Every boss sitting around this table knows he’s responsible for all the death this blood war has provoked. The weight of that certainty, and the knowledge that if we continue on this route our way of life will undoubtedly become obsolete, forced this meeting to be unavoidable. Peace amongst the families is the only way we will be able to survive. If we insist on killing each other one by one, then soon there will be nothing worth fighting over.
My features remain carved in stone as I take in the sight in front of me. In a twisted Arthurian version of the round table, each family’s boss takes his seat, ready to craft an arrangement that will ensure no more innocent blood is spilled.
Compared to the expensive suit-wearing assholes in this place, my father looks like just another tourist. In a colorful, flowery-patterned shirt that strains over his Guinness belly, Athair looks like your run-of-the-mill blue-collar worker on his first retirement trip to the tropics. No one would ever peg him as the boss of the Irish mafia.
Never let them see ye coming, lad.
In all the years I’ve been a made man, Athair’s mantra has never led me astray. Besides, it’s easier to throw out a bloody t-shirt than it is to replace a five-thousand-dollar Tom Ford suit. Even those Bratva pigs look like they spent a pretty penny on their designer clothes to be here today. I’d expect such pompous attire from the Italians, not those assholes. But I guess the occasion called for them to be on their best behavior considering where we are all meeting. It was a strategic idea from La Cosa Nostra to have planned this meeting in a hotel conference room in the Caribbean and not in some vacant warehouse where someone might get the itch to blow the competition into smithereens.
And when I say someone, I mean me.
Nothing would give me greater pleasure than seeing all these motherfuckers blow up in smoke. Can’t do that with a clear conscience when innocent lives could be lost, too. But maybe I’m the only one who considered the hotel guests and staff as unacceptable liabilities. The Butcher twins haven’t arrived yet, and with each passing second that The Firm’s boys aren’t here, my impatience morphs into dreaded uneasiness.
I’m two seconds away from getting my father far away from this place when the double doors to the room swing open–Benny and Danny Butcher finally making their grand entrance. As Benny takes his seat at the table and his twin stands tall behind him, we all notice how their clothes are covered in dried blood.
“You’re late,” Giovanni Moretti, the boss of the Outfit Syndicate, scolds annoyedly.
“We’re here, aren’t we?” Benny replies, his utter boredom making his thick British accent even more pronounced as he slumps back into his chair. “Count your blessings, Giovanni, that we came at all.”
“Go n-ithe an cat thú is go n-ithe an diabhal an cat,” Athair mumbles under his breath, meaning may the cat eat you, and may the devil eat the cat.
The old Irish proverb might not offend these twats, but it’s my father’s humorous way of telling the English fuckers to rot in hell, all while having a smile on his face.
If I had it my way, it wouldn’t just be the Butcher twins I’d send off to the underworld where they belong. But then again, this whole fucking table deserves a little corner in the fiery pits of hell, considering how we make our money.
Take the Bratva, for example. Like us, they are all about guns and women, but that is as far as our similarities go. The way we conduct business could not be more different than how they go about it. We treat our whores with dignity and respect. We don’t traffic them into the country against their will in shipping containers like those pigs. Our girls get a piece of the pie for their hard work, while the Russians beat and starve their girls to within an inch of their lives should they even think of asking for the same rights. Rumor has it that they like to keep their whores high as kites while their johns have their way with them, as a form of payment for their services.
Bratva scum.
But if there is one thing we Kellys hate more than treating women like garbage, it’s the drugs that infest our streets. And all that supply can be traced back to one family—the Hernandez Cartel. They’ve made their fortune off of junkies’ backs and the devastation of their families. The Mexican Cartel never once batted an eye at turning most of the U.S. into jittery zombies who would suck cock and kill their own grandmothers to get their next fix.
That’s the only thing La Cosa Nostra and The Outfit have in common with us. We despise drugs. Selling, trafficking, anything related to the business we find unsavory. Not that it makes us any better than the Hernandez Cartel. We might turn up our noses on smack, but we’re totally okay with smuggling enough guns around the world to start a civil war.