more of then please send me a PM or leave a review. Thanks for reading what I post here!

A/N:2 The summary is not really the best way to describe this story, I really am that bad at writing them! But this should be an interesting tale to tell. So come on in sit a while and read.

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