Chapter Text
Its center cools to a gelatinous mess. The final ounce of drop, once coursing through their veins, pumping through their aorta, but now more resembles a port wine jelly. How fascinating.
It’s fun to watch, you know.
Many of the others, they just send anyone to eliminate a target, trusting the accomplice. I, However, due to personal experience have discovered that such oversights will cost, now I watch from the sidelines, but just enough to know the job is done.
Don will be right pleased.
“Good ol’ Goldsworth”, he’ll say, “so reliable, always gets the job done.” Almost as if he’s bragging about me to grand executives and investors. I suppose rival crime families looking to form a partnership are the closest parallel we get in a job like this. Regardless of praise or commendations, it’s my job, to make sure everything goes smoothly for the Don, make sure there’s no hiccups that we have to scrub out, none left that is.
Of all my jobs, all my time and effort working my way through the ranks, this is by far my favourite gig. More oversight than grunt work, but not so removed that I wouldn’t have the opportunity to participate should the urge call. Ensuring that my charges followed as instructed. Killed, disposed, transported in all the preferred methods of the Family. Our signatures if you will. Like the family signet ring that rests on the knuckle of the Don. A uniform.
Killings are to be sanctioned by the Family or doubly justified if not premeditated. Particularly skinned on neck, hands and feet while alive, to ensure they don’t escape. A hole through their right shoulder, by means of shooting or should there be a metal pipe about, a skewering. Then we torture for information if that is what is wanted.
The next part is my favourite; Open the neck. Sounds straightforward, no?
I just love the room for the artistic expression in this small part. I mean, Have you ever opened a man’s neck up with a pair of kitchen scissors? Well. I have. Despite how messy that occasion was, I definitely would recommend, particularly for the sound. So unexpected, yet so natural. The wet “PSST” , like an unsubtle conspiratorial whisper.
A secret he will never live to tell… ahh, what a thrill!
Brings a smile to my face every time.
And that’s only part of it.
Some of the neighbours think we run amuck in this town, but really all we are doing is maintaining order and stability for the general population. Of course we could never tell them just how stable the implementation of the fucking Mafia (capital M), keeps this town as well as about seven others just in the areas we, as a family work. Who's to say what other families run other towns? Unless we have business with them, we don’t usually try to keep in too much contact, self preservation and all that.
Without us, the corruption of the cops would be unstable, chaotic and unsustainable as a system. Too individualistic, we collectively make sure that the flow of crime and business is smooth and regular. We make sure that only the real sick fucks get locked away forever, you know, the rapists, peodophiles and the fellas making the ladies, children and elderly feel unsafe in our home. Not the poor young families that couldn’t make the rent that week.
I mean, they may have to eventually pay back in assisting with a few jobs, but really, that is just getting the youngins into the workforce and providing an entry into a decently stable job for those who need it.
Bootlegging alcohol, smuggling drugs and generally running this part of town. That’s what me and my boys do-did. I’m damn proud of ‘em. I only wish I could have been around a little longer, you know.
I suppose I lasted a while in the business, longer than most, 34. If it hadn’t been for that damn stinkin’ rat, those cops wouldn’t have been in our way and my boy would have had a father growin’ up, but no. That no-good Jerry had to screw us up.
Poundin down the door was the first indicator we had of their noisy raid. Normally, there was more chatter, more generous cops looking for a payout, but they kept their filthy, piggish snouts quiet.
Bang! We start at that.
Bang! We fling painting sheets over the boxes, barrels and general merchandise.
Bang! Anticipating a less than pleasant encounter, compared to that at the precinct or behind our fine establishments, we duck behind our sturdy barricades.
Making a few shots off after the final clatter of the door coming down, my boys followed suit. Three of theirs down before reinforcements were called, seven by the time they arrived.
The cavalry had certainly arrived, and to put it simply we were in for it. I suppose my only saving grace would be I didn’t get the chance to get chewed out by the Don for insufficient checks before securing and moving the merchandise.
That being as by the third wave of the bastards, we were essentially pinned. Nothing but a few rounds between the bunch of us, but this was our mission and we’d be damned if we were to give up before death. Exchanging round after round with the coppers, I didn’t see the sneaky bugger at my 5 o’clock.
I barely heard the gun cock before I felt the 9 mm tear through my three piece. A metallic ding as the metal hits the inside of my waistcoat button from through my back and lung. It wasn’t a quick death, no that would have been too merciful for the fat fucker. No, I was left to be taunted at by this asswipe while I choked though heaving coughs of blood, white hot pain sizzling and burning through the bullet’s passageway, buzzing under the rest of my skin. By the time it reached my fingertips, they were pale white and shaking so violently the handkerchief I held to my bleeding lips at this stage was more than likely merely smearing the bloodstain across my chin than actually helping in any way.
My face suddenly felt as if all the blood had been drained, cold and wavering. My lips and jaw-I couldn’t help the shaking.
I only hoped my boys couldn’t see the state of me, focussing on the job at hand and protecting each other.
Cold and weakening as I was, there was no more holding on. I was fatigued, nothing more could be done for me. I didn’t want to. I would never want to leave my boys, but I did. Reality faded, became more a dream than reality, then drifted entirely from conscious thought. Much like the pull of sleep through a dream-I was there and then suddenly I was gone.