Members of the other Irish mobs in our area and around us didn’t take kindly to the uprising of my father’s syndicate. The power and respect him and my brother alike commanded and were given had even big Italian bosses seeking my father out to tame wild groups where power and money had gone to their heads.
My father had warned me, trained me along with my brother for the day where they would attack, he copied books, diary’s, ledgers and gave them all to me placing his whole operation in my hands. All the secrets. All the information I would ever need to rise higher than they ever thought.
He kept me hidden always knowing the day was coming, and they would want to take me if they knew what I knew. We had planned for their attack, but that day nothing went as planned. Our entire home turned into a bloody massacre, one where I had to watch my father and my brother brutally taken from us. After those men in black (whose faces I burned into my memory, each and every tiny feature, mark and scar) left, my mom made us wait it out for what felt like days, but it was only really hours.
She walked into her and my father’s room taking bags, that were already packed, from underneath the floorboards inside their massive walk-in wardrobe. One was filled with money. I watched as she checked it, my eyes wide and my heart beating fast.
She gathered all the things that were placed and packed all over our home. Taking a few photos from my father’s briefcase I then went to my room, took a few items and then into my brother’s room taking a couple of things to remind me of him for the journey I was about to take without him.
In the car, I watched as she drove us from Boston, Massachusetts - my home - to Chicago where the Ragen family were. Her family, her father.
She made me promise I’d never step foot back in Boston, Massachusetts again. She wanted to shield me, protect me and keep me this side of life with her. Not in the crime family of her and my father’s past. She told me she wouldn’t allow her father, nor her brothers to taint me with their business and that I was far too special to be a thug.
I had seen the pain in her eyes as she worked hard to shield me, protect me, but I was a Walsh at heart.
It’s in my blood.
Chapter Two
The battles of echo’s calling you to sin deeper than the devil resides.
~ Micha Ragen
My name held power. Men hated those that had it.
Especially my cousin, he hated me the most. And he should. Our grandfather saw all that my father and brother had instilled in me.
My mother changed my name from Shamus to Micha as per my grandfather’s wishes. Half Italian, half Irish descent meant I was power. But I was young, filled with hate and angered by blood.
He saw the promise, the fire and the courage.
He wanted me to feed on the hate.
So, he trained me.
Conditioned me.
Taught me how to feed the bloodlust.
How to face the demons and use them to destroy all that come within my line of sight.
My cousin hated that. He thought because he was from the son of my grandfather, and not the son of a dead man whose name I no longer have, that I shouldn’t have a single thing.
Difference between him and I is I am smart. He’s a ball bag who will get himself killed.
I’m on a mission.
I remember everything.
I feel everything.
I don’t forget, as much as I would love to forget a lot of moments, I can’t. My brain doesn’t allow it.
All I can do is numb it all with blood, death and the echoes of their screams.
The creator of the infamous North side gang inside the high-ranking Gallo family was still unfound by me though.
I had found out his name and just how powerful he had become after taking my family from the world.
Brutal and merciless.
They that I meet say this of this man.
Oh, believe me I know this.
He killed all I loved and destroyed my mother. She hasn’t been the same ever since that fateful day.
I spent hours seeking out the man with the scar that would have been left from my brother’s blade and the man wearing the midnight blue suit that took my father from me.
Hours and hours.
My grandfather preaches to me to be patient.
Wait.
Watch.
Listen.
I do this and its lead me to many men who work for him.
Slowly I am taking them all out.
Two out of the six men that came into our home, my mother’s safe place, that day I have found and killed already.
“He is soulless,” my grandfather says to me after I walk in, bloodied with hate in my eyes and a pain inside my heart. He is making you soulless too, my son.
***
I never lost sight of my vengeance.
I spent days and nights plotting, making plans that would likely result in my death, but I didn’t care. That’s how reckless I was. That’s how blinded by revenge I was.
The uprising of the Walsh name and syndicate.
The silent echoes of their pain rolled over my spine daily.
I wanted revenge for my family, and it didn’t even register in my mind that the men who were hiring me were a part of the family that killed mine.
I just wanted to kill any part of the Irish/Italian mob, that I pulled the trigger without hesitation.
I was becoming powerful, talked about and sought after.
I’d had a lot of guns aimed at me over the years, lots of hits I was sent on that had men waiting for me. That meant there were lots of men that had missed and never woke up to tell the tale of firing on Micha Ragen. I was making my own name and slowly killing my mother.
Whatever it was he saw in me, in the way I looked down the barrel of a gun, was life-changing for us both. He gave me what I wanted, and I gave him all he had desired - safety and nights where he could finally sleep without fear of never waking.
I didn’t fear. As to fear you have to feel. To feel you have to be alive. To be alive you have to have a heart.
Nothing I possess.
It wasn’t until he sat with me talking that I came to hear by his mouth that he was indeed the younger brother of blue suit, the man who shattered my 12-year-old boy heart and broke my life into little un-fixable pieces.
He told me that it was solely out of greed. The same reason that he knows his brother is coming for him and his family.
Greed and dishonor fill the Gallo family.
He told me that blue suit is as ruthless as they come.
I am still young, thirsty and just as ruthless.
The ghost of my father guided me into this world of violence though, my brother’s voice loud in my ear. No one could intimidate me, and I wasn’t intimidated by him.
I’ve been made to be cruel and savage. Just what is required to win in this war.
He welcomed me into his circle, his brotherhood, with open arms.
I gained so much more than I ever thought I could by being a solider of his Mafia.
He helped me go from an angry, broken boy who sought death and blood like a nun sought out Christ to a conditioned beast.
I’ve had to climb my way up to be on the same level as any of the other soldiers that he has inside the House of Ragen. Now that I’m here, there’s no way I’m ever looking back. My cousin hates it because I am becoming more than what he ever will be. To be a god you have to be loved not feared.