Born in the west indies, Cordé knows the tribulations and delights of poverty life from his childhood. When he moved to New York at age 13, he already had a lot of experience, how to suffer hunger, thirst, how to turn nothing into something so you can maybe eat at night, but also on how to share, how to ask for discreetly, who has nothing to get from, and who has way too much and won't even notice if you take it and how sharing with others makes what you have more not less. But in the states, all that experience seemed useless. Here, they were other rules, rules like the rude bois in the ghettos would preach, the strongest survive, money rules the world, every man for himself, that sort of thinking. Add white supremacist racism in the states to that upbringing and you can imagine, that Cordè s teenage years were very confusing and thus very troublesome. By the time he was 16, he had build up a lot of aggression and was tired of being a pushover even in his own community.

So he joined a gang in Haarlem. It was the day when got robbed of his new school shoes that his mother had bought for him. It was broad day light and many people where watching as a youthman not even a year older than Cordé at the time, ordered him to take off his shoes at gunpoint. The same day he decided not to take any shit anymore and got his first gun from a distant relative. The first time he felt the power of his gun in his hand was that same night, but he didn't squeeze the trigger, jusst held it at the guys temple, as he returned the shoes. But it didn't last long untill his newfound power earned him the attention of the police. His mother who had a good carreer going in New York would not risk her reputation as a black woman with university degree for him and send him back to Jamaica before the trouble could get any serious. Back in Jamaica he was now stigmatized as a little gangster youth from the states, as many jamaicans come back to the islands with a whole new set of skills from gang culture

Cordé s uncle was a Nyabinghi Rasta. A naturalist, a farmer and a self proclaimed safekeeper of indigenious african traditions and their remnants. His uncle tried to drill those values in his head, and he identified with a lot of the things that Rasta helped him discover about his ancestoral history. But his bad reputation kept pushing him into another direction, the path of a criminal. Mainly because Cordé started to believe what people said about him and figured- he might just be very talented for this. It started when his uncles eldest daughter started making affairs for extra pocket money. He didn't had to find out, she told him about it herself when a guy fucked her over and left her brutalized without any pay. He didn't hesitate and made the guy pay. In more than one way. People would ask him more and more for his help with problems, that you wouldn't trust the corrupt police force nor your pastor with. But he did it, telling himself he was doing good for the community like it was his uncle wish.

And from all the crimes he commited for the good of his community, none of them did ever bring him in jail. It was a crime that he didn't commit, a set-up, probably instigated by an politician that he refusted to work for as enforcer.

7 years on remand yard for a murder, standing in court countless of times over years without getting a sentence and then finally being released. It was the hardest time of his life, and yet the best school to refine his talents. He got better at fighting, buffed up on his physic and read books about military strategy like Sun Tzu or Niccollo Machiavelli. When he came out, he felt guilty for all he had done and for the man that he had become. But his family had gotten enough problems of their own in the past 7 years. The worst of it all were three of his uncles sons, that he knew back in the states that were now rumored to be heavily addicted to crack and have disappeared from the family radar to a place called Hathian...