Ruthless A Don's Story

ANTONIO PORTRIGAS

I wasn’t expecting anything unusual when I walked through the front door that evening. It had been one of those long, drawn-out days where everything seemed to moves at a snail’s pace. Work was the usual grind, the bus home was late, and by the time I finally got to the house, I was just looking forward to unwinding with a book or maybe a little Netflix. But the moment I stepped inside, I knew something was off.

The house was too quiet. Sure, it wasn’t uncommon for my mom and dad to be off doing their own thing—my mom might be out in the garden, and my dad could be tinkering with something in the garage—but this silence was different. It was heavy and oppressive, like the air before a storm. I paused in the entryway, my hand still on the doorknob, listening.

And then I heard it—voices, low and hushed, coming from the living room. One of them was my dad’s, unmistakable with that gruff tone he used whenever he was being serious about something. The other voice, though, I couldn’t place right away. It was smooth, with a kind of practiced charm to it. I stepped closer, moving quietly across the hardwood floor, my ears straining to catch the conversation.

“I’m telling you, Don, it’s all going to work out,” the smooth voice was saying. “You just need to trust me on this.”

I stopped dead in my tracks. Antonio Portigas. He was an old friend of the family, someone I’d known since I was a kid. He was one of those guys who always seemed to have a smile on his face, always ready with a joke or a compliment. My dad and he had been tight for years, though I never quite understood why. Antonio had this way of making me feel uneasy, even when I was little. Maybe it was something about his eyes—they were too sharp, too calculating like he was always three steps ahead of everyone else.

“Trust isn’t the issue, Tony,” my dad replied, his voice low and tense. “It’s… the risk. I’ve got a family to think about.”

“Exactly,” Antonio said, his tone soothing, almost patronizing. “That’s why you need to let me handle this. You know I always look out for you.”

There was a long pause. I could almost hear my dad thinking, weighing whatever it was Antonio had proposed. I leaned closer, trying to catch a glimpse of them through the c***k in the door, but all I could see were shadows moving in the dim light.

“Maybe you’re right,” my dad finally said, though his voice was thick with reluctance. “But I need to be sure—”

He never finished the sentence. There was a sudden crash, the sound of glass shattering, and then everything happened at once. The front door burst open behind me, and I was shoved hard against the wall by a pair of rough hands. My breath caught in my throat as I looked up and saw them—three men, dressed in black, guns drawn, their faces hidden behind ski masks.

“Don’t move,” one of them barked, pressing the cold barrel of his gun against my temple.

I was frozen, my mind racing but my body paralyzed with fear. My eyes darted toward the living room, where I could hear my dad shouting something, and then Antonio’s voice, calm as ever, cut through the chaos.

“Take them all,” he said as if he were ordering dinner. “No witnesses.”

My heart was pounding so hard I thought it might burst out of my chest. The man holding the gun to my head shoved me toward the living room, where my dad and Antonio were standing, but I hardly noticed the motion. My thoughts were jumbled, trying to make sense of what Antonio had just said.

No witnesses.

Antonio stood near the fireplace, the same casual smile on his face that I’d seen a hundred times before as if this were some kind of twisted joke. My dad was next to him, his face pale, eyes wide with panic. He was looking at Antonio, disbelief written all over his features.

“Tony, what the hell is this?” my dad demanded, his voice shaking with anger and fear. “What do you mean, no witnesses?”

Antonio didn’t answer right away. Instead, he stepped closer to my dad, almost like he was going to comfort him. But nothing was comforting about the way he moved, like a predator closing in on its prey. The other men with guns

He pulled out his gun, aimed it at my dad's head, and pulled the trigger, I covered my face,

Bitter tears had begun to form

"Pity. I'm sad it had to end this way," he began, standing over the lifeless body. "But with you go, see, I told you I'd eventually get what I wanted. You said it was impossible and even called me a madman. I said it wasn't. You said it would be over your dead body. Well, now here I am, standing over your dead body. Life’s a b***h, isn’t it?"

He took a breath, almost savoring the moment. "As much as I'd like to take credit for this whole operation, it wasn’t my idea. I’m more of a backstabber. It was your good friends at Embers. They decided you needed to go. 'Old blood,' they called you. They asked you to step down, but you said no. So they sent me, and I proved to be more than reliable."

He paused, letting the weight of his words sink in. "Now the world’s going to think you died in a fire accident. But here’s the catch—each one of the five Mafia sons in Ember, they’re aging, too. I’ll kill them one by one. A bunch of old, miserable bastards. Then I’ll start Embers again, from the ground up, as its founder. I’ll bring in new blood, they’ll work for me. They funded this little hitman job, after all. Ember gave the order, they funded it. They are about nine in total. Kail, you’ll kill them when you come for revenge—kill me last to savor the moment."

stepped back, preparing to leave. "Either way, I have to go give the old f***s on dying life support the good news of your death. Now there’s no one to stop me from getting what I want: your money, your power, and most importantly, your position in Ember. Since you were the most feared Mafia, I’ll take that respect too. The fear you instilled in people—I’ll take that. My new minions and I will rule all of Ryon, turning it into an illegal hub, a bloody war zone of crime. I knew you’d never give it up, so I had to kill you and your beautiful family. It’s a shame. You’ve been nothing but good to me. I wish it didn’t come to this, but I’m sorry."

Bruno, My driver one of the men who was armed, asked, “What shall we do with the kid?”

I lifted my head at those words, meeting his gaze with cold, steely eyes.

"Shoot the boy, spare the girl," came the response, calm and detached