his arm moved, and I knew he was reaching for the gun I’d seen in his pocket. Pushing the fucker back a step, I twisted his arm around his back, moved behind him and grabbed the prick by his hair.
That movement was all the signal my boys needed. They turned on Johnny’s men, who had all reached for their guns. “Watch,” I said calmly into Johnny’s ear. I pulled on his hair tighter so he had the perfect view of his men that were about to be destroyed before his eyes. Johnny fought my hold, but his weak arse had nothing on me.
A bullet from one of his men flew by Charlie’s head. My cousin smiled, then, taking two knives from his pocket, grabbed the fucker by the shirt, sat him down on a nearby wooden chair, and stabbed both knives into his thighs. He removed the blades, ploughed both into his chest, pulled them out again, then plunged them into the fucker’s eyes.
Eric charged at a man and rammed him against the basement wall. The wanker dropped the gun, and Eric picked it up and put it in the fucker’s mouth. He angled the gun up, then pulled the trigger. His brain redecorated the walls.
Vinnie roared, then ran full force at a man holding a machete. Vinnie slammed him to the floor, then let his fists fly. Vinnie liked to kill with his bare hands. And he was fucking perfect at it, all the time singing “Humpty Dumpty” at the top of his voice: “… couldn’t put Humpty together again …”
Freddie silently slammed a knife into the remaining arsehole’s heart, twisting the knife and eyeballing the fucker until blood spilled from his mouth. Freddie spat in his face as he pulled out the knife. The arsehole hit the deck.
“Artie, stop this,” Johnny said in my hold as the last of his men dropped to the floor, bathing in their own blood. Vinnie reached into his pocket and pulled out his pliers. He opened the mangled mouth of the man he’d just pulverised and yanked out a tooth. He kept a tooth of everyone he killed in jars back home.
“A tooth for me and Pearl. Not yours anymore.” Vinnie held it in the air. “See, Pearl,” he said to the ghost of my sister. “They can’t hurt our family anymore.” He hummed, then stopped and stared at the empty space beside him, his cheeks reddening. “I love you too, treasure.” He placed the tooth in the travel tin he carried in his shirt pocket and got to his feet, his eyes snapping in our direction. Johnny stiffened in my arms.
“Artie, listen,” Johnny said, his tone hitching higher to maniacal levels. “You’re just a kid. You all are. What your old man has you doing here isn’t right.”
I tutted in his ear. “What’s not right is you skimming profits from the firm that’s served you well.”
“I haven’t, I swear—”
I pushed him to the ground and looked around us. There was some rope in the corner. I towered over the fat piece of shit on the ground as the blood of his men crept closer to his sweaty skin. “Get the rope,” I said to Freddie. He did. I looked at Eric and Charlie. “Lift him up.” I pointed to the metal spindles on the bannister. “Tie his arms to the bottom of the spindles.”
Charlie and Eric carried Johnny to the staircase, and Freddie tied his wrists to a couple of the metal spindles. The wall was high, and when they moved back, the fucker just hung there like something out of the Tower of London. As my boys stepped back, wetness appeared on Johnny’s trousers.
“Aw, he’s pissing himself,” Charlie said, wiping his knives off on a white embossed handkerchief he took from his pocket. “Shame he wasn’t this scared when he thought it would be a good idea to rob us blind.”
“Undo his shirt,” I said to Eric.
Vinnie moved behind me, sitting down on the chair Johnny had been sat in earlier. His arms wrapped around the hallucination of my sister, and he was content to hold her and watch the show he knew was coming. I turned back to Johnny; his shirt had been ripped open, his torso bared. Taking my favourite knife from my pocket, the one my old man gave me for my thirteenth birthday, the one I’d used on my first kill, and every kill afterwards, I walked closer to Johnny.