Mafia's Mistake

CHAPTER THREE

Antonio

I knock back the last swig of smoky scotch, letting it burn down my throat as I push away from the table. Henric knows better than to keep flapping his goddamn gums after I’ve made my point.

Out of the corner of my eye, I can see him still nodding like an overeager mutt, no doubt desperate to prove his value. Kid brother has come a long way, but he’s still got decades before he’ll be half the man I am. Half the merciless pragmatist required to keep this family empire intact and respected.

As I rise to my feet, I catch the bartender – that new girl – watching me intently. Trying and failing to be subtle as her gaze flicks away. Normally a pretty young thing like her wouldn’t even register on my radar. Just another disposable piece of eye candy for the wandering hands and leering looks of the degenerate foot soldiers who call this place home.

But there is something different about this one. She’s poised, almost too elegant for a dump like this place. Carries herself with a graceful confidence, unlike the empty-headed strays and B-girls we usually bring in to pour drinks and let the boys have their sick kicks.

Our eyes lock for just a lingering moment before she realizes her lapse in composure. In that frozen second, I catch a glimpse behind the curtain – a glimmer of some deeper intelligence, some yearning for more. As if she’s silently searching for something beyond the sleaze and depravity surrounding her.

Intriguing. I make a mental note to keep my vision on this new bird as I throw on my coat and gesture for Henric to follow. Got more pressing matters this evening – namely preparing a lovely parting gift for that incompetent Mick f**k O’Reilly and his old-school hooligan sect.

We stride through the haze and bustle of the Russo's main room, wise guys swooping in like subservient leeches to mumble their greetings and kiss the ring. Ever since neutralizing that little upset a few months back, the peasantry seems to walk that much more tentatively around me. Murmuring their respects and hollow platitudes with a little more urgency, a little more fear coating their beady eyes.

Just the way I like it. Fear is the only language these mouth-breathing soldiers seem to understand. Respect and power are to be taken, never given freely. Still, it’s becoming more and more of a struggle to mask my disdain for their fawning and empty deference each time I’m forced to endure their presence.

The valet has the glossy black Suburban ready to go as Henric and I hit the street, the night air providing momentary relief from the dank confines of the bar’s stifling interior. I pause to take a lungful of the crisp breeze, letting it steady my hardening reserve.

“Sir, if I may…” Henric pipes up from the passenger seat as the truck idles.

“Perhaps it would be wise to “

“Can it, mama’s boy,” I snap, shooting him a withering glare through the windshield.

“Your suggestions are about as useful as t**s on a bull. I gave you a directive back there, no need to flap your gums rehashing it now.”

That shuts him up but good as I slide in behind the wheel, peeling out into the night with a squeal of cheap Korean tires on wet asphalt. My restless mind is already moving ahead, assessing the viable soldiers to draft for the O’Reilly pruning operation.

I’ll need my most merciless initiates on this – killers who won’t flinch at the prospect of putting down animals. Veterans who have been spoiled by too many years of easy living and a sense of entitlement. As devoted as Henric tries to appear, he still tends to get queasy at the sight of a little insignificant spilled red puddle.

No, a reckoning like this calls for a particular breed of mad dog solidarity. Men who won’t hesitate to dole out maximum butchery to anyone idiotic enough to step on my territory. A firm reminder that the cartel answers to no one but themselves in this city.

It’s a shame. Despite his delusions of entrepreneurial grandeur, that ginger-haired s**t O’Reilly used to be quite an efficient enforcer back in the day. Before his thirst for fatter pockets and arrogance outgrew his place in the old chain.

Letting him flail around playing big man on my turf for too long has already become a deadly showing of weakness that I can’t abide. The kind of perceived slight that could unravel decades of bloodied progress if left unchecked.

I chew on the ragged stub of my cigar, letting the thick plume of smoke fill the truck’s cabin as the grimacing faces of past lessons indelibly etched into my mind swim into view. Seeing their fear and torment through the twisted mirror of retrospection never fails to bring a satisfied smirk.

This is the unmistakable path I was forced to walk upon, to rule over this domain with the same single-minded focus and zero tolerance for transgressions as those w***e. Whether the tin-lipped lapdogs admit it or not, my family is all that prevents this metropolis from descending into total anarchy.

I alone am the gatekeeper who doles out the precious life-or-death allowances to those who remain loyal and in line. Franchising brief reprieves of peace and untouchable status for a very steep price. All it takes is one little upstart pissant like O’Reilly to disrupt the natural order, and everything descends into beautiful, delicious chaos.

A tiny voice in the back of my mind dredges up that brief flash of the new bartender’s face – her feline eyes and arched brows, the slight curl at the corner of her full lips. As if she was seeing me for the first time and the mere sight was worthy of being seared into her memory.

I crush the cigar butt against the dash, letting the smoke billow in a hazy cloud as we hit the city limits. Maybe once I get through putting that Irish cocksucker back in his place, I’ll take a little extra time getting reacquainted with the new talent back at the lounge.

Any woman who insists on wearing an air of mysterious dignity in the presence of a predator like me is either very foolish or very intriguing. Or perhaps a little bit of both.

Either way, the potential conquest would surely help slake my thirst for something more invigorating than the meaningless violence and posturing ahead. And if she proves too dull or fragile for my appetites, well such is the price for aspiring beyond one’s limited potential.

Regardless of it all, I thought being occupied would take my mind off my late wife for once but just as I was thinking about the bartender, my mind found its way drifting toward the face on the photograph in my pocket. My dear Sophia.