Blood Feud

Blood Feud

Today was a very sad day. A very sad day, because my mama Abilini...
has died. I was out on a job when it happened. I had just came to a
halt outside the docks, where Jimmy, the security guard and friend of
the family opened the gates for me. I drove the truck in, giving a nod
to lil' Jim as I passed, as did Marcus, he waved his thanks from the
passenger seat. His job was to be keeping a look out for suspicious
activities, you know, any coppers come looking around, so we can
disappear all quiet like. He didn't notice it, but after years of
smuggling booze out from the docks, I sensed that something was wrong.

How can you explain that feeling, without knowing why you feel it? I
couldn't exactly turn the truck around and head back empty handed, I
couldn't exactly face my father, Don Abilini without knowing what had
driven me away.
So I just leaned over towards Marcus and said to him "Something's not
quite right here. We outta' be taking extra special care tonight."
"What's the matter, George? You seen or heard something 'bout tonight?"
Marcus was relatively new to the business, a kid off the street.
He was good with his hands, but he wasn't exactly the most subtle
person I knew. He didn't quite have the gut instinct that I've had my
whole life, but in a way, that was good, he was very practical, very
straight forward. What you see is what you get with Marcus, no
bullshitting around.
"I haven't noticed nothing, Marcus, I just have a feeling..." In
reality, this cautiousness had consumed me only within the last few
minutes. As we drove into the docks, or as we were driving through the
streets, I couldn't pinpoint the exact location of this instinct.

Like always, I backed the truck up to the storage area "19 B". Like
always, we dragged open the massive corrugated doors to our precious
cargo. Top shelf shit right here, and because we know the right people,
we get it for a real bargain. So I load the truck up, nothing out of
the ordinary, Marcus is on look out, and he's silent as a mouse, and
while I'm lifting these crates into the truck, it clicks into place. It
was Jimmy, he triggered this growing sense of dread I had. He seemed
awfully quiet tonight, not at all his usual friendly self. I was
certain he wouldn't willingly go out of his way to harm the Abilini
family, but with the right leverage, well... he wouldn't be the hardest
nut to crack. And who, in this town, would be interested in cracking
down on a friend of the Abilini mob?

I lit up another cigar and took a swig of my drink. The man sitting across from me already knew the answer to my question.
"The van Harem mob." He replied.
"Yes, the van Harem mob. They came into this town where no one knew
them and no one feared them. Yet they came here anyway. They stayed,
and they tried to break through the Abilini organised crime ring and
'take the responsibility of running this town off our hands', as they
so delicately put it."

What could I do? I was half way through loading up the truck. The
only way out was through the gates, and I was damn sure that van
Harem's men would be waiting for us. I signalled Marcus to help me to
finish loading the truck, we needed to get out of there as soon as
possible. I told him all I knew, and all I feared. Jimmy was fucked,
and if we didn't play our cards right, we would be too. Once the cargo
was loaded up, we didn't dare try to drive off right away. With Marcus
closely tagging behind me, I walked around the storage building 19 B.
We were heading back towards the gate, to evaluate the situation. We
followed the 6 metre high fence, keeping to the shadows, scanning the
docks for the men we feared were watching us. And then we saw the
gates, still wide open.

I pulled my pistol from my jacket and moved closer, closer, and
then... Jimmy, he just steps out in front of us, sweat dripping from
his face, his ear bleeding, his trousers soiled.
Over Jim's choking sobs, I could hear what sounded like whispering. And
with splutters and hiccoughs, Jimmy repeated the whispers to us.
"Y-y-you've run this t-town for too f-fucking long Abilini." He paused.
More whispering before he continued. "Y-y-you've run this town, a-and
now... it's t-time for L-Lucas van Harem t-to have his turn."
"Shit, Jimmy, we never wanted you to get all caught up in this." I said, truly sympathising for the man.
"I-if you know what's g-good for you, you'll let Mr. L-Lucas take over.
If you kn-know what's good f-for you, you'll let his m-men take your
v-van and you won't tell a s-soul." He sighed, holding himself with the
grace of a worn and torn rag doll.
"Alright, alright. Take the fuckin' booze, just leave this poor man
alone." I never broke eye contact with Jimmy, as I said this.
All shiny eyed, Jimmy mouthed the words "I'm so sorry", agony deep set across his face.

I was close to tears, it was hard enough going through this once,
but being asked to tell this morbid story again? So heartless, so
emotionally detached, yet it was so vital to my situation.
"Take all the time you need" the man said, holding his hands pressed against his chin.
The floodgates opened, the tears rolled down my cheek. I reached for my
glass of whiskey. It was empty. I knew it was empty because it had been
empty for the last twenty minutes.
"They blew his fuckin' brains out. He was just standing there, hoping
beyond all hope that through some sort of twisted fate, he might be
forgiven for his minor misdeeds and given a second chance at life. But
he couldn't recover his lost dignity, fate didn't hold the gun, it was
that spineless motherfucker, Lucas van Harem." I tried drinking at
empty again. "He didn't deserve it, he was better than that. Men like
Lucas, men like myself, we were the ones that usually ended with our
brains splattered across the pavement, not Jimmy."

Where was my dear mama this whole time? According to Lucas, mama
Alibini was at home, waiting for me to return so that I could stare
into her vacant face right before Lucas put a bullet in my brain,
signifying the beginning of a new, more brutal and bloodthirsty age of
organised crime in this city. And my father, the Don? Well, Lucas had
him by the balls. Somewhere in this city, in a remote location, Don
Abilini was tied up and beaten for information, perhaps at one of our
very own storage warehouses. I found out later that Lucas was speaking
the truth, my mama was dead, and my father might as well be. Lucas was
a sly bastard. Ever since he came here, he'd been watching us, he knew
who we were, where we hid out, where we lived and who we associated
ourselves with. He planned to take us over in one night, and no one
would know until they saw the bloody mess in the morning. But Lucas
didn't get everything he wanted. He had the makings of a mastermind,
but he lacked one thing that would have kept me from lashing out,
leverage.

He had taken everything from me. What do I care what he does now? I
slipped my pistol back into my jacket and instead I grabbed a military
grade grenade and pulled the pin. He waited, perhaps he expected me to
try to shoot him, perhaps he expected me to say something. But I just
waited, and then I threw the grenade over the fence to where I assumed
that Lucas was standing. I didn't kill him there and then, but he
caught a hefty force from the explosion. He limped over to where Jimmy
lay, shrapnel embedded in his side and face, his clothing had caught
fire. He shot blindly towards Marcus and myself, his gun arm shaking
violently, his bullets whizzed around us in all different directions. I
pulled my pistol back out again, and we fired right back at him.
"Guys" He yelled out. "Get the van, and take care of these bastards." He staggered back through the gate.

About a dozen (or so) of Lucas' men came through the gates and into
our line of fire, simply stepping over Jimmy's dead body, splashing his
pooled blood on the ground. I was out for Lucas' blood now, I mean,
really out for his blood. These guys were target practice, and they had
nowhere to hide for a good hundred metres. I aimed my gun and squeezed
the trigger, again and again. A beast within me had been released, and
I breathed slowly and deeply, trying to keep my emotions under control.
They fell, one after the other, hardly getting off a wayward shot
before I loaded a fresh magazine into my pistol.

I counted five dead, the remaining seven ducked around the nearest
building and made their break for 19B. Marcus and I did the only decent
thing we could do, we made chase. Around the building, we saw the seven
spreading out and hiding throughout the docks. I indicated to Marcus
that we should split apart and meet back up at 19B. He nodded and moved
out across the yard. I gunned down four of Lucas' thugs before I came
to the van. Two more men sat within the van, I guess they were waiting
for the others, but there should only be one more wandering around the
docks, and Marcus... I hid around the side of the building, and waited
for Marcus to appear. And then the fifth man came from between the
buildings across from me, and in his clutches, with blood dribbling
from his side, was a defeated Marcus.

They shuffled up to the van, Marcus groaning in agony as he was
thrown to the ground. I came around the corner, my hatred for these men
swelling by the minute. The man who brought Marcus was about to start
beating down on Marcus when he saw me. I rushed at him, hammering my
fist down on his face. He fell to his knees. I swiftly kicked him in
his ribs. He doubled over, curling into the worthless foetus that he
was. The men in the van watched in horror, fumbling to open their doors
to get out and save one of their own. Amateurs. I fired my gun into his
side, as he did to Marcus. The two men from the van made to move
towards me, guns raised.
"Wait." I said. Out of fear, they obeyed. "Watch, and you might learn a
valuable lesson here." The monster within me purred with the
satisfaction of control. "You do not fuck with Marcus." I knelt by my
victim's side and fired a bullet through his forearm. He screamed, a
mixture of blood, sweat and tears running down his face. "You do not
fuck with George Abilini." I fired a bullet through his kneecap, his
groans were music to my ears. "And you do not" I reached into my
jacket, staring into my victim's eyes, and I pulled out a grenade "blow
Jimmy's brains half way to hell without feeling our pain" I shoved the
grenade into my victim's mouth "without suffering the consequences." I
pulled the pin, picked up Marcus and headed for the gates.

I found Lucas propped up against the wall just outside the gate. His
face was pale, and he was sweating something chronic. His shirt was
drenched in his own blood, and I could easily tell where he had tried
to dig underneath his skin to pull the fragments of metal out. He had
probably given up a while ago, and was content enough to wait for his
guys to come and pick him up on the way past.
I pulled Lucas up by his collar "Where'd you take my father?!" I spat in his face.
"Your father's getting what he deserves" Lucas said, clearly hurting with every word.
"That's not what I asked. What the fuck have you done with my father?!" I rammed my knee through his stomach.
He doubled over, trying not to show his weakness. "He..." Lucas coughed
"he's being held at the National Bank. I-in the vault..."
I ran back through the docks to fetch the van, Lucas' two drivers were
gone. Smart men. At the gate, I pulled Marcus into the passenger seat,
and threw Lucas into the back of the van with the booze. I opened one
crate and pulled a bottle out. I tore a strip of cloth off of Lucas'
shirt and tied it tight around his hand. I poured the alcohol over the
cloth, pulled out my lighter and watched the flames flare up. "This" I
said, as I unloaded the open crate "is so you don't go making any more
stupid decisions tonight." I opened another crate, emptied it, and
proceeded to empty several more. "You are not to make any rash actions
while in here, or I'll slam the breaks on you, the bottles will smash,
you'll fall over, and your lit hand will ignite the floor and you'll
wish you were never born. Understand?" Lucas nodded. I closed him in
the back and locked the bolt down. I then hopped into the driver's seat
and drove to the bank.

I left Marcus and Lucas in the van while I went into the bank to
take care of business. I came out about twenty minutes later, and
Lucas' men were dead. I was too late to save my father, but I managed
to obtain some useful information before I left. They didn't just have
my father hostage, they just about had the whole mob. And I would track
them all down, but something was wrong with Marcus, he seemed strangely
motionless, seated in the van. He was dead, and the doors to the back
of the van were wide open. Lucas had escaped.

"I didn't know how he managed to get out of the back of the van, but
the single largest mistake I made was keeping him alive from the moment
he spilled the location of my father. I don't know exactly what I was
thinking, maybe I thought I could get some more information from
him..." I sighed and cradled my head in my hands.
"And then he went to the authorities and bribed them with cash and
evidence, so that they'd consider looking at picking up your case?" He
knew what he was dealing with, he'd read through the files.
"Yes. He took his injured self in to the police, told of my crimes, and
convinced them to hear the whole story, his first hand accounts, all
documented, backed up by witnesses, some were spies like Lucas, not
entirely cut out for the confrontation of the organised crime ring.
They were mostly working from the outside, tracking us with
microphones, cameras, never getting a fingernail dirty." I grabbed a
handful of peanuts from the centre of the table and cupped them in my
hand. "Now, when I was in the bank, I learned that there were also a
handful of Lucas' spies on the inside." I picked at the peanuts in my
hand. "These men were spies, and their documentations were well
recorded. If you've seen their testimonies, you'd know their case is
rock solid. But I'm a mobster, an assassin. I killed the fuckin' lot of
them. I had the names, I had the locations. Most of these spies and
wannabe thugs held the Abilini mobsters hostage. The legitimate members
were dead, the traitors and undercover spies were just 'playing
pretend'. I killed them all."

I noticed my lawyer shiver as I so casually laid bare my sins. "You
know this won't end in your favour, George." He said, showing some
understanding to the situation I now found myself in. "I won't lie to
you, if Lucas follows through with this case, you'll end up in jail.
Granted, you've probably killed every witness that could back up Lucas'
claims, but on his own, his case is still very strong."
"How long am I looking at?" I said, hardly believing that I was finally
faced with the situation that had always been in the back of my mind, I
never actually believed it would happen, I never believed that I could
wind up in this situation.
One word. That's all he needed. That's all I needed. "Life" he spoke with his head bowed.

A uniformed officer walked over to where we sat, and he said "It's time to go".
My lawyer turned off the audio recorder and slipped it into his front
shirt pocket before leaving the building without so much as a goodbye.
I remained in my seat, cuffed at the wrists and ankles, dressed in an
orange jumpsuit. I slipped a couple of hundred dollar bills from my
pocket and waved them for the officer to take.
"Not this time, George" he laughed, and dragged me to my feet.
I lashed out, ramming my arms into his upper body. He tumbled to the
floor and the other officers tried to take me down. They each grappled
with me, they each struggled to fight a cuffed man. I was able to
wrestle a gun off one of the officers, and there it was, the one thing
that would assure my smooth escape to freedom; leverage. With that one
gun, I managed to disarm the three men and unlock my cuffs. I ran.

The next month was a blur. Wanted for innumerable crimes, I could do
nothing but hide. If I went to jail, I would die in jail, and I would
never avenge the death of my beloved family. I mostly kept to the
outskirts of town, meeting with men I wouldn't dare be seen dead with
under ordinary circumstances. The men that did small jobs, working
solo, a little here, a little there, bit by bit, picking away at the
Abilini family business. Nonetheless, the men I met were professionals,
low profile crims that could help me get the information and services I
required. It started with a quick change of identity, fake ID,
passports, so that I could move from place to place without detection.
Then I changed my appearance. My face was all over the news barely
hours after I broke free from the prison officers at the bar. I was a
wanted man, and so I changed. I hired a private investigator to find
information about Lucas van Harem. And then, I waited.

The private investigator worked fast and well. Lucas was a hard man
to find, the government had made him almost untraceable, an invisible
man. But a hiding man is never entirely invisible, and the investigator
saw the footprints and followed. Until I resurfaced in cuffs in front
of a court, Lucas took no chances, under a new name, he left the
country for Italy, an island off the coast of Italy, Capri, to be
specific. And that's were I, too, would go. He gave me the names, the
locations, everything, my private investigator. I took that information
and formulated my plan to leave this country, to go to Capri, and to
kill Lucas van Harem.

So I met a few more guys, pulled a few strings, made a few phone
calls, and Paul Marone ( a disguised version of myself) was going back
to my home of Capri to carry out my mother's last dying wishes of
taking her body back home and giving her a proper burial. My mother,
going under the name "Yvonne Marone", really was going home to Capri
with me, and it was what she had always wanted, it just so happened,
that her funeral was the perfect subterfuge to conceal my motives. I
had the plane tickets, and with a small bribe to airport security, I
smuggled my arsenal of weaponry onto the plane in my mother's coffin.

I was on the plane, I was there, so close, so close... Capri was
much the same as I had remembered it from my childhood years, but I was
not 14 any more, and my father hadn't just sold his restaurant to start
a new, more prosperous life in a different country. I was here on a
mission, to finish what he had started all those years ago, to put the
final nail in Lucas' coffin, because he crushed my father's dreams, and
my own, in a single night. I stepped off the ferry as it reached the
docks from the mainland. With some help from the locals, I carried my
mother's coffin towards the van I had rented to execute my last
assassination.

From here on out, I went solo, no communication with anyone, no
stopping for anything until it was over. I drove through the winding
streets, navigating myself about the island. He owned an elaborate
traditional style mansion on the outskirts of the community. Pictures
of Lucas, or "Tony Beretto" as he goes by now, littered the inside
walls and ceiling of the van, along with photos of his house and
lengthy notes on his pets, vehicles, schedules. Basically, my private
investigator did a fuckin' good job.

I drove along the cliffs and rolling roads, each house I passed
became more grandeur than the previous. And there it was, behind
elaborate iron gates, across gardens of immaculate greens, a beautiful
white mansion, decorated with homely traditional features. I pulled up
across the road and moved into the back of the van. I pried open the
coffin to find all that I'd need to fulfil my mission, pistols, small
explosives, bolt cutters, and the deliciously malevolent high powered
crossbow fitted with a barbed solid steel projectile. My individually
designed and manufactured suit had inner pockets and holsters for them
all. I climbed out through the back of the van, walked across the road,
and cut the locks on the front gate.

I dropped the bolt cutters by the driveway and proceeded to walk up
to the house. I walked past the main entrance and around to the side of
the house, where I readjusted the crossbow underneath my jacket and
wiped my glasses clean before climbing the staircase on the exterior
wall. Potted plants ran up the length of the stairs, fixed to the steel
railing, I followed them to the second floor landing, before drawing
the crossbow from my jacket.

The door was locked. I knew this because Tony Beretto was watching
television on the other side of the door, knowing that he had done
things, and knowing that he was never truly safe. I pulled one of the
small explosives from my pocket and attached it to the door lock. A
moment later, there was a soft pop and the door was open.
"Tony Beretto?" I said. The man turned to face me. "George Abilini
wanted me to give you this". I fired the barbed projectile through his
face. His blood soaked into his chair, and spattered over the
television and wall. My job was done.

An hour later, with my mind finally at ease, I was at the graveyard,
standing alone by my mother's grave. "It's done, mama, it's over... I'm
free" I said, with a heavy sigh.
"Paul Marone?" The voice sounded vaguely familiar.
"Yes?" I turned to see who was asking.
"Lucas van Harem sends his regards" He held a gun pointed at me, he pulled the trigger. I died.