Page 85 of The Enforcer’s Revenge (Untamed Hearts #4)

Glock —One of the most popular gun brands in law enforcement.

Also extremely popular with criminals. Why?

It doesn’t have a typical safety. You can fire quickly and efficiently in an emergency situation.

Of course, gangsters like to conceal this weapon in their jeans, and without a safety, well, for obvious reasons, I’m not recommending that.

I like Glocks, but I don’t stick them in my jeans. The Glocks I reserve for a holster.

Goodfellas —Another term for made men. (Note, made men are protected in the underworld. Even if they deserve to get whacked, killing or even punching one of them is bad for your health unless the punishment was approved by the administration.)

Hit —A contract killing.

Ice —Kill. (Also street slang for crystal meth, a drug that makes cocaine look like baby aspirin.

Meth wrecks you. Quickly. Anyone with a shred of vanity wouldn’t touch ice.

You don’t see too many wiseguys on meth.

Cocaine, we’ll snort like a motherfucker.

But ice, not so much. We don’t even deal it, to be honest. We have limits. Ice is one of those limits.)

Made —Being formally inducted into the mafia through a ceremony.

You’re told the history. (Why do you think this dictionary is so fucking long?

We have a thing about our history.) You’re told the rules.

(Which takes a while, as you can see.) You’re told what happens if you break the rules.

(Death, in varying horrific ways, depending on the infraction.) Then you’re a man of honor, a wiseguy, a goodfella, more often than not like your father before you, and one day, if our lady is kind, you’ll have a bunch of mafiosi sons to share the tradition with.

(Note, or if you’re my father, you have one daughter, and a couple of bastard sons who are good enough for no other reason than one is pretty smart and the other makes a fantastic motivational tool.)

Madonn’ —Short for Madonna, or Madonna mia. The Blessed Mother. It expresses surprise in a slightly blasphemous way, something similar to holy shit. (Note, like others in this section, while technically Italian, it’s become New York slang enough that I moved it down.)

Make your bones —In order to become a made man, you have to make your bones.

What is it, you ask? You have to carry out a contract killing.

This cannot be a personal vendetta. It can’t be the asshole who screwed over your friend.

This has to be done exclusively for the organization.

Meaning you have to kill, in cold blood, someone you don’t know who had the misfortune of making enough bad life choices that the mafia put out a hit on them.

Don’t get me wrong, whoever you have to kill to make your bones was probably gonna die anyway, but if the Borgata has someone up for being made, they take the job away from the enforcer and give it to the potential inductee.

For a lot of made men, this is a grim part of being made.

Not all mafia are killers, but this is insurance for the organization, and it’s currently an unbendable rule.

It used to be, back in the day (like the early ’80s), you could become a made man without it.

If you were a big earner like Nova, that’d be enough, but after the Donnie Brasco trials, it became an absolute must. Why?

’Cause undercover FBI agents aren’t going to go contract kill someone to get into our organization.

They just aren’t. So, yeah, after it’s done, made men love to announce when they did it.

“Yo, Tony, shut the fuck up. I made my bones back when Reagan was president.” Honestly, I usually want to punch motherfuckers when they do that shit.

I never had to make my bones. I was contract killing for the Borgata long before I got made. Lucky me.

Mattresses —Going to the mattresses. Hitting the mattresses.

It means preparing for mafia war. It is still a literal term too.

When a war goes down, mattresses are involved.

Soldiers sleeping on them, stuck in safe houses as they wait for orders.

The administration and their families are also taken to safe houses, cooped up together, sleeping on the floor, and forsaking any other internal bullshit that is going on in order to protect what matters.

All those mattresses in the apartment over the garage, that’s what they were waiting for.

The next big war. Which showed up, by the way, but that’s for another book.

Muscle —Underworld thugs. (Note, yes, I am considered muscle to the Borgata. I like to think I’m top-shelf muscle, but really, muscle is muscle. Do you really care if it’s top-shelf muscle kicking your face in?)

Omertà —Omertà is more than a code of silence.

It’s an attitude. It revolves around strict noncooperation with law enforcement and protecting the secrecy of the organization.

Once you take the Omertá oath, you turn your back on the idea of any help outside the organization.

Whatever problem you have has to be handled inside Cosa Nostra.

You’re a citizen of Cosa Nostra and answer only to their laws.

Forever. Endgame. (Do I believe in the oath?

I fucking took it. Of course, I believe in it.

I don’t love the establishment, but fuck the government.

Motherfuckers hound my brother every step he takes.

I’d rot in federal forever before I’d flip on the Borgata.)

On the pad —An officer of the law enforcement who is being paid to ignore certain criminal activity or provide valuable information.

Oobatz —Crazy. (Note, this is another one of those Italian words that was latched on to by New York Italians. I mean, can’t really give anyone shit about it. I use it as much as the next wiseguy.)

Oxy —Oxycodone. Also known as Percocet. A prime prescription painkiller, much better than Vicodin with a high street value.

Long term use of oxy will fuck you up. After a while, you’ll need them to feel normal, so you’ll end up taking more for the high until you’re literally swallowing fistfuls of pills.

Withdrawal is a motherfucker, though I don’t think I ever fully crashed off oxy.

I moved on to blow, because oxy is a hardcore gateway drug.

I have crashed off blow and though I wouldn’t say it was the hardest thing I’ve done in my life, I’d put it in the highly unpleasant category.

Considering the shit I’ve gone through, chances are, unless you know what it’s like to be chained in a basement for three days with no water and a bullet in your thigh—you should skip the oxy habit and the blow. My unpleasant is your living nightmare.

Poppers —Amyl nitrate. Legal in most countries, though usually marketed differently from their intended use.

Poppers are favored by gay men because they relax your body for a short time to make anal sex easier and more comfortable.

Girls in the underground sex market use them too.

Poppers also give you a brief head rush, which, when mixed with ecstasy, can make the high more intense for about thirty seconds, but it feels like longer.

Not recommended. Nova was fuck crazy to mix them.

At twenty-four, I wouldn’t have let him do it.

I’d lay him out first, but I wasn’t exactly clearheaded at that point in my life either.

Rolling —Rolling is the term used for the high off ecstasy.

Everyone is always waiting for the roll.

Planning for the roll. Ecstasy users are very serious about the roll and usually spend their whole day getting ready for it since ecstasy isn’t one of those drugs someone snorts every hour like blow. Ecstasy is an event, not a lifestyle.

Smack —Heroin. (Never used it. There are levels of drug use, and heroin, in my opinion, is extreme. It wrecks you like meth. A horrible, nasty drug, and my people don’t sell it because of that.)

Soldiers —Entry-level position for made men in the mafia. Also known as button men, because if a capo presses a button, they better jump to do what he says.

Straight —A term used for a gangster who decides to step away from crime and be law-abiding. This rarely works out. I went straight for three fucking years, but it just never lasts, for any of us.

Stugots —American Italian slang for balls.

I think it originally stems from the term stu cazzo , which means this dick in Italian.

Not totally sure, but stugots means balls now, and it’s used in lots of different ways.

I guess American Italians didn’t have enough swearwords revolving around cocks and balls and made up an extra one. Figures.

War —A mafia war. Never a good thing, but inevitable.

WASP princess —This is sort of a snarky term.

WASP stands for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.

A WASP princess is one of those preppy, polished girls from high school you kinda wanted to fuck, even knowing they’d ignore you the next day rather than be seen in public with you.

WASP princesses eventually grow up to drive BMWs and decorate their four-bedroom houses in the suburbs.

Then they’ll have more little WASP princesses that they take to dance classes and groom to be the next generation of wine-drinking, pumpkin-candle-buying queens of suburbia.

Whack —To kill. (Note, we have a lot of words for this. The ones in this dictionary don’t even scratch the surface.)

Wiseguys —Another term for a made man. If you’re made, you’re a wiseguy.

Zips —Zip is another term for a Sicilian gangster.

It’s a term the Italian Americans gave to the Sicilians who got off the boat because their Italian was so quick.

Short and fast with a lot of slang they didn’t understand.

Could also be tied to the zip gun, which, wow.

Old school. I’m telling you, when you got history like Cosa Nostra does, sometimes it’s hard to let go of these things.

Nova likes the term suburban zips , which is an insult in Nova’s world.

In case you didn’t notice, Nova has a hang-up about people from the suburbs.

You can take the genius out of the ghetto, but when he doesn’t forget shit, it’s hard to take the ghetto out of the genius.

There used to be a time when Nova wanted a house and a yard with a dog to go with it, but he doesn’t know I remember it.

Zu —Another term for uncle, but it’s used in mafia circles as a title of honor.

Usually, the Capo Bastone and the Consigliere of an organization will be referred to as Zu in the same way a godfather is Don.

A man of power in the family. They aren’t the head of the Borgata, but they are the right- and left-hand men to the Don.

Sometimes the title Zu is spoken in fear, like it was with Frankie.

Other times it’s said with respect, like I often hear with Nova.

Either way, if someone earned the title of Zu, you should probably honor it and say it.

Forgetting is an insult you don’t want to dish out.