The Salvinelli's were least helpful toward settling Johnny into the family. It was sheer luck he had gotten his apartment anyway—the previous inhabitant, Antonio Salvinelli's nephew Gino, had been killed in an awfully suspicious scuffle not long before Johnny entered their apartment complex. The women fed him, as they were accustomed to doing so for everyone else, but the men were harder to impress or, even, to get respect from. Though they accepted Johnny's kinship, there seemed to be an ever-present elephant in the room whenever they were around, which no one could quite put their finger on.

Nevertheless, Johnny did not have much to complain about. After all, he didn't exactly have a luxurious, or even blessed, childhood. So, the tattered, skimpy curtains allowing too much wind breezing into the cramped, narrow apartment were not bad in Johnny's eyes. Indeed, the furniture was ripped here and there, the walls so paper thin he could hear Antonio Salvinelli insulting America every night to his wife Maria, but Johnny held his tongue. This was his family.

His duty thus far had come in different shapes and sizes—some tasks so small as picking up groceries, while others carried the magnitude of his current job. As he sucked down his umpteenth cigarette that afternoon, Johnny could not help but fear doubt in his plans, or lack thereof. He hadn't been in this "line of work" before, save for the amateur strategizing of the newsie realm. The undertaking, his obligation, was rather demanding—the constant emptying of his ashtray gave this away.

The last meeting he had with his second uncle Antonio, who actually felt more like a boss, was a month ago, during which his status-check response in regards toward Brooklyn was, "workin' on it." In all honesty, his progress was slow and frankly uneventful as far as actions were concerned. Johnny, being in subordination still, did not call for a meeting and so hoped to rely on dinner each evening to converse with Antonio Salvinelli; however, it only took one supper to remind him not to do it again:

"No busi-ness at the table!" Maria had scolded with a strong Italian tongue and an adamant smack to his head, so adamant, in fact, his hat fell off.

"No hats at the table," Antonio had reprimanded with another hit to Johnny's skull. "Didn't your mamá teach you anythin'?"

Before Johnny's silence could make enough of an impact, Maria had shouted from the kitchen, "Don't you remember his mamá, Antonio? Ah!"

Presently, recalling this memory sparked a thought in Johnny's scheming mind. He wrote it down vigorously on his notepad and stared at it. The words been swimming around in his head for quite a while; it was only a matter of time before he brought it to the surface.

He could feel himself definitely on to something, though he couldn't reach it just yet. Instead, Johnny stood up from his flat excuse for a mattress. He felt his legs stretch for the first time in hours and staggered over to the window. He took his flake-filled ashtray and tossed the contents into the wind.

He looked across the busied streets below him and scanned over the buildings. It brought him back to the speech Antonio gave him almost every time they had a meeting:

"'This city destroyed their spirits," he had memorized, "'I ain't allowin' that to escape my mind.'"

Johnny was back at his notepad. He scribbled these words underneath his previous thought. It was evident, as he repeated everything on the notepad out loud, that Johnny's motivation was getting clearer.

First and foremost, his obligation belonged to his family.

"'Begin by takin' someone out that's got some influence in Brooklyn,'" Johnny recalled his uncle's words, "'Don't have to be big, I need you ta test the waters a lil' bit, know what I'm sayin'? We got more people in Brooklyn so it's not all on yer shoulders. No way I'm lettin' ya mess up somethin' this important…'"

But the other motivation had been tucked away in his mind, only pondered about on afternoons such as this. But he had written it down now! There it was, in writing, lying before him! It was clear what else was driving him now.

Árdanach Thirteen.

It gave him goosebumps. His mind and imagination ran away from him and it was as if someone else had taken hold of his pen. He couldn't stop. The emotion flowed so easily onto the paper in plain sight. As he poured his soul and morphed it into a plan, a sharp breeze picked up outside his window. The papers, his precious papers, caught the wind and floated about the room. Johnny sprang up and presently chased them as if life, his precious life, had depended on them.