“This place is a fucking dump,” Steve sighed as he slid into the booth seat across from Pat.

A slim, unconscious smile slipped onto Pat’s face as he shook his head slightly, turned down the corner of his newspaper, and replied, “I love this place, Huft.”

“Of course you do,” Steve sighed as he stuffed a cigarette in his mouth and threw the rest of the pack down on the table. “It fits you too well, Brookfield.”

Pat did a half assed job of folding his newspaper up, took a sip of his coffee, and said, “This ain’t the smoking section. Besides, since when do you smoke?”

Steve shrugged and lit his cigarette, “Since I was fifteen. I’ve been quit for about three years.” Then he dragged deep on it and coughed, “This fucking case, though.”

Before Pat could say anything else the waitress was standing at the edge of the table. “Smoking section’s over there,” she said, pointing toward the back of the place.

“I told him that,” Pat looked up at her and smiled.

Steve rolled his eyes at Pat, looked up at the waitress, read her nametag, and said, “Ellen, there ain’t nobody else in her but us. Can you cut me some slack and bring me an ashtray and a coffee?”

After a quick look around, she thought for a moment and sighed, “Fine. The place will be empty until lunchtime anyway.”

“You’re a doll, Ellen,” Steve winked over a broad smile that followed her as she walked away. When his gaze dropped back down to Pat, he shrugged and added, “See? I told you.”

Pat chuckled. Then he sipped his coffee and asked, “So, how’s Cheeks doing? I haven’t heard from him at all since that night.”

“He’s doing good, riding a desk. He hates that, but he’s healing up nice,” Steve took too big a gulp of the coffee Ellen had just dropped off and had to suck a bunch of air in through pursed lips, “Fuck that’s hot.” Once the burn calmed down a bit he added, “He’s been kind of depressed. That’s probably why he hasn’t gotten back to you.” After a more delicate sip he finished with, “You guys are pretty close, hey?”

“Kind of,” Pat shrugged, “I don’t know. I guess not so much anymore. We used to be a lot closer, best friends in high school.”

“I wouldn’t read too much into it. He’s been in a funk.”

“I’m not. We’ve gone months without talking to each other. Real life gets in the way sometimes.”

“It sure does, Brookfield. It sure does.”

Pat grinned at the nickname Huft had branded him with. Brookfield. That name had never sounded so generic to him as it did when it came out of Steve’s mouth. The way he said it gave it a dirty, backwater feel, like torn overalls and a floppy hat.

“Why the fuck are you looking at me like that?” Steve asked as he pounded the spent butt of his cigarette in the ashtray Ellen had dropped off with his coffee.

Pat hadn’t noticed the dopey grin that had invaded his face until Steve called him out on it, “Oh…sorry. I don’t know.” He chuckled, raised his hands palms up, and added, “You’ve been rubbing me the wrong way since we met, but somehow I still like you, Huft. I don’t know why. More than half of the shit that comes out of your face pisses me off, and yet, I can’t help but giggle at it.”

“Because everything I say is true, Brookfield,” Steve shrugged. “It’s honesty. I’m honest. I call it as I see it, and I don’t give a fuck about your feelings. So, sometimes the shit I say pisses you off. However, when you really think about it, you know I’m right.”

“Maybe you are,” Pat smiled, “and maybe you’re just full of shit.” Pat nodded up at Ellen who topped off his coffee cup. Then he sipped it and asked, “So, how did you and Cheeks get away with everything? I mean, there wasn’t any connection to mine. It wasn’t our case. But you guys… Shit, Cheeks was shot. I mean, didn’t anybody ask?”

Steve lit another cigarette, shook his head, and said, “First of all, the Ramsey’s – except for Mark – are still missing persons. None of them have been found. They’ve got the bodies of Vinny’s crew and tied the massacre in Coleman to it. They were also able to connect one of the corpses to the Rosatti’s. It’s a loose connection, obvious in my opinion, but loose nonetheless. I mean, they know that Vinny took the kids, and now they know that the punk was either working for somebody else or trying to make a deal. However, they can’t really use it unless they can find something stronger. And what would they use it for anyway? Everybody’s dead. That’s all they’ve got.

“They can’t connect anything to the bloodbath at the rest area. Sure it’s between here and there, but there wasn’t any useable evidence. None of the corpses have been identified, and their van was a twisted hunk of melted metal. They didn’t get anything off of that,” he paused, sipped his coffee, and added, “Oh, yeah, and that other carcass in the barn just down the road, he was fucked up. They haven’t been able to find anything on him either. The feds have had it for a month and haven’t been able to put anything together. It’ll be a memory before you know it.”

Pat was nodding long before Steve finished, “Yeah, but Cheeks was shot. How the hell did you explain that?”

“We said I shot him,” Steve laughed.

“What?” Pat laughed back at him. “Why would you shoot him?”

“It was an accident,” Steve shrugged, still giggling. “We were at the range. His gun jammed. I looked at it. He was too close and it accidentally went off.”

“Wait a minute,” Pat squinted. “They’d be able to tell that his gun didn’t fire that bullet.”

“No,” Steve dragged hard on his smoke before busting the cherry off in the ashtray, “not if it wasn’t there. I have a doctor buddy. Not to mention, all of the equipment we used in Lake Geneva had been scrubbed. You’ve never worked in a place like New York, Pat. I have my ways. You have no idea how easy it is to erase things.”

“You didn’t call me Brookfield,” Pat reached over and grabbed one of Steve’s cigarettes, “May I?”

“Yeah, yeah, go ahead.”

“My wife will kill me if she smells this on me. I haven’t smoked in over five years.”

“Anyway,” Steve lit another cigarette, sipped his coffee, and said, “The only one who looked sideways at either of us about it was French.”

“Your captain?”

“Yeah, he fucking knows.”

“How much does he know?”

Steve shook his head, “I don’t, but he knows a lot.”

“How?”

“Captain French knows everything,” Steve shrugged. “I don’t know how he does it, but he does. He looked at me and said, ‘I don’t know whether I should pin a medal on your chest or punch you in the mouth.’ I played dumb, but he knew. He told me that if the feds didn’t find anything that could place me and Cheeks at the scene in Coleman or Lake Geneva, he would give us atta boys. If they did, he’d send us up the river.”

“Did he really say, ‘Up the river’?” Pat chuckled.

“He did,” Steve nodded. “He says shit like that all the time. He also said that it would have been a real bonus if we could have found the kids. This case is going to be open forever until they’re found. I told him that I figured the mom had them. He agreed, and that was it.”

“Wow,” Pat shook his head. “That’s crazy.”

“Yep,” Steve dragged deep on his cigarette and blew the smoke out slowly around his words, “Then I gave my notice. I’m gone in a month.”

“What?”

“I can’t do it anymore, Pat. I’m not like you. I wish I was. You’re a good person. You care about people. You want to help them. That’s why you’re a cop, because you want to help people. I wish that was why I did it. I’ve been trying to convince myself that it is for the past five years. This case reminded me that it’s not. I don’t give a fuck about anybody, not even myself. My wife, I care about her. I don’t give a fuck about anybody else. I’m a hunter, Pat. I miss the hunt. I miss tracking a scent and gunning it down like a fucking hound dog. Man, there ain’t nothing to hunt in a shithole like West Allis. It’s too fucking small. Do you want to know what kind of cases I get here?” He paused and raised his eyebrows at Pat, “Well, do you?”

Before Pat could answer, Steve continued, “I’ll tell you, domestic violence. Nine times out of ten if there is a homicide in my jurisdiction, it’s a half-bald beer belly that didn’t get quite as far as he wanted to in life so he drowns his sorrows with a case of beer or a fifth of whisky or brandy or some other fucking thing, and then lets all of his pent up aggressions out on his wife whose only crime was standing by his side through failure after failure. Most of the time, the killer is the one who calls it in. Sure, he lies about what happened, like he fucking found her that way, but I never have to look passed the front door to find all the fucking clues I need. Case fucking closed.”

“Wow,” Pat raised his eyebrows and stole another one of Steve’s cigarettes. “I normally write traffic tickets to speeders. But, I get where you’re coming from with the whole domestic disturbance. The ones in my town seldom end in murder.”

“Most don’t in my town either,” Steve shook his head. “That isn’t the point. The point is they’re all crimes of passion. I don’t care if it’s some drunk stabbing another drunk at the bar or some asshole throwing his wife down the stairs, these aren’t elaborate, well thought out murders. They’re easy. They’re dirty, and they’re easy to solve.”

A heavy silence settled in between the two of them as Steve watched Pat awkwardly light the cigarette he had just stolen from him. Pat’s face twisted into a series of different expressions. A couple of times he looked like he was going to say something but changed his mind. Just as Steve was about to ask what the hell he was thinking so hard about, Pat finally broke the silence, “Where are you going to go?”

“Braston,” the word sounded kind of oily as it came out of his mouth.

“Braston?” Steve asked, furrowing his brow. “Why Braston, isn’t that place kind of a shithole?”

“It’s a horrible shithole,” Steve slammed his cigarette butt down in the ashtray a couple of times and quickly lit another, “but I grew up there. On top of that, I have a friend on the force. We worked together in New York. He moved back, says his captain is interested in talking to me.”

“What does your wife think?”

“Mary? She hates the idea. But I think she hates West Allis more,” Steve grinned. “Not to mention, she can’t stand me moping around all the time. We need a change, and she’s supporting me. What can I say? Maybe she misses the big city too.”

A faraway look spread across Pat’s face, “I’m going to miss you, Huft.”

“You know what, Brookfield,” Steve paused, “Pat, I’m going to miss you too. We’ll keep in touch. You make a trip out to the big city, and I’ll show you a good time.”

Pat chuckled, “Big city, you make it sound like I’m a country boy. That sounds good, though. Let’s do that. Let’s keep in touch.”

Steve sipped his coffee, “So what about you? What’s next for the pride of the Brookfield P.D.?”

“Same shit, writing tickets,” Pat stretched and glanced out the window at the empty parking lot. When he looked back at Steve he added, “I’m going to get to know a stranger that I should have gotten to know a long time ago.”

“Miles?”

“Yeah,” Steve shrugged. “I’ve spent a lot of my life subconsciously hating the guy, and for what? He is who he is, and he’s a part of me.”

“Father and son camping trip,” Steve smiled.

“No,” Pat laughed, “nothing like that. He’s a stranger that should be an old friend. He’s been all over the place too. I’m kind of interested in knowing more about him, more about where I come from. I don’t know. I don’t really expect anybody else to understand.”

“I get it, Pat. I’d want to do the same thing.”

“Yeah?” Pat asked.

“Yeah,” Steve replied.

Then they both looked out at the empty parking lot, completely out of things to say.

Shelia didn’t make a sound as she slipped into the empty hallway. A shiny metal door to her left marked the focal point of the hall in that direction. About one hundred yards in the other direction, a cherry-colored elevator door didn’t quite balance it out. Between the two were several lights and several doors on either side of the hall, more than she cared to count. The shiny, metal door behind her was intriguing. It was almost too obvious though. Muffled voices coming from the room directly next door to the one she had just exited – the room that Matt’s lifeless body now occupied – were even more intriguing. She didn’t make one step in that direction before the metal door began to open. By the time it was fully open, Shelia had fallen to a crouch with her gun aimed and ready to fire.

The face looking at her from the darkness of that room almost knocked her on her can. Not quite struck completely dumb, she managed to whisper, “Miles?”

Miles smiled, “Hi Stiletto. I would have preferred to see you under different circumstances, but John’s son made a mess of everything. It was too much for me to take care of myself.”

“Miles,” she shook her head, “what are you doing here?”

“We don’t really have time for that right now,” he replied. “I will say this much, there are many things that I never told you or your dad. It wasn’t that I wanted to withhold anything. I just felt it would be safer if neither of you knew. John Rosatti was married to the woman I fell in love with. He killed her when he found out that your dad wasn’t his son.”

Shelia didn’t reply. The look on her face – squinted eyes and slight frown – as her head dipped slightly to the right asked the question. There was no need for words.

“Yes,” Miles’ smile widened, “Jack was my son.”

Memories flooded Shelia’s mind drowning it like a valley beneath a broken dam. Little bits of her life swirled around her consciousness like scenes from an old movie, the kind she would watch with Miles while her dad was away with Rufus on business. Hundreds of questions fought to be among the next words that came from her mouth. None of them could beat the sober statement that left her lips, “They killed Matt.” She didn’t need words to leave the blame for that at Miles’ feet. Her tone handled the accusation.

Miles’ eyes widened as quickly as his smile fled. Before anything audible could accompany the frown that was feverishly working around silent words, a faint ding from the other end of the hallway grabbed the attention of the two glistening orbs his eyes had become.

Shelia followed the gaze as she spun and trained the barrel of her gun on the elevator door at the other end of the hallway. It took her a second to place Sergeant Pat O’Malley, pride of the Brookfield Police Department. She didn’t recognize the guy with him. “How the fuck?” she asked mostly herself. By the time the words had left her lips, both men were aiming guns back at her.

Shelia couldn’t tell which one of them yelled, “Freeze!” She was too distracted by Miles shouting at her, “Don’t shoot. I guided them here. They’re here to help.”

“Ms. Ramsey,” there was measured tension in O’Malley’s tone, “please put the gun down. We’re here to help.”

Shelia paid far less attention to Sergeant O’Malley than she did to the other asshole with him. That one wasn’t trying to hide his tension at all as he said, “Fuck that. Both of you drop your weapons.”

“Detective Huft,” Miles replied before Shelia could, “you would do well to avoid a shootout with this one. I know that you are an exceptional police officer, but you may as well be standing between an angry mother bear and her cubs.”

“Cub,” Shelia corrected without looking back at him. “Those bastards have already killed one of my babies.”

“Pat, if you have any influence over your friend…” Miles words were cut short when the door next to the room that Matt’s dead body was lying in busted open.

The suit that spun toward Shelia never had time to take aim. Shelia squeezed her trigger and left a hole just a hair above the bridge of his nose. The shot he got off as he stepped back before falling forward onto the carpet hit the ceiling just to her left. She held what would have been her next shot as she watched the other suit lean back and fall away from her toward the elevator. Intense looks of some twisted form of satisfaction on both O’Malley’s and Huft’s faces assured her that both of them had fired and both of them had hit their shared target. Shelia allowed herself a few moments of similar satisfaction as she watched the two suits bleed out onto the already red carpeting amid involuntary twitches here and then there.

Then the world slowed. Mario stumbled out of the room. Shelia hadn’t seen that man for about fifteen years. The depth of the connection she shared with him was just beginning to come together as she shuffled through the memories of the darkest period in her life prior to the one unfolding around her. He was more than just a blood relative of her daughter, a grandfather to be specific. He was also related to Jack in a fashion that had nothing to do with blood. Finally the answers were clear. In that split second – infinitesimally small compared to the years that had passed since she first killed for the Rosatti family – every piece of the puzzle fell into place. Everything made sense. Her dad was Miles’ bastard, and no matter what kind of monster Big John Rosatti had been, Jack Rose – or Rosatti to state it more correctly – was the result of betrayal. She was the result of betrayal. That is why Mario was coming so hard at her. Revenge for his son’s death was one piece. Pressure to wipe a black spot from the family name just added to the fire. Sure, years had passed, but Mario was just like his father, the kind of man that doesn’t forgive and never forgets. All the time that had passed obviously did nothing to cool that flame. He wanted her dead to avenge his son, and his dad wanted her dead to erase any living memory of Jack Rosatti. The aha had barely faded into just another bit of known information when Shelia realized that the fact that Alyssa was Mario’s granddaughter might not be enough to keep her from being one of those bits of Jack that needed to be erased.

That new, stifling fear didn’t even have time to get a good grip on Shelia’s spine before she saw that last little bit of Jack stumble out of the room behind Mario with a large hunk of her hair wrapped around his knuckles. The master of the puppets that had been gunning for her was a mere ten feet in front of her and she couldn’t pull the trigger. His feet were all tangled up in Alyssa’s and the shot just wasn’t clean enough to risk it. Her finger remained tense on the trigger as she kept her barrel pointed at the maestro that orchestrated the massacre of her family. All the hapless pricks that had died for destroying nearly everything that meant anything to her were merely following this slick fucker’s orders. He was the one, the real target, the mystery, and the sonofabitch was finally within reach. One bullet would end it all. Unfortunately, the one person left in the world that Shelia gave two shits about was too wrapped up with that target – that could be so easily wiped from the face of the earth – for her to get a clean shot.

It took every bit of resolve that Shelia had left in her body to stay her trigger finger and keep it from firing a slug into that prick’s head. If it were anyone else on the planet she’d be ending that piece of shit with a little hunk of hot lead. Her focus had grown so intense over those brief moments that she never saw the gun in Mario’s right hand aiming at her. Neither did she flinch in the slightest when that .45 belched a bullet in her direction close enough that she would have felt the heat of the slug on her cheek had she not been so absorbed in Alyssa’s struggle to free herself from the animal’s grip. Then something registered. Before another bullet could fly out of Mario’s gun, Alyssa’s hand shot out like a snake toward Mario’s neck. Shelia’s eyes widened as Mario’s big body slammed into the wall with Alyssa’s tiny form pushing against it. Blood pulsed out of Mario’s neck as Shelia’s sweet angel – that seemed so much bigger than she had moments prior while struggling in Mario’s grip – climbed onto his chest and slashed toward the elevator splashing the ape’s blood all over the wall, the carpet, and herself.

Shelia’s gun fell at her side. All of the effort it took to remain still became instantly unnecessary. In fact, now she really wanted to move. She wanted to run to her daughter, scoop her into a tight embrace, push her blood-streaked and matted hair away from her face, and tell her that everything was going to be okay. Despite all of that desire, shock kept her motionless. Instead, her eyes widened as she watched her sweet, caring angel covered in blood, screaming in the face of a dying man, and pounding the little knife in her hand repeatedly into his chest, arms, and face. A tear streamed down her cheek as the horror of watching the birth of an assassin sunk into Shelia’s soul. That lone tear carried the innocent spirit of her daughter away. The last person in the world that she loved was gone. She could do nothing more than sit and watch her die as the person she would become continued to release her rage long after her first victim had expired. Alyssa was dead, and someone new had taken her place, someone dark and cold with a lifetime of experience earned in a handful of days.

“Put the knife down, sweetheart. Everything’s going to be okay,” Pat’s voice was enough to snap Shelia out of her shocked state.

She glanced up. O’Malley and his friend were far too close to Alyssa. “Back off,” she shouted. “Both of you stay the hell away from her.”

Alyssa stood and turned the knife toward the approaching officers, slowly swinging it back and forth between them as she continued to scream wildly.

“I said get the fuck away from her,” Shelia shouted again with more vigor.

“We’re just here to help, Ms. Ramsey,” Pat’s tone failed to convey the calmness his words would suggest.

Shelia shook her head as she stood and aimed her gun toward them, “Everybody’s fucking dead. We don’t need any more help. My daughter and I are walking out of this place. You’ll never see us again.”

“That’s not going to work, Stiletto,” Huft replied.

“I’m sorry to hear you say that,” Shelia said quietly as her stance tightened.

“Wait,” Pat shouted. “Steve, I’m sorry. This is personal for me now. They’re going to walk out of here, and you’re not going to try to stop them.”

Huft’s arms fell to his sides as he looked toward the ceiling and sighed, “Come on, Brookfield. Are you fucking kidding me?”

“I’m not,” Pat shook his head. “Ms. Ramsey’s a victim here. She did what she had to do. If we take her in, she’s not going to be treated like a victim. You know that. She’ll be put away, and Alyssa will be put into foster care.” He paused, scratched his head, and added, “Besides, she cracked the case and killed all the bad guys. I know you hear those sirens too. We can still get the hell out of here and not lose our jobs over this.”

There were sirens, and they were getting close. Huft’s face tightened up as he clenched his teeth, forming silent words for a few moments before saying, “Fuck! Fine, let’s get the hell out of here.”

Shelia finally moved toward Alyssa who was still slowly swinging her knife back and forth and shaking. She had finally stopped screaming. “Alyssa, sweetie,” she said. “It’s okay now. We have to go.”

Alyssa remained silent as she dropped her knife to the floor and slowly turned.

Shelia forced a smile to her face, a smile that desperately wanted to flee the gory sight that Alyssa’s face had become, and whispered, “Come here, honey.”

As Alyssa slowly melted into Shelia’s embrace, the tears came. Her body heaved as she buried her face into her mother’s shoulder and wept. Shelia remained silent as she stroked her daughter’s bloody hair and watched O’Malley and his jackass friend retreat back toward the elevator. That prick was lucky to be more than another well-blended stain in the red carpeting of the hallway.

“Let’s go ladies,” Rufus’s deep voice beckoned from the room behind Shelia, “I’ve got Matt. We need to get the fuck outta’ here quick. This place is gonna’ be crawling with fuzz in a minute.”

Shelia glanced back, this time suppressing her smile, and replied, “I knew you’d come. We’re still going to deal with this shit, though.”

“I know,” he replied through a sober expression.

“Miles?” Shelia leaned her head back over her right shoulder.

“Miles ain’t here, babe,” Rufus answered. “We gotta’ go.”

“He was,” Shelia’s tone matched her confused expression.

“Well he’s gone now, and we need to be too.”

Shelia nodded at Rufus. Then she gently pushed Alyssa back to arm’s length and said, “It’s going to be okay, sweetie. But we have to go now. We’ll get all of this out once we get someplace safe.

Alyssa didn’t say a word. Though her eyes were staring back at Shelia, they were somewhere else. Nobody was home. That vacant stare was all too familiar. The same expression sat on her own face for weeks after her first kill, and she had been prepared, trained. Alyssa’s first kill was full of passion and feeling, more than just a contract or a target. This kill had meaning. That scar might never heal.

Alyssa crouched against the back wall of her room with Sophie nearly draped over her like a blanket. Somehow the lame line she kept repeating quietly in her ear just didn’t hold up or fit the situation. Alyssa couldn’t really blame her. Most people wouldn’t know how to respond to explosions and gunshots.

“Shh,” Sophie whispered for at least the tenth time, “Everything is going to be alright.”

Though the wall she was leaning against had ceased its tremors, Alyssa’s body was still shaking to the point of convulsion. Sophie’s best efforts at calming her down just weren’t cutting it. “Everything is not going to be okay,” her voice was at least as shaky as the rest of her. “What the hell is going on out there?”

“I don’t know,” Sophie finally said something other than a bullshit assessment of the situation. “As soon as I heard the first gunshot, I ran right over here.”

“Where is Matt?” her tone began to gain strength. The muffled gunshots still sounded like corn rapidly popping in another room, but there hadn’t been any explosions for a few minutes.

Sophie sniffled and replied, “He’s safe. He’s with a friend of mine.”

Alyssa’s words poured out with a quick sigh, “We’re not safe Sophie. How can you say that he is?”

“I can’t really,” she admitted. “I’m trying to be nice.”

“You’re just as scared as I am,” Alyssa whispered as she pulled away from Sophie and sat up.

Sophie looked at the ground and shrugged, “I am.”

“Are you crying,” she asked. Before Sophie could answer, she added, “You don’t really know if Matty’s okay, do you?”

Sophie wiped a tear from her cheek and admitted, “I don’t.” Then she slipped something out of her pocket and placed it in Alyssa’s hand. Holding that hand in both of hers she added, “I don’t know much, Alyssa. I do know that I don’t like what my father is doing to you and your brother. I also know that I don’t want anything bad to happen to you,” she paused, “or your brother.”

“What is this?” Alyssa tried to pull her hand away.

“Wait,” Sophie shook her head. “I’m not finished. I’ll probably never have any children. It isn’t that I don’t want any. Your grandfather is just old fashioned, and he doesn’t approve of my lifestyle as he calls it.”

“Why don’t you just leave,” Alyssa’s tone was matter of fact.

A humorless chuckle fell from Sophie’s lip a moment before she replied, “He’d kill me. There is no place to hide from Mario Rosatti. I would spend the rest of my life running, and the rest of my life would be very short.”

She thought for a moment and then asked, “Is he going to kill me?”

“I don’t think so, but that man surprises me sometimes. I truly believe that he wants you to be part of his family. I can’t say the same thing for your brother,” Sophie’s gaze drifted to the floor as her voice trailed off. She sat there like that in silence for a few moments before starting like she had just woken from a dream and adding, “Anyway, I know you don’t like being here, but I like having you around. This may sound silly to you considering how completely tragic this situation is, but I’m your aunt, and I want to be that.”

Alyssa turned her head to the side and almost smiled, “That isn’t the craziest thing that I’ve heard today, but we both know that’s never going to happen. I can’t stay with that man no matter what he is to me.”

“I know,” another tear slipped quickly down Sophie’s cheek. “That is why I’m giving you this.” She released Alyssa’s hand and said, “Don’t push that button there on the side until you’re ready to spill blood. Once you’ve done it, you can never take it back. Anyway, when you push that button, the blade will pop straight out of the handle like a stab. It’s small, only about three inches, but that will do the trick. If he gives you the opportunity, stick it against his neck, push the button, and then slice it across his throat. It’s sharp on both sides, so it doesn’t matter which way you pull.”

Alyssa examined the knife in her hand. The handle was a smoky purple with chrome accents. As she watched the light glinting off of the chrome, she wondered if she could actually get herself to push that little, round button in the middle of it. Without looking up she asked, “Have you ever killed anyone?”

“Just one,” Sophie nodded. Then she shrugged and added, “I thought he was a friend. I was seventeen. We were drunk. He tried to…” her voice trailed off again. She bit her lip, looked up at the ceiling and changed course, “Even though he was planning on doing horrible things to me, I will never forget the way he looked when he died. I still have nightmares about it. Make sure you’re ready to do what you need to do before you do it. Given the chance to relive it, I’m not sure it would end the same way.”

Before Alyssa could say anything else, the door to the room slammed open. Her hand instinctively flew to her pocket depositing Sophie’s gift. Whether or not she could use the thing would remain a mystery for the moment. Blood had always made her kind of squeamish, and she didn’t like hurting things or people. In fact, seeing any kind of pain had bothered her for as long as she could remember. Just thinking about it reminded her of her earliest memory of seeing real pain. She couldn’t have been more than four years old. On a stroll through the neighborhood with her dad – that same one that Mario had tried to convince her had never been her dad at all – she saw a dog chasing a cat down the driveway of the house directly across the street from her. That dog seemed so vicious; snarling, growling, and barking. She wished that she were bigger so she could stop that dog. Ideas of what she would do to him were as clear to her at that moment as they were when she first witnessed that scene so many years ago. Equally clear, was the pain she felt for that poor dog when the frightened cat led him across the street in front of a big truck that was going much too fast. But the thing that stuck out most in her memory was the contrast of that frightening beast chasing that poor cat and the quivering, whimpering lump of bloody fur slowly dying in the middle of the road. That had been the end of her walk with Daddy. He had to carry her home as she sobbed a big puddle into the shoulder of his shirt. All of the bad thoughts she had about that poor thing were replaced by empathy and honest sorrow. If an opportunity presented itself, would she see that vicious, barking monster that would tear apart that poor kitty if it could, or would she see the frightened, bleeding lump completely scared and confused about what was happening to it? She truly didn’t know.

Before either of them could turn toward the door to see who had just entered, Mario’s voice filled the room, “What the hell are you girls doing on the floor? This place is solid.” He was winded, and his cadence was accelerated.

“The walls were shaking, Dad,” Sophie turned an icy glare toward him. “We were scared.”

“Broads,” Mario shook his head and then glanced over each shoulder at the two suits standing behind him. Then he looked back at Sophie and added, “Your brother would have grabbed his gun and raced upstairs to see what was going on.”

“Well, I’ve always been your little disappointment,” Sophie shrugged.

Mario’s eyes rolled toward the ceiling as he sighed, “We don’t have time for that right now. As I’m sure you’ve probably figured out, there is a bit of a war going on up there. We need to get the hell out.”

Sophie pulled Alyssa close and said, “You’re not walking her through a war zone.”

“You’re damn right I’m not,” Mario snapped. “I’m not walking any of us through that mess. I’m not exactly sure what we’re dealing with, and with all of the fireworks the cops should be here soon. That is, if they aren’t already. No. We’re slipping out the back. Wiggles should still be next door with the boy. We’ll grab them and then we’ll slip out the back.”

Sophie looked down at Alyssa and nodded.

The gesture didn’t escape Mario. “What the fuck was that?” he asked.

“She’s terrified dad,” Sophie’s voice raised as her hands did the same.

Mario’s expression softened as he said, “I can see that.” It hardened right back up as he added, “Okay, be scared then. But do it while we’re walking out of this place. Let’s go.”

Sophie and Alyssa rose together, huddling as if they were bracing against a chilly wind. Sophie’s eyes fell to the floor. Apparently, she had seen enough of her father for one day. Alyssa’s eyes went right to his throat, right to a spot about an inch to the left of his Adam’s apple. If she could bring herself to shove the knife Sophie had given her into that son of a bitch that is exactly where she would put it. Just then she still wasn’t sure if she could. She would have to cross that bridge when and if she came to it. For the time being, she would follow Sophie’s lead and hold onto hope that nobody else she loved had been killed.

The world still seemed to be moving in slow motion despite how fast Pat was running. Flames from burning cars dragged sluggish licks across the air toward him as he rounded them to see Steve crouched to the left of Mario Rosatti’s front door. To Pat’s eye, Steve appeared to be moving through water. Each movement appeared as painfully slow as each of Pat’s steps. Though it was obviously an illusion, he willed his feet to move faster as he watched his new partner lean back behind the door jam, drop the magazine from his gun, pop in a fresh one, and lean back out to begin firing again.

By the time Pat finally rolled passed the front entrance, he counted three gunmen down and at least five more scattered about strategic locations in the foyer and at the top of a wide staircase that stretched toward the second floor of the place from a point about fifteen feet in from the doorway. The quick scan he made of the room wasn’t near enough to get a really good look at any of the targets. However, he saw enough to know that none of them looked to be over thirty. Unless he missed something, none of them could be Rosatti.

What seemed like hours after he had left Cheeks by the fountain, Pat finally came to rest in a prone position just behind Steve. In actuality, it had been less than a minute. Pat’s perception of time meant very little to him at that moment. What really mattered was the fact that they were pinned down. The moment his movement stopped, the barrel of a gun with a face behind it poked up from behind an overturned table. Pat instinctively squeezed his trigger, and there was one less gun firing at them.

“I counted five still standing minus one that I just put down,” he hollered up at Steve.

“Yeah,” Steve agreed as he spun back behind the wall to reload again, “there are at least that many.” After dropping his magazine and slapping in another he added, “This ain’t working. Give me a minute.”

Pat rolled to the right and emptied his gun into the doorway. No bodies fell, but all of the heads he could see slipped back behind cover once the bullets started flying. When he rolled back to reload, Steve had his backpack off and was fishing something out of it. Pat paid little attention as he reloaded and rolled back in front of the door to empty his gun again. Five shots in, he noticed a small, dark ball flash by the periphery on his left side. By the time he had finished emptying his gun and was rolling back to reload again the ground beneath him was shaking and his ears were ringing with more vigor.

“What the fuck was that?” he shouted up at Steve.

Steve didn’t reply immediately. Instead he slipped back around the door jam and began firing into the room again. Once empty, he flopped back against the wall and said, “Grenade. I have one more. Think I should use it or save it?”

“How many are left?”

“I only saw two at the top of the stairs.”

“Save it,” Pat replied as he rolled right, fired twice, and then scanned the room again, his gaze following the path of his barrel.

A moment later, Steve slipped back around the door jam and scanned the area in the same fashion. After three seconds he whispered, “Clear?”

“Clear,” Pat agreed.

“Cover me,” Steve said as he crouched around the corner and headed left.

Pat slowly rose to a crouch and then shuffled closer to the doorway. There was no movement in his line of sight. By the time Steve’s head interrupted his view and said, “All clear,” he already knew that to be the case.

“I’ve got my last magazine loaded,” Pat whispered.

“I’ve got one more,” Steve replied. After scanning the room again he added, “Watch the stairs and the hall while I see what our friends are packing.”

Pat sucked in the slowest, deepest breath he could remember. Then he let it out in one quick blast. Reality hit him in the head like a baseball bat. While bullets were filling the air, his instincts had been in complete control. Now that he had a minute to assess things, the severity of the situation began to sink in. They would all be fired. There were dead bodies all over the place and at least four of those kills were his, maybe more. An unfamiliar coldness battled in his gut with an all too familiar sense of dread. The coldness was new, foreign. That sense of dread was something he had known since childhood. As he waited for Steve to finish scavenging everything useful from the newly made corpses they had created, he counted every instance in his life that he felt it. It was a hollowness that filled him, shut him down, and kept him from reacting or even moving at all sometimes. Luckily, the coldness seemed to be winning the battle. He was ready to face whatever other horrors Mario Rosatti’s lakeside funhouse had to offer and face the consequences once his work was finished.

Steve flopped down beside Pat, handed him a gun and two magazines, and said, “They were all carrying nines.”

“Really?” Pat glanced over at him. “I would have thought they’d all be packing something bigger.”

“Me too,” Steve shrugged. Then he glanced around the room and said, “We should move.”

“Yep,” Pat agreed. “Up or down?”

“I can’t be sure that it was him, but I might have seen Rosatti head down that hallway toward the back of the house. I don’t know what he looks like, but this guy carried himself like he was in charge. He had a couple of younger guns following him to, protection maybe.”

Both men looked at each other for a few seconds before Pat finally broke the silence. “That’s the best lead we’ve got. You ready?”

“Yep, let’s go,” Steve replied. After three steps, he looked over and asked, “Where the hell is Cheeks?”

“He was hit,” Pat replied soberly. “The bullet just grazed his shoulder. He was bleeding pretty good, but I wrapped it up and told him to sit tight by the fountain.”

“Good call,” Steve replied. “Okay, stay alert.”

Pat nodded as the two crouched behind their guns and slipped down the hallway toward the back of the house.

The sky lit up as the ground shook. An echo from across the lake wasn’t quite finished making it back to Shelia’s ears before another explosion followed, then another, and yet another. In all, there were five explosions that worked together to pull her from her slow, deliberate crouch and send her sprinting the last quarter-mile or so to the backside of Mario’s place. That had to be Rufus’s handiwork. She wondered briefly if he were still there somewhere. It would be nice to have back up, even if that backup had already shown his true colors as nothing more than a big pussy. The fact that she wasn’t crouched in a bush at the shoreline watching the fireworks was another reminder just how valuable any backup at all would be. None of that mattered though. There was too much at stake to be concerned about rustiness, fear, or the shocks of pain that radiated from the stab wound in her right thigh every time that foot hit the dirt trail that ran along the circumference of Lake Geneva. If Matt and Alyssa were still alive, she had to get to them. If they weren’t, she would have no choice but to settle for revenge.

By the time her boot left the dirt trail and hit the grass of an expansive yard that consisted mostly of an upward sloping hill, the pool house was engulfed in flames and already coating the pool in ash. Both sat in a level area that had been carved into the grassy hill about halfway between the lake and the house. Once Shelia’s eyes adjusted to the brightness of the blaze, she noticed that more than just the building was burning. There were at least three bodies writhing on the ground near the inferno, and all of them were covered in flame. As Shelia charged passed the building – careful to maintain a safe distance from all of the light that could give away her position – she spied another flaming shape. This one was slowly working its way toward the pool while wildly flopping about. Shelia ended the drama for that one with a flick of her wrist. It wasn’t a desire to end anyone’s suffering that motivated her to hurry up the poor bloke’s demise. The more they suffered the better. That one was just getting too close to the pool. She didn’t want any survivors. The blade took a full two seconds to cover the distance, but when it met its mark, the shape dropped and became just another fire burning around the pool.

 Beyond the burning, two more shapes raced through the darkness toward the house. The expanding light from the growing fire chased them like a stalking cannibal lumbering toward a lame hunk of living flesh. They managed to stay one step ahead of the increasing glow, but neither proved quick enough to escape the beautiful and vengeful angel of death that had come to claim their souls. Two more flicks of Shelia’s wrist sent two more glints of metal flying through the orange haze. Not more than an instant later the legend of Stiletto Rose grew by two victims. Each of the two new chapters in that story bleeding out on the grass as the myth charged by them without a glance.

Rufus had been able to load more than just a map to the computer in Shelia’s van. With the intel he had gathered, she knew precisely which window to crash through to find the library and precisely which book to pull from the shelf to open a hidden door concealing a secret staircase that led to the basement. When the stairs ended in what appeared to be a three-foot by four-foot dead end, Shelia pushed a panel in the wall to her right. As soon as she did, the wall that appeared to be a dead end slid left exposing a room with a couch that was occupied by a small body.

Shelia fell to her knees as the face on that small body turned to look at her. Those blue eyes and that fresh innocence were enough to bring a cry of joy up to the back of her throat. It stuck there for a bit as the tears began to flow and she tried to speak. “My baby boy,” she cried, reaching toward him. The words weren’t really discernable in the sound that came out of Shelia’s mouth, but Matt seemed to understand the sentiment.

“Mommy!” Matt shouted as he jumped up onto the couch cushions and began running toward her.

Matt’s left foot was on the arm of the couch when another shape raced into Shelia’s field of vision. It came in from the right and snatched one of her two reasons to live out of the air by the back of his messy, blonde hair. Before she could get back to her feet or even slightly regain her composure, she was looking into the eyes of a memory. The man they called Wiggles stared at her, and he was holding her baby about two feet off the ground by his hair.

“Holy shit,” Wiggles attempted to chuckle, “Stiletto Rose in the flesh.” The expression on his face belied the illusion of coolness that his words hoped to invoke as he continued, “You weren’t much more than a baby the last time I saw you. And look at you now, all grown up and somebody’s mommy.” Then he held Matt out a bit further from him and added, “Are you looking for this? We’ve been getting real close. We’re like old friends. Ain’t we, Matt?”

Wiggles’ words barely registered as her baby boy struggling in that bastard’s grip held the lion’s share of Shelia’s attention. Her hand slipped toward her gun as she struggled to her feet. The world slowed; Matt’s feet kicking back and forth, Wiggles’ lips moving around words that she could barely hear, and especially Wiggles’ other hand moving up from Matt’s left side and pointing a gun against the struggling cherub’s head.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,” Wiggles began. “You don’t want to do that. You wouldn’t want to see this handsome, little man’s brains splattered all over the walls would you?”

“You son of a bitch,” she didn’t bother attempting to hide the tears. She couldn’t swallow down the mountainous lump in her throat if she tried. Instead she aimed her gun at Wiggles’ head and assured him, “If you hurt him, I will show you pain like nothing you could possibly imagine. I will keep you alive for years just chipping away at you, peeling you apart bit by bit until you will beg me to let you die.” After a slow, deep breath she added, “And I won’t.”

“Oh, well that sounds horrible,” he attempted a smile, but only his lips were in on the fakery. “What about door number two? What if I let him go?”

“You get one bullet in the head, quick and painless,” she replied through the tears trickling over her stony expression like the runoff of a spring rain in the mountains. “You know how good I am. You probably won’t feel a thing.”

Despite his failure at appearing nonchalant and unafraid, Wiggles maintained the charade as he shrugged and said, “See, that doesn’t sound so good to me either. In fact, any option that includes me dying or being tortured or whatever other fucked up shit that pretty little head could come up with, just doesn’t work for me. No,” a scowl spread across his face as he shook Matt slightly before continuing, “See I got this. And as long as I have this little scab as my insurance policy, my version of this deal looks a bit different than either of your options. In my version, I back out of this room with Matt here, and a bunch of my guys pour into this room and fill that hot, little ass of your with lead.”

Shelia’s cheeks were still damp from her tears, like the ghost of a puddle that lingers two days after all of the snow has melted. Her eyes were bone dry though. Rage filled her and chased the fear and sorrow away. Lips like iron barely moved as she said, “There is no version of this story where you walk out of this room tonight. The only question that remains is how much it’s going to hurt.”

Wiggles forced another chuckle as he slowly began retreating toward the door with Matt. He only shuffled back about three feet before the doorknob started turning. “Get the fuck in here,” he shouted, slightly turning his head back over his right shoulder.

Shelia’s eyes locked on to Matt’s wild gaze. A foul mix of confusion and fear swirled over his twisted face. Though her brave, little soldier remained silent, every thought racing through his mind spun around in the agony on his face. It only took one step before her entire world erupted around her. Wiggles backed into the sofa, bumping the arm with the back of his knee. The flash was brighter than anything Shelia had ever seen, and the bang like a bomb exploding in the center of her head. Right at that moment it was impossible for her to discern whether she actually saw the flash and heard the bang, or if both of those things were conveyed to her through Matt’s widening eyes. Reality checked out as her instincts took over. She didn’t feel her knees hit the plush carpet on the floor. Nor did she consciously will her arm to move and her finger to squeeze her trigger twice putting a bullet in the left eye of one thug and the right eye of another. Yet, there were two fresh corpses lying in the doorway. Even after those bodies had fallen and her arm and finger moved together again, belching another bullet from the barrel of her gun, a bullet that would skim across the front of Wiggles’ neck – not quite deep enough to shred any arteries, but plenty deep to nick his windpipe, incapacitating but not killing him – it wasn’t her conscious mind controlling her. All of these things happened around her as her eyes – that had managed to find more tears to pour over their lids – remained locked on the twitching carcass of her only son, her Matt, her little man, the boy whose crooked smile could drag her up from the lowest of lows. She wailed as the innocence left those precious, blue eyes a moment before they grayed over, as if in that one solitary moment, he learned everything about life just in time to die.

Shelia remained like that – on her knees wailing and clawing at her hair and clothes, shouting this moment and mumbling the next, none of it discernable – for a period of time that didn’t matter to her. Nothing mattered. Matt was dead. His angelic face stared accusingly from a small puddle of blood and muck that was quickly soaking into the carpet. Her baby was dead, and it was all her fault. She could have remained there for the rest of her days, weeping and damning herself until dehydration finally ended her, but something shouted at her. It was something from deep in her mind, a small place in her brain that hadn’t completely checked out. She could barely hear it at first, like the muffled howling of a woeful soul pouring their sorrow into a pillow. There were words. They were hard to make out. The room spun slightly making Matt’s bloody face rotate counterclockwise before her eyes as the muffled shout gained volume and the words stomping among it gained clarity. No, not words, it was just one word repeated over and over again. “Mommy,” a girl’s voice cried out from that place deep in Shelia’s mind, that place that was still connected to reality, if only loosely. It took a few moments for the rest of her mind to catch up with that spot and realize that it was Alyssa’s voice crying at her. As difficult as it was to go on, she had to. Everything that meant anything to her anymore still needed her.

Shelia rarely broke promises, but she didn’t have time to make good on her threats to Wiggles. She stalked over to him with her jaw bulging under the pressure of her clenched teeth. The fake smirk was gone as his eyes darted wildly around the room before finally coming to rest on Shelia’s icy glare.

“I made you a promise,” she said coolly.

The response was nothing more than some hissing that was sloshing around too much sickening moisture. He couldn’t push any words out of his mouth with all of the air seeping out of that nicked windpipe. That didn’t stop him from trying. Nor did it stop him from swinging his right arm at Shelia’s face. She grabbed it by the wrist, threw her gun in its holster, and brought her nose within an inch of his.

“You’re lucky that I don’t have time to keep it,” she whispered. As the words left her mouth, she slipped the first two fingers of her right hand into the tiny slit her bullet had made in his throat and spread the hole wide. Then she added, “This is all I have time for,” as she yanked those two fingers down and right, ripping his throat open. Only three drops of blood made it up to her cheek. She didn’t wipe them away. They would remain until she had time to look at them, absorb what that son of a bitch had taken from her, and then scrub that useless fucker away. She watched his eyes until all of the life had left them, and then she turned her attention back to Matt.

“My sweet baby,” she cried as she collapsed next to his lifeless body, “look what he did to you. Look what I did to you. I’m so sorry.”

Shelia pulled Matt close to her chest, letting his head flop onto her shoulder. She absently pushed at the flaps of skin loosely hanging from the exit wound Wiggles’ bullet had torn open in her baby’s left temple. The tears came stronger as she rocked back and forth with him, whispering incoherent nonsense that slowly mounted into helpless wailing against the side of his lifeless face. Two minutes. That is how long the collapse lasted. That was all she could allow herself.

The breakdown ended as abruptly as it had begun. Then she gently laid Matt’s body back onto the floor, tenderly kissed his forehead, and whispered, “I’ll be back for you baby.”

Shelia completely slipped away as Stiletto Rose slowly stood up from her son’s corpse. “So it will be revenge then,” she said as she stalked toward the door.

Little Sal – as he was known in certain circles – pushed Big John’s wheelchair off of the elevator and into a wide hall with low-pile red carpeting and deep, cherry woodwork. Paintings and decorative lamps lined the cream colored walls as they stretched toward a door that had to be at least one hundred yards from the elevator. That shiny, metal door didn’t match anything else around it. All of the doors on either side of the long hall were stained the same deep cherry that the molding boasted. Sal hated that hallway as much as he hated the rest of the basement at Mario’s place. It reminded him of an old hotel from a horror flick, freaked him out a little more every time he had to go down there. Somehow, pushing Big John Rosatti down that creepy hallway made it worse. The hair on the nape of his neck stood up as he waited for some suit to slip out of a doorway and slip a blade in between two of his ribs.

“How old are you, kid?” Big John’s raspy voice dragged Sal away from his torment.

Little Sal cleared his throat and said, “Twenty-two, boss.” It was best to keep his comments short and direct. Whether Mario ordered him to transport Big John to the safe room or not, the old man didn’t want to go. The little power struggle going on between those two titans was something he didn’t want to be in the middle of.

“Twenty-two,” Big John nearly whispered. “You’re just a fucking baby aren’t you? How does a young kid like you end up pushing a guy like me around?”

“I don’t know, sir,” he replied. “It’s an honor. You’re a legend.”

“So I’ve heard,” the old man’s voice sounded like gravel being dragged across an old washboard. “That question you don’t know the answer to, I’m going to answer it for you. It’s respect, kid. I know who the fuck you are. You’re named for your grandfather, and his name is the reason you are where you are right now.”

Sal waited a few moments before responding. He didn’t want to interrupt the old man, and he wasn’t sure if he was finished. After a few steps, he finally said, “That’s right, sir. I was too young when he passed to really remember much about him.” Uneasiness slammed curiosity down and prevented him from saying any more.

“I knew him, you know. He was a stand-up guy, quick too, clever, never got pinched,” Sal could hear the smile that had crept onto Big John’s face as he reminisced. “You know what they called him?” Big John finally looked up at Sal.

Sal smiled down at the old man and replied, “Yeah, they called him Slippery Sal. I’ve heard lots of stories about him. It would have been nice to meet him when I was old enough to understand.”

“That’s right,” Big John chuckled as he dropped his head back down, “Slippery Sal Barone. They called him that because the pigs could never get him on anything. He never landed his ass in the joint. They could never get him, questioned him a handful of times, but nothing ever stuck. And he never gave anybody up.” Big John paused and looked up at Sal again, “Do you understand what I’m saying, kid?”

‘Not really,’ Sal thought with an internal sigh. Of course, that answer wouldn’t suffice. Instead he said, “I think so. You’re talking about loyalty.”

The old man nodded, “That’s right, Sally. You are where you’re at right now because of the trail your grandfather blazed for you and your old man. Slippery Sal had character. He was loyal because he never let his friends or his betters down. Have you thought about what you’re doing, where your loyalty lies?”

Sal let out a slow, audible sigh and replied, “I mean you no disrespect, sir. I’m just following orders. Your son and Wiggles, they’re scary dudes.”

“Yeah, I know,” Big John shrugged. “You’re just a soldier and you’re doing a good job, kid. Don’t stand to close to that fire though. You’re bound to get burned.”

By the time Big John had finished, Sal was pushing a plate on the wall. The heavy, metal door swung slowly inward in response. Once inside the room, Sal reached over to the wall on the left side of the doorway and flipped a switch. As the darkness fled, “What the…” was all Sal managed to get out before he was lying on the floor with a thin trickle of blood oozing from a hole in the center of his forehead. Moments later, the door slowly swung shut and pushed the newly made corpse back into the hallway.

“Hello, John,” an old man sitting in a brown, leather easy chair against the wall opposite the door said in a calm, soothing voice.

 The report from the gun hadn’t registered with Big John. However, the ringing in his ears assured him that there had been one. That ringing all but kept him from hearing what the soon to be dead man staring at him had said. His eyes narrowed as he spat his words out between clenched teeth, “I don’t know who the fuck you are, but you’re as good as dead.”

“Forgive me, John,” the old man smiled. “It makes sense that you wouldn’t recognize me. You have never seen my face. You know who I am though.”

“You’re a fucking corpse,” John shouted at the man and the barrel of the gun that he was staring down.

“I think I have a few years left in me, John. You, on the other hand,” the sly smile widened, “your time is up. You owe me a debt.”

“Get to the point,” John’s tone remained a shout. “I don’t like this game of yours.”

“You took something from me a long time ago and, like I said, you owe me a debt.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake, what do I owe you?”

The man in the easy chair looked at the ceiling and sighed. When he lowered his head back down there was intensity in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. That intense stare stabbed through Big John as the man’s tone fell to something just above a whisper. “I’ve loved many women in my life,” the man began, “but one of them stands above all the others. She was the only one that ever truly held my heart.”

“You’ve come to me to lament lost loves?” Big John scoffed. “Just pull that fucking trigger and see how far you make it trying to get out of this place. I don’t owe you or anybody else anything.”

“Oh but you do, John. You owe me everything. You see, this perfect creature, this elegant beauty that stole my heart, her name was Capricia…”

“Miles fucking Blaney, you son of a bitch, I’m gonna’…” a coughing fit cut Big John off before he could finish the threat.

Miles waited patiently, watching the old bastard convulse helplessly in his wheelchair. The fit lasted a solid two minutes, two minutes that gave the smile on Miles’ face more time to grow. Once the fit ceased, Miles continued as if neither the threat nor the fit had ever occurred, “She was perfect, sweet, caring and beautiful. The world lost…”

“She was a fucking whore,” Big John interrupted.

“She was everything to me,” all of the humor left Miles’ face as he squeezed the trigger of his pistol.

“Son of a bitch!” Big John shouted as his shoulder erupted. It had been quite a few years since anybody had the balls to put a bullet in him. It is something you never get used to.

“Relax,” Miles snapped. “The pain you’re feeling right now is nothing to the lifetime of heartache you caused me.”

“She was my wife,” the words flopped out amid a humorless laugh. “How dare you accuse me? You self-righteous bastard, you stole my wife from me.”

“You didn’t care about her,” Miles squeezed his trigger again. “She was nothing more than property to you.”

Big John’s eyes narrowed to a squint as a scowl spread across his face, “What I felt or didn’t feel for her is none of your fucking business. She took a fucking vow and broke it.” Both of his shoulders burned as his clenched his jaw tight.

“The vow meant as much to her as it did to you, you fucking hypocrite,” Miles finally lost control of his cool demeanor.

“That fucking…” were the last words to leave Big John’s mouth. Miles squeezed his trigger again and pumped a slug into the old man’s head.

Miles loudly sucked in a deep breath and released it slowly as he gazed at the furious, twisted expression on Big John’s carcass. After a few moments, Miles blinked several times and said, “The debt isn’t nearly paid, but there is nothing else you can give me.”

“Holy shit,” Pat whispered as he peered through the wrought iron fence that surrounded Mario Rosatti’s Lake Geneva Estate.

“Yeah,” Steve remarked quietly over the top of Cheeks’ head, “cute, little cottage on the lake. These fuckers with all this money make me sick. I bust my ass…”

“It’s Chicago money,” Cheeks said quietly. “Most of the properties here are. My parents have a place on this lake. It ain’t the mansion this place is, but it’s a nice, little weekend cottage.”

 “Cottage my ass,” Pat’s whispering tone grew dangerously loud as he chuckled out his reply. “Your parent’s place is like thirty-five-hundred square feet. That’s a bit bigger than what I would consider a cottage.”

“I’m sure glad you guys are able to laugh and joke at a time like this,” Steve sighed. “We’re about to do some serious shit that could really fuck us up.”

“Sorry,” Pat dropped the volume of his voice.

“It really pisses some of the folks in this state off that a bunch of FIBs own all of the good land in their state, land they can’t afford,” Cheeks tried to explain.

“I must be missing the punchline,” Steve whispered. “That doesn’t seem all that funny to me.”

“You’d have to have grown up in one of the two places to get it,” Cheeks leaned over and whispered to him.

“I guess,” Steve shrugged as he pulled a pair of night vision goggles out of the backpack he had just slipped off his shoulders. Then he added, “I find it far more amusing that both of you now belong to the group of people you’re laughing about.”

“Where the fuck did you get those?” Cheeks ignored the jab as he watched Steve slip the goggles over his head.

“Not that it’s important, but do you remember when Captain French was trying like hell to get us a S.W.A.T. team in West Allis?”

Despite Steve’s slight scolding, a laugh slammed up against the inside of Cheeks’ tightly clinched lips. All of the effort it took to hold the guffaw back kept him from responding.

“You guys almost had a S.W.A.T. team?” Pat asked, his whisper again growing a hair louder than it should have been. “Why’s that funny? That’s fucking awesome.”

Steve sighed, shook his head, and then handled the question while Cheeks shook with the laugh he wouldn’t allow to leave his mouth, “We did. There was some City Council bullshit agenda that kept us from calling it a S.W.A.T team though.”

“So what did you have to call it?” Pat was dying to know what was so funny about a S.W.A.T. team.

Steve tried like hell to maintain his stern expression. He lost the battle and a wide grin spread across his face while he replied, “Crisis Unit Negotiating Team, Captain French came up with the name with assistance from that same City Council that had such a big issue with calling it S.W.A.T.”

Cheeks’ voice sounded like a piglet quietly dying as he finally opened his lips and squeaked out, “It was the fucking C.U.N.T. squad.”

Steve mostly kept his composure. His body shook only slightly with a silent chuckle just before he finished the story for Cheeks, “Captain French didn’t realize what a spectacular acronym he and the City Council had come up with until your pal here,” he pointed over at Cheeks, “and a few of his clever, fellow officers had t-shirts made and started wearing them to the station.”

The redness of Cheeks’ cheeks was hidden by the darkness as he added, “That was the end of the C.U.N.T. squad.”

“It was,” Steve agreed. “Captain French banned the shirts from work and tried renaming the thing the Crisis Response Unit Negotiating Team, but C.R.U.N.T. squad wasn’t much better. On top of that, his big idea had turned into the biggest joke of the year at the station, and his dream of running a S.W.A.T. team died.” Steve turned back toward the fence as he finished with, “After all of that, we ended up with a few new toys that we were able to keep. These sweet, night-vision goggles were among them. Now, seriously, we need to get our heads in the game.”

Pat and Cheeks giggled as quietly as they could while they watched Steve scan the yard beyond the fence.

“I count eight guns in front of the house,” Steve whispered out of the left side of his mouth. “There are two cars parked in the drive. Holy shit that’s bright.”

“Yeah,” Cheeks replied, finally able to compose himself. “There’s another car pulling up. Get down.”

“That’s like a hundred yards,” Pat argued quietly. “They can’t see us from there.”

Steve pulled the goggles off of his head, stowed them back into the backpack, and slipped it on his shoulders. The house looked like it was sitting in the middle of a sunny day with all of the light shining at it. All that lighting didn’t do anything for the yard though. Most of the eight guards that Steve had spotted with the night vision goggles were nearly invisible without their aid. He was the only one that could make them out, and that was only because he knew precisely where to look. Pat and Cheeks could only see the three closest to the house. Those three looked on as two big bodies appeared to be dragging someone out of the car that had just pulled up.

Steve glanced over at Cheeks and asked, “Can you see anything?”

“Nothing you haven’t already reported,” Cheeks whispered

“We need to get closer,” Pat added.

“Yeah,” Steve agreed. “We at least need to get on the other side of this fence.” After straining his eyes at the group by the car for a few more moments he added, “They all seem to be focused on who or what is coming out of the car that just pulled up. We can hop over right there,” he motioned to the brick pillar to Pat’s left. “If we take the proper angle, they’ll never be able to see us passed that fountain and we can regroup in the shrubs surrounding it.”

Pat was pulling himself up onto it by the time Steve finished. He made the six feet to top of the thing easily enough. The little bit of pride swelling in his breast at getting his big body up the narrow thing fled as his chest flopped down on the two-foot by two-foot square platform that marked its apex. He managed to suppress the groan that wanted to slip passed his lips. His balance proved a bit harder to master as he rolled over and off of it, barely missing the sharp points of the fence sitting just six inches below. The brief moment of relief that Pat felt at avoiding impalement was short-lived. When the ground rushed up to greet his falling body with a dull thud, all three of the men froze.

“Fuck,” Cheeks whispered out of the side of his mouth. Both men drew their guns and aimed toward all of the commotion going on around the car that had just pulled up in front of the Rosatti house. That car was still getting every bit of each guard’s attention. It didn’t appear that anyone up there had noticed Pat’s inelegant entrance or the dull thud that accompanied it.

After two minutes of silent stillness, Steve whispered through the fence at Pat, “I don’t think anybody heard anything. Get your ass up to that fountain and stay low.”

Pat did exactly that, covering the fifty or so yard jaunt with a slow jog that ended in something akin to a slide but a little more awkward. Two seconds later, his gun was drawn and he had a clear shot at the car that everyone was focused on. Ten seconds after that, Cheeks flopped down beside him. Roughly ten seconds later, Steve joined them.

By the time the three were situated in the shrubs surrounding the fountain, Pat had time to come up with a clearer assessment of what they were dealing with. He leaned back toward Steve and whispered, “There are eleven now; the eight that you spotted and three more that were in the car that just pulled up. One of them is in a wheelchair.”

“The guy in the wheelchair and the two with him are heading into the house,” Cheeks piped in. A few moments later he added, “Two of the original eight are following them in.”

“Wait a minute,” Steve replied. “One of those two is coming back.”

“Alright,” Pat turned toward them, slid to his butt, and leaned his back up against the wall of the fountain, “now we know exactly what we’re dealing with outside. What’s the plan? We can’t really walk up to the front door and introduce ourselves. Like you hinted at, we’re off the clock and really shouldn’t be here.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Cheeks agreed.

“No,” Steve shook his head, “even if we could be here the front door wouldn’t be the option for us. These fuckers are expecting a war or something. They all have guns drawn already. We wouldn’t even have a chance to identify ourselves before the bullets started flying.”

“We need to figure out what else we’re dealing with here,” Cheeks added.

“Yeah,” Pat agreed. “With eight guns out front, how many more do they have inside?”

Steve pulled a black, hooded sweatshirt out of his backpack, handed the bag to Cheeks, and then slipped the sweatshirt on, “I think it’s dark enough that they won’t see me if I skirt the fence line. I’ll signal you guys once I see what’s on the side of the house. One flash of my light means sit tight and watch the front. Two means follow me around.”

Before either man could argue, Steve was charging back toward the fence. Both Pat and Cheeks kept their weapons trained on the front of the house, systematically targeting each of the seven guards and looking for any clue that Steve had been made. None came.

“I counted sixty,” Pat whispered.

“Me too,” Cheeks replied.

“He must have at least made the side of the house,” Pat continued.

“Yeah,” Cheeks agreed.

“Do you think…” Pat never got the opportunity to finish his question as Cheeks shushed him in the wake of two gun shots that cracked off almost simultaneously.

“I think those came from inside,” Cheeks whispered, “two separate guns.”

Pat spun back to his knees and said, “Three of the guards just ran into the house.” Then he looked over toward the left of the building and added, “I can’t see Steve anywhere.”

“It’s too fucking dark over there,” Cheeks agreed.

“What do you think?” Pat asked. “Do we sit tight or move in?”

Before Cheeks could reply, the vehicle furthest left of them erupted in flames that lit up the night sky. There were two more explosions, but Pat only heard and felt them. After the concussion from the first blast knocked him on his ass, the sky was the only thing he was looking at. The second explosion came almost immediately after the first. The third took a bit longer as if it were an afterthought. In fact, the shock had worn off to the point that he was almost about to scramble to his feet to assess the situation before the third blast occurred – at least the third one in front of the house. Even with the ringing in his ears that began immediately after his ass connected with the ground, he could still distinguish two additional explosions somewhere else very close by.

Pat’s gaze moved left from the sky above his head until it met Cheeks’ wide eyes staring at him. His old friend mouthed, ‘What the fuck?’ Then he lifted his left hand with three of his fingers raised and nodded toward Pat. Immediately after the nod, Cheeks counted off by raising each of the three fingers that he had just held up to Pat. Once the final finger came up, both men scrambled to their feet and aimed their guns toward the burning mess in front of the house.

An eerie silence settled in. Perhaps the only reason that it existed was also the only thing disrupting it, that loud ringing in Pat’s ears. Somebody fired. With all of the ringing, it was impossible to tell where the shot had come from. At that point, its origin didn’t really matter. Somebody had fired and the hiding spot in the shrubs behind the fountain had become far less spectacular with the light of three blazing cars setting the yard all aglow. Pat’s vision became a tightly focused circle as he crouched, took aim at one of the henchman, and squeezed his trigger. The gunman got off one shot that ricocheted off the brick on the other side of the fountain before the back of his head split open and he fell to his knees. ‘One down,’ Pat thought as his aim moved left toward another target. That target fell before he could pull his trigger. Just as his aim began to move left again, a bullet zipped passed his head. It was so close that he could feel it on his cheek, something almost like wind but not quite. That wind – or whatever the sensation was – was accompanied by a sound that managed to raise itself up above the loud ringing in his ear. While the world slowed before his eyes, the best adjective to describe that sound troubled him. Was it a whistling or whizzing sound? Did it go whoosh or did it maybe hum? He squeezed his trigger again before deciding.

Pat had never shot anyone before he dropped the first target he drew on, some hired muscle standing in front of a burning car, probably disoriented and trying to shake off the wicked ringing in his ears, firing at an enemy he couldn’t really see, and wishing he hadn’t shown up for work today. The ease with which he pulled the trigger occurred to him as he watched the second bullet he had ever fired at a human being inch toward the threat. That’s what he was firing at in his slow motion world where the spin of a bullet could be seen and clouds of red hover in spaces that heads formerly occupied. It wasn’t a person. It couldn’t be. Pat was fairly certain that he could never fire his weapon at a person. Threats were a different story. It was his job to stop the threat, on or off the clock.

Fire blazed behind that nameless, soulless, second threat. Flames dancing as slowly as Pat’s bullet spun toward a heart that soon would cease beating in a chest that would just as quickly be replaced by a cloud of red, tiny droplets of blood painted against the orange and yellow backdrop of a flickering canvas of fire. The moment that the soft tip of Pat’s bullet contacted the fibers of the target’s shirt – an incident that Pat was certain he could clearly see – the right, rear section of the gunman’s head exploded. Bits of cranium covered in blood and hair along with bits of brain expanded from the crater that remained. Each small piece cataloged in Pat’s memory. A moment – so brief even in slow motion – later, his bullet ripped into the falling target’s chest. ‘Double dead,’ Pat thought as he continued his slow motion sweep left across the front of the house and the burning mess of melting metal blazing before it. The sweep continued until Pat’s gaze fell on a kneeling Steve, whose gun was still aiming in the spot where the last target had stood.

All four targets were down and at least two were dead. Pat’s world sped back up as Steve looked over at him and motioned toward the house with his gun, time to move. As Pat rose up from his crouch, he glanced down at the ground next to him. Cheeks had been hit. Wide eyes stained with bewilderment stared up at Steve from Cheeks’ face. Even in the darkness the paleness of the skin around those shocked eyes was a striking testament to the horror consuming Pat’s oldest friend.

The Brookfield cop quickly dropped back to his knees to examine his fallen comrade. “Were you hit,” Pat shouted. The time for whispering had raced away on the tails of flying bullets and the echoes of the tiny explosions that propelled them toward their targets.

“My fucking shoulder is burning,” Cheeks grunted.

Pat’s gaze moved to the bloody fingers of Cheeks’ right hand, “Let me see it.”

“Holy shit! I’ve never been shot before,” the words flopping out of Cheeks’ mouth sounded more like an animal growling than a human speaking.

“Move your hand,” Pat commanded. “I’ve got to see what we’re dealing with.”

“No. Fuck you,” the wounded soldier’s shout was saturated with thick spittle that flew up a few inches before falling back to his lips and chin.

Pat sucked in a deep breath, held it for a few moments, and then released it in a quick burst. His heart rate slowly decreased as he said, in a far calmer tone, “Look buddy, I need to see how bad you’re hurt. They have more guns in there and they’re going to be spitting lead all over the place real quick. I need to know if I can leave you here, or if we need to get you the hell out.”

Cheeks clinched his eyelids tightly together and reluctantly moved his hand away. “Fine,” he spat.

Pat pulled a small flashlight from his belt. After a few moments, he unzipped his jacket and pulled both his shirt and his undershirt out of his beltline. Then he ripped a three inch wide strip off the bottom of his t-shirt. He tied a knot in the middle of it and stuck it over the wound.

“Motherfucker!” Cheeks sat up a bit as he shouted in Pat’s face.

“Relax,” Pat kept his tone as calm as he could. “The bullet just grazed you, but we’ve got to stop the bleeding.” As he did his best to sooth his bleeding friend, he tied the two ends together under Cheeks’ armpit. Then he added, “Keep pressure on that and sit tight. Unless you think you can make it back over the fence. Then you should head back to the car. If not, hide out in these bushes. Either way, you’re not going to bleed to death.”

“You can’t leave me here.”

“Calm down. Breathe,” Pat’s control of his tone continued to improve. “You’re going to be fine. I can’t let Huft go in there alone.”

“But you’ll leave me alone?”

“Nobody will find you here.”

Cheeks shook his head, sighed, and finally said, “Alright, go. Help me sit up.”

Pat dragged Cheeks up by his good arm and helped him slide back against the side of the fountain. “Keep your gun ready. How many shots did you fire?”

“Just two,” Cheeks sighed. “I dropped one of those fuckers, and then I let another one slip as I was heading toward the ground.”

“Alright,” Pat scratched his head. “Don’t shoot unless you have to.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Cheeks agreed as his eyes shifted toward the fence. “Hey Pat,” he added after a brief pause, “I’ve never killed a man before.”

“Me neither.”

“This was a fucking mistake.”

“Maybe,” Pat said as he patted Cheeks’ leg and stood to see Steve already making his way around the burning cars toward the front of the house. Three steps into a slow jog he turned and added, “Stay hidden. I’ll be back for you.”

The darkness outside of the window made it impossible to see anything but the office reflected in it. Mario stared at it anyway. He wasn’t seeing any of the images there. Nor was he interested in trying to see anything beyond them. Alyssa’s face was the only thing he could see at that moment, the way she looked at him like he was some kind of monster, less than human. If only she realized what kind of life she would have. Sophie could never run the family. She sealed that at seventeen when she came out to him. It was unnatural. On top of that, she would never have any children, at least not of her own. Even if that dyke adopted, the child wouldn’t have Rosatti blood. No, she could never sit at the helm of that family. That essentially made Alyssa heir to the throne. The Rosatti name would die with him, but if he married Alyssa right it would never be forgotten.

Wiggles busted into the room nearly breathless, “We’ve got a bit of a problem, boss.”

Mario didn’t look at him as he said, “I’m busy right now. You had better have a very good reason for bothering me.”

The long pause that followed was almost more irritating than the interruption. Mario was just about to comment as much when Wiggles finally replied, “Unfortunately, I do. Your dad just pulled up.”

Mario’s stare finally broke, and his head snapped toward his breathless general, “What the fuck is Big John doing here?”

“I can only guess,” Wiggles said. His face tightened into a concerned expression as he added, “It looks like he brought some muscle too. Somebody must have told him.”

Mario slammed his right hand down on his desk, “Of course somebody fucking told him. You hired those fucking amateurs. Everybody from here to New York has probably heard about it. We’re going to talk about that when this shit is over.”

“We already have,” Wiggles shrugged. “Vinny was highly recommended. The kid was coming up, hungry.”

“Yeah, too hungry.”

Wiggles’ eyes narrowed as he took a few steps toward the desk and asked, “Are you really trying to dump this in my lap?”

Mario looked up at Wiggles, shrugged, leaned back in his chair, and replied, “Had your boy Vinny taken those kids cleanly, none of this would have happened.”

“Do you really believe that?” Wiggles’ asked, his head slowly shaking back and forth. “You don’t think any of this has to do with you underestimating that bitch?” He shifted uneasily with pursed lips. Tension visibly tightened his shoulders belying the inner debate going on in his head about whether or not he should take the conversation further. The short, internal debate ended with, “Look, I mean no disrespect, but this little cat and mouse game was your idea. You wanted this. Ever since Danny was killed, you’ve been like a father to me. That gives you a lot of rights in my eyes, but not the right to dump your mistakes on me. You should have let me unleash the German on her right off the bat. It would have been clean, and she would be gone. But now…”

Wiggles’ ballsy rant abruptly ended as the door to the room swung open in front of a well-dressed body that fell backward at his feet. Two suits followed in behind him. Both had heads poking out of them that had been hardened to stone by sixty or so years of not taking any shit. An electric wheelchair rolled in behind the two rhinos in pinstripes. The old man sitting in that chair resembled a corpse that hadn’t been told he was dead. Everything about the old shape from the expensive suit that didn’t fit so well to the scraggly hair that would no longer stay in place looked like it belonged in a casket, everything but the eyes. Those were sharp and filled with murderous intent. The electric wheelchair stopped at the feet of the well-dressed fellow that had been used to bust the door in.

One of the rhinos picked the barely conscious shape up off of the floor, tossed it back into the hallway and grunted, “Get the fuck out of here.”

Mario stood up out of his chair and opened his mouth to speak. Before a word could leave his lips, however, Big John Rosatti – the old form in the chair – said, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” The force behind the words didn’t match the weakness that the crumpled, old shape delivering them suggested.

A scowl spread across Mario’s face as he forced his reply out through clenched teeth “Dad, this is my fucking house. What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

Big John ignored the question as he sat up straighter in his chair and said, “I’ve told you several times that I am not your father when we’re working, I’m your fucking boss.”

Mario sat back down in his chair, glanced over at the reflection in the window, and chuckled, “You haven’t run this family in ten years.”

“Oh no? Who do you think has been nursing all of the relationships that have made this family so strong while you’ve been doing your best to destroy them? Every bad decision you make jeopardizes what I’ve spent my life building.” His tone mellowed a bit as he continued, “And this fucking thing you’ve got going right now with the daughter of that fucking mick’s bastard, you’re acting like some rogue capo. This ain’t the fucking ‘20s, kid. You can’t leave corpses all over the street. You’ve got bodies lying all over this fucking state for Christ’s sake. Our friends aren’t happy. What the fuck…” Big John’s rant was cut short as a coughing fit doubled him over in his chair.

A grin slithered onto Mario’s face, coiling up above his chin. He shot a subtle wink at Wiggles. A moment later, both of the rhinos that had busted into the room with big John were lying on the floor with pools of blood expanding beneath their shattered skulls. Wiggles had done the one to Big John’s right and Mario had taken the one to his left after slipping out the .45 he kept holstered under his desk. Everything happened so fast that neither of the meatheads had a chance to reach for their guns.

Big John’s coughing fit continued long after the echoes of both gun shots had ceased. By the time he regained his composure, the barrel of his son’s gun was staring at him in front of a smirk soaked with too much malice to be considered simply arrogant. It was void of humor, filled with equal parts anger and hatred. A strong shot of adrenaline made the near ninety-year-old forget the pain that standing or walking caused his deteriorating limbs as he nearly leapt from his wheelchair and crossed the five feet to Mario’s desk in one stride. His fists pounded the desk as he shouted, “Have you lost your mind?” The words flew from his lips amid long strings of thick spittle. The skin on his cheeks trembled as he continued, “Are you taking me on? You want a fucking war? You pull that fucking trigger, and your life won’t be worth the spit on my fucking chin. You’ll be dead within a week.”

Mario laughed. Not the polite kind of laugh a person makes when patronizing someone who has said something intended to be funny that really isn’t, but the kind of gut twisting laugh that only something truly funny can hope to elicit. He kept his eyes trained on big John as he lowered his gun, composed himself, and said, “I’m not going to kill you, dad. I’ll tell you the same thing that you’ve been telling me since I was twenty-five. We share blood. That fact is the only thing keeping you alive right now. If you didn’t have my blood flowing through your veins, I’d be spilling it all over the fucking marble.” Mario shook his head as a more natural smile slipped onto his face, “No, dad. I wouldn’t shoot you, but I can’t have your boys getting in the way of my boys and fucking up my show either. I want you to sit down, relax, and watch me finish what you couldn’t. You want that bitch dead as much as I do. Fuck, you’d have killed Jackie if you could have found him. I mean,” he chuckled before finishing with, “look what you did to Capricia and her brother, Christopher.”

Big John’s form shrunk as his adrenaline rush wore off. He stumbled back toward his chair and flopped into it. His gaze fell to the floor as he said, “You’re right about that.” Then his eyes rose to meet Mario’s as his stony expression returned and he added, “But I would have had the shit done clean. I ain’t going to be around much longer. You’re going to destroy everything that I’ve built.”

“This will pass,” Mario shook his head. “Once it has, I’ll work on mending fences. By the time Alyssa is ready to take the helm, this thing will be stronger than it’s ever been.”

“What?” Big John’s eyes narrowed. “That bitch has that mick’s blood running through her fucking veins. You would slap me in the face like that?”

“She’s got my blood running through her veins too. You’d rather I put Sophie in that seat? You want a dyke running this family? I don’t believe that for a minute.”

“I don’t. It doesn’t matter what I want anyway. You’re finished and my line is done. You’ll probably end your days in prison anyway,” Big John slapped both of his hands down on the arms of his wheelchair and straightened from his slouch. “No, this little game of yours is our last hoorah, what a pathetic finish to a grand run. My younger brother has a grandson. He’s a good boy. They’re sending him over to clean up your mess and get this shit back in order. You’ll be taking orders from him if you don’t get pinched over this shit.”

“You’re crazy or fucking senile if you think I’m just going to roll over, old man,” Mario spit through the scowl that had returned to his face. Then he looked over at Wiggles and said, “Get him out of here, and get somebody to take this old sonofabitch downstairs. Make sure he’s safe, but make sure he can’t cause any fucking trouble. I don’t want any more of his people here.”

Wiggles nodded, “You’ve got it, boss.”

Big John looked up as Wiggles’ hands grabbed the handles of the wheelchair, “Get your fucking hands off of my chair. You’d better not forget who you take your orders from.”

“I’m sorry, Big John,” Wiggles replied quietly. “I take my orders from Mario.”

Big John turned his head back toward Mario and said, “You’re going to regret…”

The threat never came as a series of explosions lit up the sky outside of the window and shook the room hard enough to shatter the windows. The reflections of the office fled among bits of broken glass rocketing into the room and coating it and all its inhabitants in something that resembled crushed chunks of ice. Wiggles nearly lost his feet as the floor rumbled and shook in response to the house’s shaking foundation. In all, there had been a total of five explosions. Three of them had obviously been cars parked in the circle drive outside the office window. The twisted, burning remnants of them were easy to see since the glass had been blown out of it. The other two had come from the other side of the house. As a bewildered Mario brushed bits of glass out of his hair and picking up tiny nicks and cuts in the pads of his hands, he assumed them to be the guest and boat houses. Somebody was going to pay.

While the shock slowly – almost grudgingly – slipped away, he looked into the twisted, confused expression painted on Wiggles’ face and shouted, “Get him downstairs, and then figure out what the fuck just happened. I can’t believe that bitch has this kind of firepower. She has to be working with somebody.”

Mario looked into his father’s eyes as Wiggles wheeled the old man backward out of the room. Buried somewhere deep within the shock that matched what was sitting on both Wiggles’ and Mario’s faces was the essence of a smile. Mario scowled. That old sonofabitch would love watching him fail, watching him crumble, witnessing what Mario knew that bastard always believed, that Mario Rosatti would never be half of the man that Big John Rosatti had been. Fuck him. He would show that old bastard the man he was by finishing what that used up sonofabitch never could. Stiletto Rose would die, and the only memory of the darkest chapter in Big John’s life would be Alyssa, the knife that would stab into that decrepit corpse’s stomach until it finally realized that it was dead.

Once Big John was out of the room, Mario ran over to the window. As soon as his hands gripped the pane tiny bits of shattered glass dug in and embedded beneath his skin. Before his brain had a chance to register any pain from his flesh being torn up, gunfire erupted in front of the big house and grabbed all of his attention. Four of his men were shooting at targets somewhere in the darkness beyond the burning cars. Based on the small, bright flashes lighting up that darkness, there were three of them. That bitch definitely had help. He would have to let the boys play and get Alyssa the hell out of there.