Chapter 1

The moon shone brightly in the sky, illuminating the streets of New York. There weren't very many clouds in the sky.

On the corner of an almost constantly busy road, there was a club. It wasn't a very large club. In all honesty, it was averagely sized at best. It was owned by two brothers, Feliciano and Lovino Vargas, and they ran it with all of the pride in the world.

Inside of the club, the two boys began preparations for their venue to open. The brothers both knew that soon after the doors opened for the night, the twins would vanish, heading to the basement to prepare for something else. Something that they had to keep a secret.

Lovino was mumbling something to himself, a few things a bit louder than the others. Specifically, "Acciai" and "Get rid of them." He sounded as if he was on the phone with someone, which Feliciano knew wasn't true, because nobody talked to Lovino willingly.

Nobody.

"Fratello," Feliciano mumbled, carefully rubbing a glass with a washcloth. "Do you think anything bad is going to happen soon?" A small frown was placed upon the boy's lips.

"Are you kidding me?" Lovino replied, snapping from his assumed trance and glaring at his younger brother with an annoyed expression. "I've been running this stupid thing for the past ten years, and you're still doubting me?" His hazel eyes seemed to glow in the dimly lit building, anger radiating from them.

"No, it's not that!" Feliciano's voice began to raise in both pitch and volume. "It's just... I've got this feeling in my stomach... And do you remember when Vash told us he wanted to bring his sister in?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, he mentioned that she was younger... Do you think she's going to work with the other kids?" The taller of the two placed the clean glass back on the shelf, next to the other glasses. He reached for another and let out a small sigh. "Or do you think he wants her to work with the soldiers?"

Lovino's glare faded slightly, his sneer falling. "Oh. I don't know... It all depends on her skill. She has to be inducted first, anyways." He rested his elbows against the granite counter, sighing and staring at seemingly nothing. "If she's okay during the induction and everything works out okay, we'll assign Vash to be her Godfather, and he can-"

An alarm went off on the taller boy's phone, and he reached into his back pocket, letting out a breathy sigh.

"Two A.M.," he said softly, turning the alarm off and picking his elbows up off of the table. He slid on a dark blazer, hiding his previously exposed arms. "Get ready to head on down."

"Right!" the taller brunette chirped, a newfound tone of joy in his voice. He quickly finished scrubbing the glass and placed it next to the last one he cleaned, rushing to take off his apron and slide his own blazer over the white t-shirt he was currently wearing.

"I'll be waiting outside! I promise I'll be careful!" He turned and rushed off, giggling softly as his shorter brother snorted.

– – –

After everyone had arrived and was seated in the room below the club, Lovino intertwined his fingers and rested his mouth against his hands. The bass beat of the music playing thrummed throughout the basement room, shaking the chairs and desk ever so slightly.

In the middle of the room was a long, rectangular, mahogany table, with around twenty cushioned chairs surrounding it.

A single lightblub was glowing, its low-hanging light filling the room. The way that the shadows looked on everyone's face seemed to add an air of mystery to the entire scene.

Conversations had filled the room, which, as previously described, was relatively small. The sound reverberated around the room, thus making it louder. To be honest, it was a bit headache-inducing.

It wasn't hard to believe that every meeting was like this. Lovino, the boss of the Vargas family, an infamous gang in New York, and his brother Feliciano, the underboss, would wait for the rest of the family to arrive. After they did, greetings would be exchanged, and everything would really begin.

Lovino cast his gaze around the room, studying everybody closely. There was his brother, whom he loved dearly, but was bothered by constantly. The younger Vargas brother was taller than the older one by a few centimeters, with short, slightly wavy brown hair, and brown eyes to match. A strange piece of curled hair was protruding from his hair, as always, and his skin was lightly tanned.

Lovino had his own curl, as well. He was rather tan, too, which was no surprise. He had been raised in Italy, as was all of his family.

Then there was the concigliere, Kiku Honda. He was a short, quiet man, who was named the concigliere because of what seemed to be his lack of empathy.

In all honesty, he was very good at sensing how everybody was feeling, but he chose not to acknowledge it when it came to making descisions. He had neatly trimmed, straight, black hair, with deep, dull, brown eyes. He was a man of few expression, and mostly kept to himself.

The boss snapped from his trance and realized that the sound had increased tenfold.

"Everybody," the Italian said, his voice a bit louder than the current noise, but still ignored. A few moments passed, and the man's eyes narrowed angrily. "Hey! You guys!" Nothing. He stood up and slammed his palms against the table. "Everybody, shut the hell up!"

Silence. Finally.

"Alright. Now that everybody's here, or so I believe, I'm going to begin this meeting of the Vargas family. Where were we last time, Kiku?" The man sat down and rested an elbow against the table that filled most of the room.

The short man tensed when he heard his name. "Right, um," he mumbled, pulling a file folder from a drawer in the table, and opening it. "I believe we were discussing the matters of Vash's sister's induction, right?" Several gazes were cast in the direction of the leader of the gang.

"Ah. Right. Thank you," he sighed. "Vash, you said her name was... Lisa?"
The aforementioned soldier glared at the Italian, shaking his head. "Her name is Elise," he spat, his green- almost turquoise in the light- eyes narrowed. "I believe she will fit in fine, and considering the fact that we already have some women here, it won't be much different."

He cast his gaze in the direction of two other soldiers, a relatively tall woman with long, curly brown hair, pinned back with a flower hairclip and bright green eyes, and a shorter woman with short blonde hair, held back in a headband.

"She knows how to handle herself in several situations and I guarantee she'll be able to get in if you give her a chance."

"I'll consider it. What else had we discussed last meeting, Kiku?" Lovino inquired, glancing at the concigliere.

"Um..." The Japanese man shuffled through papers, stopping and nodding slightly. "Peter almost got caught with illegal substances by his parents a few days ago." The attention shifted in the room, glances turning towards the young blonde boy.

"Hey!" he cried, narrowing his rather thick eyebrows. "It's not my fault that my parents are nosy assholes sometimes!" He tensed when he felt two... different pairs of eyes on him. "O-Oh... Uh... I meant..."

"Watch your mouth, kid," a taller man, seated next to Peter and glaring intensely at the younger boy, growled, brushing a strand of wavy blonde hair out of his face. He closed his mouth once more, repositioning the hairclip on the opposite side of his head and turning to Lovino.

The owner of the other pair of eyes that had locked onto the British boy nodded slowly, opening his mouth to speak. "Yeah, Peter. Y'know Lukas and I can just-" He was silenced by Lukas' hand pressed firmly against his mouth.

"Shut up."

"You better be more fucking careful," the boss spat, clearing his throat. "Mess up like that in the real world, and you could get yourself killed." He smirked slightly when he saw the boy shudder. "Yep. Don't act so surprised, kiddo."

A long silence signaled Kiku to shuffle through more papers in the folder, and he tensed when he stopped again. "The... Acciai family has been... More active recently." The tension began to build in the room.

"Right... Okay... Well, as long as none of us are killed or kidnapped or anything, it should be fine, si?" Feliciano spoke up, glancing around the room hopefully. "I mean, we can defend ourselves! We're the strongest family in all of New York, for Christ's sake!"

Several people nodded and began to glance around the room, and a few people began to mumble things to one another.

"Right. If anything happens, it happens. And we can't do anything about it in the end," Lovino said, his tone a bit less firm than before.

"But... You said something about getting rid of them," Feliciano replied. "What was that about?"

The shorter italian tensed. "Nothing. It's none of your business," he spat, his tone suddenly more defensive than before.

The brunette woman, seated quietly along one of the long stretches of the table, tilted her head to the side.

"Lovi?" she asked, frowning slightly. "Are you okay? Do you need something to drink?" She rose from her chair, only to be seated once more at the response given.

"I'm fine, Elizabeta," Lovino replied, running a hand through his hair. "Just... A bit stressed."

Another person chimed in. He was seated in between Kiku and Vash, and was a bit taller than both of them.

"You can take some time off to rest, you know," he mumbled, his icy eyes laced with concern. "I'm sure Feliciano can handle this for you."

Hostility was now visible in the boss' expression and tone. "Really?" he chided, leaning forwards. "Do you really think that my airhead little brother can take care of this when I'm not here to help him? Or are you just saying that because you're his boyfriend?"

"I-I-" The blonde's eyes widened in shock.

"That's what I thought, you stupid German bastard... I don't even know what Feli sees in you, Ludwig." He spun the chair around, facing away from the table.

A tense silence filled the room, and several glances were exchanged.

The three capos, Francis, a Frenchman that would make a romantic metaphor out of a sack of garbage if you asked him to, Gilbert, a German with silver hair and strange red eyes that would beat the living shit out of anyone that messed with his family but couldn't kill a fly if he was forced to, and Antonio, a Spaniard that would wear a smile while executing a stranger, all exchanged concerned looks. One of them spoke up.

"Lovi," Antonio said, his tone tremblng slightly, "you know that we shouldn't try and get rid of the other families... They'd probably take us out before we got a chance to introduce ourselves to them. Especially the Acciai family..." He glanced at the table, and paused for a while.

When he had looked up, Lovino was gone, and the last thing he heard from him was the sound of a door slamming.

A/N: Ok, hello! This is my first fanfiction, so please excuse any crummy writing. I'm having my wonderful editor, Kadin, go over the chapters for me and they're helping me edit everything before it goes up. Kudos to them. A second thing; if you see me messing up with any language stuff in the future, please please tell me, and I can try and fix it! And, uh, school's going on right now, so a bit of a delay in between chapters should probably be expected, but I'm going to try and get the next chapters up ASAP!

Oh, P.S., there will definitely be a lot more characters coming in in the future. uwu;;

Thank you all so much for reading! xo Alec