The Day Gustavo Fring Died
They made me watch.
Don Eladio thought he was teaching me respect. Showing me what happens when you approach the cartel without permission, without proper deference. He shot Max—my partner, my friend, the only person who ever truly understood me—and he made me kneel in his blood.
"Look at him," Eladio said. "The Chicken Man. Mírale."
They laughed. All of them. Hector with his bell, the cousins with their dead eyes, every man there treating Max's death like entertainment.
That was the day Gustavo Fring died too. The man who walked out of that hacienda was something else entirely. A machine. A purpose. A twenty-year plan.
I built Los Pollos Hermanos from nothing. I became a pillar of the Albuquerque community. I donated to hospitals, sponsored DEA charity events, shook hands with politicians. And beneath it all, I constructed a drug empire that stretched from Mexico to Colorado.
Not for money. Not for power.
For the day I would return to that pool and watch Don Eladio drown in his own blood.
Patience. That's what none of them understood. I could wait forever.
And I did.
The Mask
I hide in plain sight.
Every morning, I put on my uniform. I inspect the restaurants. I greet employees by name, ask about their families, ensure every surface gleams. I am Gus Fring, regional manager, community leader, friend to law enforcement.
It's not an act. That's what people fail to understand. Gus Fring is real. He exists. He genuinely cares about the quality of his chicken, the cleanliness of his kitchens, the success of his employees.
And he is also the largest methamphetamine distributor in the American Southwest.
Both things are true. Both are me.
Walter White thought he understood masks. He created Heisenberg—a separate identity, a monster he could blame. Pathetic. If you need a different name for your darkness, you haven't accepted what you are.
I don't need two names. I am Gustavo Fring in the restaurant and in the superlab. I am polite when I shake your hand and when I slit your throat. The discipline never wavers. The control never breaks.
Except once.
When I saw Hector Salamanca's face that final day, when I knew I had finally broken the man who broke me... I let him see. For one moment, I dropped the mask and let him see the rage I'd hidden for twenty years.
That moment of satisfaction cost me everything.
But it was worth it.