[Blackhand Moretti sits around a table, flanked in conference with Tony Knuckles and Frankie Fingers.]

[It’s tense.]

Blackhand Moretti: “You’s had one fuckin’ objective; make ‘im pay up. Now that mook is runnin’ around thinkin’ he got one over on us.”

[Both men lower their heads shamefully.]

Blackhand Moretti: “Last week was a bad week for I.C.E, but things can only get better.”

[~BUZZ.]

[Moretti looks down at his phone. Match notification: COMETA IV.]

[He smiles.]

Blackhand Moretti: “Ya know, when I was a boy, I was obsessed with space. I used ta sit on the stoop lookin’ up at the sky in awe. One day, pop got me a telescope. Stole it off some mook in the park.

I spent hours in the black, searchin’. I’d do nothin’ but look up. One day, after months of searchin’ the sky for somethin’ of note, pop sat me down and tol’ me life was about to change.”

[Sadness engulfs him.]

Blackhand Moretti: “He tol’ me that I had a business to run one day and that whilst havin’ my head in the black might be what I wanna do, it can’t be what I gotta do. He tol’ me that I had to stop looking up. The answers weren’t in the sky and beyond. They were down here on the ground, in the blood felt between you’s fingers.

Cause money makes the world go round, Cometa. Paper. Not the stars. Not space. Not dreams. Whilst you were sat down and tol’ that you had a legacy to uphold that put your head in the stars, I was tol’ that to take my head outta them.”

[Moretti shakes his head.]

Blackhand Moretti: “I wasn’t allowed to be dazzled by the stars. I didn’t have that luxury. I got taken from the stoop lookin’ up and put into the back of a Buick with a baseball bat and a job. Make em’ pay, figlio. Make em pay. When you were thinkin’ about a legacy of stars, I was creatin’ a legacy of violence.

When you were a shootin’ star, blinding people in the ring, I was shootin’ stars of streets that owed my family a debt.”

[He sighs.]

Blackhand Moretti: “See, I’ve been a made man for a long time, Cometa. We both have, in our own rights. The world has taken us in two different directions. You went up to the stars and I went down, in fuckin’ the dirt. I had to put down the telescope and my dreams of space to join the real world.

Now it’s your turn.”

[Moretti reaches into his waistband and pulls out a pistol, placing it on the table, resting his hand there.]

Blackhand Moretti: “At Slam, you’re in for a rude awakening, cazzo.”

[He pauses.]

Blackhand Moretti: “Cause I’m gonna shoot on a star for luck.”

[Moretti turns to face Fingers and then Knuckles.]

Blackhand Moretti: “The next time you boys fail me, Cometa won’t be the only thing I shoot on for luck.”

Together: “Yes boss.”