A1: The Don (GirlxGirl)

Chapter One

"You say you're a gangsta, that don't impress me none"

I traveled around the globe, been to many beautiful and exotic places with even more beautiful and exotic women, but the Santa Monica pier was one of my favorite places on earth. The atmosphere of the pier was unbeatable. The contact high that you got from surfers, the kids begging their parents to go on rides and young lovers displaying PDA on the pier somehow made a sweet concoction. It was a vacation from reality and I found myself there whenever I got too overwhelmed.

Being a huge member of a gang, most of my days were filled with gunshots, fighting, stress and drama. It wasn't like I wasn't used to it, but sometimes things got way too much and that's when I found myself on the pier. When I was on the pier, I felt like an average human being rather than one with a crazy, dangerous and sh-tty lifestyle.

I was a part of the De Palma Family. The gang was made by my pops. He reignited gang activity in America and raised awareness of Italian-Americans and Italian cultures when he did. Everyone wanted to be like us once the De Palma Family started popping. They wanted to talk like us, to walk like us, to cook like us and to have the same traditions we held valuable. Italians joined our gang and so did wannabes. As years went by, we naturally expanded, and our Family represented more than just the Italian culture.

Our gang began with strictly Italians but once it got going, we got more members from different communities and backgrounds. Blacks, Latinos, Asians and anybody with respect for the Family joined. Anyone who wanted to be somebody joined the Family and once you were in, you were committed for life.

There were small clusters of our gang all over the globe, operated by various of races. The point was no matter the color or ethnicity, if you shared the same values of the De Palma Family, you were in. Honor, loyalty, family, hard work and f-cking sh-t up were our values in short terms. I could read the whole f-cking five-hundred-page guide of the De Palma Family values and the history of the Family, but I doubt you want to hear all of that.

The point is that we ran the world. There were other gangs and we let them have their set limits and turfs, but if they stepped on our turf or interrupted our actions, they knew we'd make them extinct. Within our family, we had drug dealers, thieves, hitmen, hitwomen, our own military and our own investors. We had lawyers that pledged an oath to always get us out of trouble. We had doctors with small hospitals and clinics that we built that healed us from our injuries. We had escorts and hookers for slime balls that felt the need to pay for sex. We had everything.

Our system was so organized and tight knit that even though the police knew about us, they wouldn't lift a finger to stop us. They knew they couldn't take us down. Hell, the f-cking president couldn't even take us down. It was too complicated for anyone outside of the Family to wrap their heads around, plus, it's not like we were vicious savages. We never harmed innocent people, only other gangs who f-cked us over.

So, in conclusion, to be part of the family, you needed to have a work ethic for illegal sh-t and not be too sh-tty of a person. Of course, once people got in the Family they let the sh-t go to their head. They became power hungry, aggressive and off the rails. But I wasn't like that. I was always respected because I was the daughter of the man that started it all and everyone loved me, but I didn't let that go to my head.

You would think I would be the Don of California with so much acclaim and praise. But I was happy to be an active, tell-me-what-to-do-and-when-to-do-it member rather than someone with so much power. I had some enemies outside of the Family and being on top of the pyramid wasn't going to help my friend count.

Speaking of friends, alongside of me were my friends Leo and Lin. We grew up together from little kids in the Bronx to lesbian gangsters living in Santa Monica. My life has been like one of those gangster movies since the beginning.