New York City. 1990. Five people per day are being murdered in the Big Apple.
Since they emigrated to the Land of Opportunity, the Zerin family had found more fortune than they could ever have imagined in the unquenchable American thirst for pulling the trigger. But by the mid-1980s, both the United States and the Zerin family were at a fork in the road. Lou Zerin, the family patriarch, felt strangled by the byzantine gun laws sweeping the country, and decided to focus on the path of least resistance: arming the NYPD. Whereas his son Michael, an aspirational yuppie with a marketing degree, believed that after hiding behind locked glass for two decades, guns were ready to go mainstream again.
The signs were neon bright. The culture was screaming it. Between the surging crime rates; the blockbuster action movies starring Stallone and Schwarzenegger; a desire to accessorize at all costs as a symbol of status; plus rampant cocaine use, the untapped yuppie class was prime clientele to pack heat. Only, father and son didn't see eye-to-eye on the future.
When tragedies – business and personal – befall the Zerin family, Michael is finally handed the opportunity to take his bold gun-selling strategy to market, and the stakes couldn't be higher.
Luckily – or maybe not – he's not alone on his mission to save his own skin. His new business partner, Stacey, a high-priced call girl, has access to the type of clientele Michael desperately needs to reach. She's willing to make the introductions, for a price, and she doesn't come cheap. Or without her own agenda. She also may be Michael's girlfriend and falling head over heels for him. Ladies like Stacey never tell.
Forced to deal with a cadre of corrupt cops, crooked licensing officials, the Manhattan DA's office, her pimp, and the ATF, Michael and Stacey will learn the true cost of selling guns in America.
And if they can survive, it'll be the time of their lives...
Click the fullscreen icon (far right) for an enhanced reading experience
Nicholas Mennuti is the writer of the espionage thriller Weaponized (Mulholland Books/Little Brown), which had film rights purchased by Universal Pictures and Scott Stuber and Scrap (NeoText). Nicholas's short stories have appeared in AGNI and Conjunctions, and he has written about the intersection of technology and entertainment for the Huffington Post. He is also a graduate of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts Dramatic Writing program.
