Kirk and Robbie, one of my other lead men line the men up. There’s eight of them.
“Drop to your knees and put your hands behind your head,” I order, and the men do as they’re told.
I’m about to find out though if they’ll talk too, and tell me what I need to know.
I look each of them in the eye, gazing at their terrified expressions and hope they do talk. It would be in their best interest if they do if they don’t want to end up as dead as the guards who were supposed to be watching them.
“Right, let’s cut to the shit. You all work for Falcone. He stole some guns from me. I want them back. Tell me where they are,” I say.
As terrified as they look of me and my men no one is eager to share information.
“Decided to be stubborn,” I state glancing at Kirk who sighs who bites the inside of his lip. “Dumb fucks!”
This shit is exactly what we’ve been dealing with for the last two days. Nobody talking. Fucking fuck that. They will sing like canaries today. I will fucking make them or end them if they don’t.
The name Giordano is one of the most feared on the streets. These fuckers know who I am, so they know I won’t be showing any compassion today.
I look at each of them and note they have the same scared look. I’m good a figuring people out and I can bet from the look of them and their silence that that fear is not for themselves. It’s for someone else. Someone they cared enough about to be their price. Everyone has one thing. One price. These men were bought well. No doubt about that.
I look at Kirk who’s staring at a guy at the end of the row. An Italian man like us man who looks to be in his mid to late thirties. The food stained t-shirt he wears, and the baggy Levi’s make him look unkempt, but there’s an intelligent look in his eyes that accompanies the fear.
“Should I get the knives?” Kirk asks and the man starts to shake.
“No, no one here has the benefit of my patience,” I answer and glare at the same guy. “Him. I’m gonna start with him. He looks like he could shit himself any second. I take that to mean he must have the intel we want.”
While I make my way down the row to my new friend, Kirk keeps his gun trained on the others. The soldiers back him up.
The guy starts to shake when I get closer, a sure sign of guilt. I don’t have time for shit, so I rush the guy and strike him with the back of my gun.
He falls back, crying out from the pain shielding his face when I come at him again. This time though, I’m not aiming to hit him. I’ve been out and about with Vincent and the guys enough times to know how to deal with bastards like this.
I pin the guy to the ground with my gun in his mouth while Kirk places his foot on his chest and looms over him with not one but two guns.
“Tell us what we need to know,” I shout in his face.
“I… I can’t.” The guy stutters. Tears stream down his cheeks and he starts to sob and tremble.
“Why the fuck can’t you?” I demand striking him again.
“My wife, they’ll kill my wife,” he rasps. “She’s pregnant.”
There it is… his pregnant wife is his price.
“Motherfucker, you have a wife with a baby on the way and you do shit like this?” I balk baring my teeth.
“I was forced,” he spits.
I can’t show sympathy for that. I’m mad as fuck and the leverage they held over him doesn’t matter to me one way or the other. It won’t save his ass. I’m done talking shit and pussyfooting.
“Look, I don’t give a shit what they did to you. No one screws with me and you have,” I snarl. “I’m gonna cut out your fucking tongue and feed it to you if you don’t cough up what I want to know.”
“I can’t.”
Wrong answer.
I let go of the guy and land a fist in his face, punching him harder into the ground. I crack his teeth and he cries out. Before he can take another breath, I hit him twice with the back of my gun, back up and fire a shot into his thigh making the fucker howl from the pain. Blood pours from the wound and splashes on me.
Even Kirk looks shocked. I can do some craziness when I’m pushed but I’ve never done something like that before. Every fucker who’s gotten a bullet from me deserved it. They did something to screw with me or someone close to me.
This situation calls for being ruthless and heartless. Definitely when my father would rather see me dead and have the guns back than screw the company over.
I sense I’ve been played in this plot. The whole plan with Jonny had to have been well thought out and they would have had to watch me to know when to strike.
I hold the gun to the man’s head and wave it in front of his face so he can tell I’m serious as fuck.
“You people took me for the fool, didn’t you? played me and lay in wait watching. Tell me right the fuck now what I need to know,” I roar.
“I can’t. Please I beg of you, my wife and my baby—”
I fire a shot into the roof top, and he jerks. “The next shot will go straight in your mouth if you don’t tell me what I want to hear. I will do it,” I promise.
When the fear of God races over his chubby face I know I have him where I want.
“I don’t know where the guns are. I swear I don’t know. They… needed me to get the details for the system on the shipments so we could plan,” he stutters.
Motherfuckers.
“Go on,” I urge.
“They wanted me to keep tabs on you and check on when you’d be replacing Peter. Jonny kept tabs on the guns.”
“You must know something about the fucking guns though.”
He shakes his head. With a savage growl I get back to the ground and hold the gun at his head again.
“I don’t know,” he cries. “I heard them mention a transit in four weeks. The guns didn’t come here.”
Four weeks. So, the guns are still in Chicago. That’s something. It’s not a lot but it’s a massive something.
“Where is the transit?”
“They didn’t say.”
He’s been saying they. That means more than Falcone must be in charge.
“Who else is Falcone working with?”
“A cop at –”
His head explodes before me and blood splashes all over my face. Bullets start flying and the men lined up go down when bullets pierce their skulls.
Fuck. Holy fuck. I can’t even process what I just heard. I take cover behind an oil drum with my gun ready and process then.
A cop… that was what the fucker said.
Dirty cops. I haven’t come across that bred before, probably because I loathe cops.
That’s one more piece of the puzzle I never expected and something I can’t think about now. We’re surrounded. Men pour into the warehouse and shoot at us.
I see a clearing and take it, jumping out with my guns I take a few guys down.
I move forward with Kirk and the others shooting to kill, and kill we do but there are too many of them. We are vastly outnumbered.
“Kirk you go to the left,” I shout, and Kirk rushes left shooting.
I go right doing the same. I run to the other side of the room, trying to get to the wall but three guys come down from the roof and I have to jump out of the way to evade their bullets.