Rising from the grinding poverty of their old Italian neighborhood, Rocco and Besha DeLuca and their growing organization had smuggled several million dollars of alcohol to the prohibition-stricken United States by 1921. Their clients were gangster organizations who were becoming richer and more violent as they fought over the lucrative turf of bootlegging, rum running and speakeasies across the country. Those same feared gangsters were also lusting after the source of that wealth and willing to snatch it from the cold, dead hands of Rocco and Besha and their two partners, Tony Genovese and Machine-Gun Tommy Giachetti.