my wrist, weak and ineffective. Just before his body can sag into unconsciousness, I release him. He drops to the floor, falling onto his hands and knees and gasping for air. I let him get two breaths before I kick him in the ribs.
“I didn’t meet with them,” he rasps. When he looks up at me, I can already see the beginnings of bruises wrapping around his neck.
I kick him again. The force knocks the air out of him, and he collapses on his face, forehead pressed to the cement floor.
“Okay,” he says, voice muffled. “I talked with them. Once.”
I pressed the sole of my shoe into his ribs, rolling him onto his back. “Speak up.”
“I met with them once,” he admits, tears streaming down his face from the pain. “They reached out to me.”
“Yet you did not tell me?”
“I didn’t know what they wanted,” he says, sitting up and leaning against the wall.
“All the more reason you should have told me.” I reach down and grab his shirt, hauling him to his feet and pinning him against the wall. “Men who are loyal to me do not meet with my enemies.”
“They offered me money,” he says, wincing in preparation for the next blow. “They offered me a larger cut of the profits. I shouldn’t have gone, but I have a family, and—”
I was raised to be an observer of people. To spot their weaknesses and know when I am being deceived. So, I know immediately Simon is not telling me the entire story. The Furinos would not reach out to our chemist and offer him more money unless there had been communication between them prior, unless they had some connection Simon is not telling me about. He thinks I am a fool. He thinks I will forgive him because of his wife and child, but he does not know the depths of my apathy. Simon thinks he can appeal to my humanity, but he does not realize I do not have any.
I press my hand into the bruises around his neck. Simon grabs my wrist, trying to pull me away, but I squeeze again, enjoying the feeling of his life in my hands. I like knowing that with one blow to the neck, I could break his trachea and watch him suffocate on the floor. I am in complete control.
“And your family will be dead before dawn unless you tell me why you met with the Furinos,” I spit. I want nothing more than to kill Simon for being disloyal. I can figure out the truth without him. But it is not why I was sent here. Killing indiscriminately does not create the kind of controlled fear we need to keep our family standing. It only creates anarchy. So, reluctantly, I let Simon go. Once again, he falls to the floor, gasping, and I step away so I won’t be tempted to beat him.
“I’ll tell you,” he says, his voice high-pitched, like the words are being released slowly from a balloon. “I’ll tell you anything, just don’t hurt my family.”
I nod for him to continue. This is his only chance to come clean. If he lies to me again, I’ll kill him.
Simon opens his mouth, but before he can say anything, I hear a loud bang upstairs and a scream. Just as I turn around, the door at the top of the stairs opens, and I know immediately something is wrong. Forgetting all about Simon, I grab the nearest table and tip it over, not worrying about the potential lost profits. Footsteps pound down the stairs and no sooner have I crouched down, the room erupts in bullets.
I see one of the men in the back of the room drop, clutching his stomach. The other two follow my lead and dive behind tables. Simon crawls over to lay on the floor next to me, his lips purple.
The room is filled with the pounding of footsteps, the ring of bullets, and the moans of the fallen man. It is chaos, but I am steady. My heart rate is even as I grab my phone, turn on the front facing camera, and lift it over the table. There are eight shoulders spread out around the room, guns at the ready. Two of them are at the base of the stairs, the other six are spread out in three-foot increments, forming a barrier in front of the stairs. No one here is supposed to get out alive.
But they do not know who