Though most of my business was conducted long after the sun made its descent for the day, I found it necessary for my health to get to sleep as soon as I could and wake at a reasonable hour. Having spent most of my teenage years as a nocturnal neophyte in organized crime, I knew I had the capacity to be a real prick when I didn’t get enough rest. It hadn’t taken me long to figure out that a cantankerous disposition wasn’t acceptable for those who held a lowly position in the outfit. When my bosses were brash, it garnered them respect, but when the underlings were insolent, it earned us scars—like the seven-year-old remnant of a knife slash above my eyebrow. It had been Vlad’s way of reminding me that a boy’s skeptical expression wasn’t appreciated while in the presence of men.

Though my indoctrination into Chicago’s Russian mafia wasn’t without its challenges, the licentious life of a mobster became markedly easier for me with time. Years after joining up, things continued to get better by the day, and it wasn’t improving only for me. With Al Capone locked up in a Philadelphia prison since May, business was booming for everyone who worked the underbelly, except Capone’s boys. While they were still going strong, they weren’t expanding, and the streets were quieter thanks to the hit to their bravado.

Wiping the sleep from my eyes, I tried to decipher the words on the radio as it hummed just beyond my bedroom door. It was odd for Igor to be listening to anything but jazz with his breakfast, so strange in fact, that I pulled on my sweater and hurried to the kitchen to see what was going on.

“The stock market’s still crashing,” my brother told me as I honed in on the news report on WLS.

“Oh, that,” I said, uninterested in the development. The market had been suffering for the last few days, and it was all anyone seemed to want to talk about. Whether it was the clandestine nature of my business or a lack of understanding of by-the-book economics, there was something that made me believe I wouldn’t be affected. Making my way to the pantry, I grabbed the Rice Krispies and poured myself a bowl. “I can’t get over how much I love this stuff.”

“How much you love the cereal?” Igor questioned, regarding me incredulously. “Is that what you can’t get over?”

I nodded, knowing the gesture would aggravate him more.

“They’re saying the Dow could be down as much as twenty-five percent by the end of the day. People are losing their shit, collapsing on the trading floor,” he continued, ever the alarmist.

“Did someone go in there with an automatic and open fire?”

“They’re emotionally distraught,” Igor chided, “the bottom’s about to fall out, Vik. Things will be bad.”