*Tallon*
There was never a worse ti to be the boss than during a crisis, and despite learning it years ago, I kept being reminded of that fact, especially now.
Natalia was surprisingly quiet the whole trip ho, looking rather downcast as she stared out the jet’s windows. She didn’t ask questions about why I needed to go ho so urgently, and she didn’t seem to wonder why my personality had flipped on its head.
Sotis I wondered if she had actually figured out who I was and what I did. Maybe she was just pretending not to know.
But I knew how ridiculous that sounded, even in my own head.
There was no way Natalia knew I was the Don of the Italian mafia.
Natalia didn’t complain about the rush from the landing zone, even being her sweet and polite self as she helped the process go quicker. A car was waiting for us at the airport, and I directed them to Natalia’s place before heading to the compound.
My mother had taught manners, and I was determined to be a perfect gentleman with her.
She seed contemplative when we pulled up to her driveway like she wanted to say sothing but just couldn’t get the words out.
“Tallon–” She started, turning to with her blue eyes. “I–”
Despite my hurry, I turned to her patiently, but all she did was sigh.
“Nothing,” she finally muttered to herself.
Though I wanted to press her, to understand why she looked so upset, I didn’t have the ti.
“I’ll call you tonight, okay?” I tucked her hair behind her ear, leaning forward to press my lips to her before letting her go. She got out, her suitcase in hand and we waited in the driveway until I saw her enter safely.
“Take to Warehouse Seven.” My voice dropped an octave lower as I ordered the driver in the front. Imdiately, the soft and kind Tallon vanished and instead, the mafia leader ca to the surface, ready to take control of this situation.
We were lucky that Warehouse Seven was rather close to Natalia’s house, which I found a bit odd. It was only a fifteen-minute drive before we drove up, and unlike the other hit, this one was particularly clean.
On this sunny day, I could almost say nothing was wrong, that everything was working just as expected, but I caught sight of Vinny leaning against the warehouse doors, tilted with black marks across them, and I knew I was in the right place.
As soon as the car rolled up, Vinny kicked off from the warehouse, walking over to et with a pissed-off look on his face. It took a lot to get a guy like Vinny angry but whatever they had done, they had managed it.
I got out of the car, squinting from the sudden bright sunshine but hurried into the shade of the warehouse.
“You sure took your damn ti,” Vinny said bitterly, an unlit cigarette in his left hand.
It was a bad habit he’d picked up from his father, being a habitual smoker. Vinny never lit the things, but during bad days, I’d catch him rolling it between his fingers, helping to think as if his father could give him the answers through cancer in a stick.
I ignored his bad mood, my eyes latching onto the warehouse doors, just like I thought. I crouched down, brushing my fingers against the black marks on the door. They were crooked, pulled out of alignnt, and one was barely still standing, hooked only by one steadfast bolt.
I brushed my fingers through the black, and sure enough, it rubbed across my fingers. I sniffed it, the familiar scent just what I had thought.
“Black powder.”
“Even with our best security on this place, it was bested by an old trick,” Vinny spat angrily. “Black powder loaded into old shells–the cheapest pipe bomb you can get.”
I sighed, getting to my feet. Unfortunately, black powder was not traceable. It was so widely used that tracking down any illegal sales was impossible. It’s like searching for a small needle in a barrel of pins–too many dead ends to follow, and all potentially deadly.
I pushed past the now ruined and charred doors, and entered the facility. Despite what I heard from Vinny already, I had to see the damage for myself.
I spotted the sa kind of guns and shells from the last raid piled up by the doorway, bullet holes in the tal walls, and a good chunk of our wares just completely missing.
By the tracks left on the floor, they used our own lifters.
This was incredibly well-thought-out and thorough. They knew exactly how to get in and get out without causing a scene. I glanced at the security caras, hopeful they might have caught sothing. They didn’t have any damage on them.
“The power grid went out fifteen minutes before the attack,” Vinny said, following my gaze with a harsh look. “Shorted out every single cara in the vicinity.”
“Of course it did,” I sighed, brushing my hand through my hair. “So we have nothing.”
“Not exactly,” Vinny said, gesturing to the single table set up in the middle of the chaos. Vinny directed to the middle of the table that had incredibly detailed maps of the city and random points around the map that were circled with red markers.
“What are the circles?” I asked, tracing my finger between them.
“Each one has been hit in the past week,” Vinny answered grimly. “Warehouses, supply routes, safe houses–there’s no pattern, no unique distinguishers. The only connection is us.”
I shut my eyes, rubbing my forehead as the sheer magnitude finally hit .
“I get the warehouses and supply routes, but what the fuck do they want with our safehouses?” I asked, baffled, noticing that only two safehouses had been circled.
They were small ones, not connected to any big operations but still, they held nothing of value to the Russians.
“Each had the sa M.O., too–struck at night, the power grid goes out and they’re in and out in thirty minutes. So were lucky and they only wanted the goods but others... safehouse fourteen was hit pretty hard. Danny and his wife–they were staying there when they hit....”
I stared Vinny straight in the eyes, watching the sorrow and grief cross his features and a low, sinking feeling hit as I realized what he was trying to tell , what the Russians had wanted with our safehouses.
There wasn’t anything of value–except the people.
“How many?” I demanded, my heart racing in my chest.
“Tallon, that’s not what–” Vinny grimaced, but I knew from the look in his eyes he was trying to spare the cold hard truth.
Not this ti.
“How many did they fucking kill?” I shouted, slamming my hands on the table. The warehouse fell into complete silence, and you could hear a pin drop with how quiet everyone fell.
Vinny sighed, glancing at the n who were now staring at us warily. They shuffled back to the work, the noise returning at once as they worked to clean up the place, to catalog everything we had left and get it ready to be moved.
“How many, Vin?” I asked, both terrified and desperate to know how many people I had failed. Vinny sent a pitying look but gave the answer I wanted anyway. “Seventeen.”
It hit like a bullet straight to the heart, and I swallowed as I slowly and carefully dropped to the ground. I sat on the floor, staring emptily at nothing as I tried my best to wrap my head around what Vin had just said to .
But as my mind always did, it drifted–to the night I officially took over duties as the Don of the Valentinos. Giovani had told sothing that stuck with .
‘This title is a great responsibility but a heavy burden,’ he’d said to the young, impressionable version of fifteen years ago. ‘Good n have placed their trust in you and you will break it, over and over again. But no matter how many tis you fail, you must have the strength to keep that burden on your shoulders and not theirs.’
It wasn’t until I lost my first man to a stupid mistake that I should have caught that I understood what he ant. Telling his family mbers that he wouldn’t be coming ho, and burying him in Eterna while his grieving pregnant widow sobbed her heart was the burden he spoke about.
And as the Don, I had to stand there and take responsibility for his death. It haunted when I was twenty-two, and it haunted to this day. Every loss was a hard one to take.
But this one... this one was the biggest of them all.
Eterna was full of n and won who had given their lives for the family, who had served until their last breath because we gave them what the world hadn’t–acceptance, family, stability and fucking money. So had just been plucked straight off the streets as kids, taken in, and joined because they had nowhere else to go.
These were broken, flawed people whom the rest of the world rejected.
But whatever their reason for joining, none of them deserved to die. There was never a good reason to have a new plot in Eterna made. But this... this was the least deserving of all.
But like Giovani had said, that burden rested on my shoulders. The responsibility was mine and like every other ti, I picked myself up, got to my feet, and faced the situation head-on.
I buried the people I failed in my heart and kept at the forefront of my mind the hundreds more who needed to be a leader right now, who needed to stop these motherfuckers from taking any more of us.
“Is there anything about these places that were unusual? Anything that stood out?” I asked Vinny, searching the map for a clue, any sign of why they had been attacking these places in particular.
“Nothing. It’s completely random, like they... wait–” Vinny blinked, leaning forward to go over every spot with his finger again, drawing lines between them as he muttered to himself. “That’s it!”
“What?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
Vinny turned to with an excited grin. “They are random, except for one thing. Every single one of these places we’ve visited in the past few months! Random wellness checks, rember?” Then his grin fell as he ca to the sa conclusion as I did at the exact sa ti.
“That ans–” He stared at the map blankly.
“We have a mole,” I finished darkly.
Vinny straightened, turning to with an uncharacteristically serious look. “I shudder to think of anyone betraying us but... it certainly seems that way. It’s possible soone would have slipped through the cracks, though getting information about your schedule, they would have to be soone close.”
I glared at the circled map, suppressing my anger.
“What do we do now?” Vinny asked.
“Draw out the mole,” I said plainly. “Whoever it is, they won’t get far. They’ll have hell to suffer for this.”
“Even if it’s soone close to you?” Vinny asked with a skeptical eyebrow raised.
I gave him a dark smirk, pulling out my pocket knife in a flash and stabbing it through the circled safehouse.
“No matter who it is,” I vowed, “they will pay for this. I swear it.”
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