My name is Feliciano Vargas and today is my 21st birthday.
Birthdays used to be the kind of thing I loved to celebrate. Parties, pretty ladies, good wine, pasta, cake...but this year it just makes me feel happy I'm another year closer to dying. Being in prison for the past year has changed me a little. I used to be all smiles and pasta for brains as my family said...I don't know whether it's because I grew up or because I'm just fucked up but...I see things a hell of a lot differently now I can tell you that much.
Prison is a pretty scary place. All my life I've been used to people not really liking me all that much but here it's very different...people don't just not like you because you're annoying or different...people just don't like you. It's hard to be friends with anyone here, it's been hard since I got here almost a year ago. No one is friendly, the food is disgusting...my family is gone. I really have nothing in here. The past year has changed me a lot but theres one person who keeps me sane...well saner I guess. I of course don't even get to see him... which sucks but then again where I am, everything sucks. That's why I'm writing...I figured I could just write about what got me in here. Anything to distract me from the bad food and the mean people. I've decided to write about why I'm here now. And why I'd give anything in the world to get out.

My story really begins 21 years ago when I was born. My mother lived just long enough to wrap me in a blanket and name me Feliciano before the blood loss got the better of her. She didn't give birth to me in a hospital, no, it wasn't safe there. So it was an alleyway for her. My father had done a good job of getting himself killed in what my Grandpa likes to call 'family business gone bad'. To this day I'm not really sure what happened to him for sure. All I know is I was raised by my Mom's Dad, Grandpa Romulus. Him and my older brother Lovino were the only blood relatives in my family. I won't cut any corners in telling you that we weren't exactly a normal family. We were what you would call a mafia...or maybe a syndicate. I didn't find out what we were doing was actually illegal until I was 17...I'd been doing odd jobs since I was a kid. Picking up cash, getting intel on the other 'families' of New York city. Anything I could get away with doing without my family letting me in on what we were actually doing. We didn't do anything too bad I don't think...well they never did. It was me who messed everything up and got myself thrown in this awful awful place...
The real reason I'm in here starts exactly 2 years ago on my 19th birthday. The whole family was in 'The Glass Tomato', That's the bar Grandpa owned. We were the only ones that really used it though. Especially for family events like birthdays. This was a pretty important one because I was now the legal drinking age for Buffalo...of course I had been drinking for years already but now I could do it legally.
Before I get into the story let me introduce you to my family.

Francis Bonnefoy.
We all call him Franny. He's older than me by a good 8 years or so. Whenever we're doing a job that involves some sort of persuasion or seduction, he's the man for the job. Grandpa picked him up off the streets when he was 10 years old. He managed to eat a good meal every night purely by batting his eyelashes and begging for it. There's a rumour that he was roped into child prostitution in order to find places to stay...but Franny doesn't like to talk about it so we don't. He's good at what he does when he's bothered enough to do it. And by bothered enough...I mean not sleeping with someone or drunk off his ass on wine.

Antonio Fernandez Carriedo.
We call him Toni. Except my brother, my brother calls him a bastard. A lot. Antonio is like me, he's not actually good for very much but he's loyal as hell. If Toni is ever taken by the police or another family...you could be sure as hell he wouldn't talk. He knows how to fight and he's a pretty good cook so he makes a good family member. Grandpa made him an addition to the family when Lovi came home from school with him one day saying he saw him getting beaten up by some Turkish guy, Sadik. Once Grandpa had heard how Toni managed to hold his own against one of the toughest guys he knew, he was in.

Lovino Vargas.
My brother. Toni has a serious crush on him and it's pretty obvious Lovi likes him too...but won't admit it. He mostly handles intel and does all the money laundering and accounting and all that. He's grandpa's right hand man and he's really good at handling things when they go south. He's been a bit distant and well...a little mean ever since mom died. He was 4 when that happened so I guess he must remember it a little...

Matthew Williams.
One of the twins. Matthew is good with tech stuff and hacking but he's even better at getting in and out of places totally unnoticed. We send him into places to hack into security systems or home computers and he gets out without arousing any suspicion. Grandpa took him and his twin brother in at 13 years old when he found out that Matt had been hacking into his orphanages computer system for years making sure him and his brother wouldn't get separated in adoption. He even hacked into the system and changed his own last name on his birth certificate to Williams, because he didn't like being compared to his brother.

Alfred F Jones.
Matthew's twin. No one knows what the F stands for. We all assume he just added it in there to make his name sound cooler or something. Alfred is big on operations. He's only happy if he's right up front where the action is, being the hero as he always puts it. Al is in charge of all weapons and anything...violent. He's the muscle. He was picked up out of the orphanage the same time as his brother but he probably would have gotten picked up by Grandpa anyways. He was getting into a new fight every week at school. The thing was...the fights he got in were with all of the snotty rich kids. He'd beat them up, take their money and give it to the poor. Of course it wasn't actually the right thing to do...but Grandpa admired his sense of heroism.

As for me? I was always working as a diversion. I honestly was never too good at any of the serious stuff so they kept me in the dark about most things. But whenever we were being questioned by the police or we needed a sort of...undercover agent...I was the guy. I always freaked out a little under pressure but the thing was, I really genuinely liked making new friends so no one ever suspected I was up to something when I tried to get to know them.

So that's the family. We did good for ourselves. We weren't the kind of mafia you're used to seeing on TV...we weren't drug king pins or have the economy by the balls or something like that. We were just a nice family that thought everyone should only have what they deserve. We were like...modern day Robin Hoods or something. We just believed that everyone should only have what they work for, what they deserve. If you're a horrible person and have everything you want. We make sure you're a horrible person with nothing at all. If you're a kind person with absolutely nothing to your name, we make sure you receive a hefty check in the mail. How did Grandpa get started in all this? That's a long story...then again I got plenty of time right? It has to do with Grandpa's arch enemy and his Family. Around Manhattan we were known as the Roman Family...and they were known as the Germanian Family. Everyone who knew anything about our 2 families knew we hated each other. Now that I think about it...they were just like us. We had no real reason to fight but we were raised on hatred towards them...so hate them we did. Now let me introduce you to what we knew about the Germania family as of 2012, my 19th birthday:

Aldrich Beilschmidt.
He's the boss. Him and Grandpa have known each other since they were young so he probably knows a lot more about him than we do but just won't say. Grandpa doesn't like talking about his past with this guy so we don't know too much about him other than he's powerful. Insanely powerful.

Gilbert Beilschmidt.
Aldrich's first grandson. Gilbert is the diversion guy. He's a big fan of toying with people in the most obvious and flashy ways possible. Explosions, bright lighting, chases in fancy cars, gold plated guns, high roller outfits. Gilbert was a very centre stage, go big go home kind of person. He wasn't too hard to figure out although once you figure him out, he's hard to stop. We know his younger brother is Ludwig and they were raised by Aldrich but thats about it.

Honda Kiku.
The hacker. As soon as Matthew manages to hack into something he manages to override it. He's quiet just like Matthew but incredibly socially awkward, he can't lie to save his life and we use that to our advantage. He mostly stays in the shadows and away from the action so it's hard to get a good read on him. We know he's loyal to his grave though and cares a hell of a lot about the people that took him in.

Ivan Braginski.
Utterly terrifying. He could kill a man in his sleep and not give a second thought about it. He's their assassin. We know next to nothing about this guy other than he has a sister and last time someone touched her...he killed them. So we know not to fuck with his sister.

Arthur Kirkland.
Planner. He knows what he's doing at all times and he's damned good at it. He's in charge of all money, schemes, accounts, embezzling and laundering. He avoids getting in any of the action but he makes up for it with sheer skills in behind the scenes. He keeps all accounts clean with no traces of foul play whatsoever. We know he was in the british navy for most of his life and managed to pull off a mutiny. How he managed to steal an entire naval ship and rob the navy blind without even getting caught...we have no idea. But we know that if we ever catch the Germania family for something...it won't be anything to do with accounting.

Elizaveta Héderváry.
We were never too sure specifically what her role was because she seemed to do it all. An all around tactical genius, mercenary, hacker, seductress, expert with leverage and diversion. Not to mention also a housewife. She has a husband and cushy apartment overlooking central park, all totally legitimate too. Her husband is a composer so they're pretty well off. Meaning, she works for Aldrich purely because she likes to. Do not mess with her.

Ludwig Beilschmidt.
Natural leader. Mainly in charge of artillery and attacks. Gilbert's brother and Aldrich's youngest grandson. Despite being the younger one, he's in line to take over the family business purely because Gilbert didn't want to. We probably know the most about Ludwig because he's the face of the family. Aldrich sends him to do his dirty work. And he's damn good at it.

So as you can see, we knew close to goddamned nothing about the Germania family... The only thing I know for sure now is Ludwig Beilschmidt is where it all went wrong. I lost everything, ended up in prison and had to throw away everything I was...all because I decided to make myself part of a fucking Romeo and Juliet story.

My name is Feliciano Vargas. Today I am 21 years old and I'm going to tell you the story of how I fell in love with Ludwig Beilschmidt and ended up in prison.

My note to you:
New story holy crap! I know at this point in time my PruCan fic 'Your Stars' isn't finished yet but I thought I would post this just to see if it got a good reaction. We're looking at a bit of a modern day New York mafia, Romeo and Juliet kinda story here.
Oh yes and Aldrich is in fact Germania, he doesn't have a canon human name so I'm just using one of the common fan-made ones.
I currently only have this and one other chapter for this story written so I'm terribly sorry if my updates are slow. This story could potentially get pretty complicated so I don't want to leave anything out or rush it too much. I will try my very very hardest to have at least one chapter out per week.
As for the length of this story...I'm going to try to keep it around 10-15 chapters...ish. But we'll see.
Anyways, if you like the sound of it so far please let me know so I know whether or not to keep the updates flowing!
Thanks so much for reading you guys!
*shameless self promotion* Also if you're a PruCan fan, please check out my other in progress fic titled 'Your Star'
Au Revoir mes chéries!