SCARLET
After we ordered, Motshan began to tell me his plan.
“I’ve already had a small meeting with the higher-ups,” he said. “We planned his funeral and decided we would do a huge wake afterwards, where everyone would be required to attend.”
I smiled at the thought of everyone being required to attend a wake. It probably would seem weird to anyone outside of a family involved in organized crime. But to us, it was normal. If the head of the family died, you showed up. It didn’t matter if you had plans, if you were out of the country, or if you just straight up hated the bastard. You were required to come and pay your respects to the rest of the family and welcome the new head of the family as the leader.
“I suggested a day where I knew the Mad Dawgs,” he said, cringing at the name the same way I did every time I heard it. Couldn’t they have thought of a better name? Seriously. “I suggested a day where I knew they had plans of their own. They have a wedding that day, which means they will all be in one place that evening to celebrate.”
“Okay,” I drawled. “Why does that matter? Where do they come in to all of this?”
“They’ve been involved from the start. They have serious connections to this family, and I want them gone. So at the wake, we make a stand, letting everyone know that this family is going in a different direction, that we are cleaning up the corruption and senseless violence that Dulca has been orchestrating for the last however many years,” he said.
“And then,” he continued, “anyone that disagrees…” He trailed off, looking around to make sure no one was listening before meeting my eyes again. “Anyone that disagrees, Scarlet, we take out.”
I let out a laugh.
“Take out?” I ask.
“It may seem drastic—”
“Oh, it definitely seems drastic,” I said. “Fun, but drastic. What are you going to do? Lock them all in one big room, make the announcement, and then kill them all by firing squad if they disagree?”
His face betrayed zero emotion, and I realized that while I was almost making a joke, he was being very, very serious.
“Asculta la mine.” Listen to me. “If we let them just walk away, they’ll form a groundswell movement against me, or they’ll pretend to walk away, and they’ll start their own little fucking gang and try to take us on that way. Or,” he said, pausing for what I could only assume was for a dramatic effect, “they could go recruit the Mad Dawgs.”
“Okay, so I’m assuming this is where you come in with the plan for the Mad Dawgs, then?”
The waitress came over, setting down our food and filling our drinks before leaving us back to what probably looked like a really intense gossip session.
“I don’t want them to have any heads-up that this is coming. Which is why I’m only telling you and Niamh.”
“Well, I should probably stop you there and let you know that anything you say to me will be immediately repeated to the guys once I get home.”
“I know.” He smiled. “I would expect no less. After everything goes down at the wake and that area is secure, we will head over to the wedding reception and take them all out. I want to deplete their numbers so badly that they don’t have a chance to come back anytime soon, if at all.”
“Do you have the firepower for this, Motshan? Do you have people on your side in this family that you can count on? Because last time I checked, everyone in the family licked the ground our father walked on. And even if you say you do, how can you trust them? How do you know that they won’t try to take over the minute you get rid of everyone else?”
He swallowed his bite of food and then took a minute to get his thoughts together. Even though the deli was filled with people, it felt like you could hear a pin drop as I waited for him to give me an answer. The restaurant was filled with people talking and eating, but it was all background noise, fading until I couldn’t hear anything except Motshan’s voice.
“I’ve been working on this ever since I heard what happened to you,” he said, his voice quiet and pained. “You may not believe it, but people in this family loved you, Scarlet. Still love you. And they weren’t all okay with what your father did. Sure, he had his cronies that were all for it. They were all for any stupid plan he had up his corrupt fucking sleeve because they were getting their pockets filled with each job.”
I swallowed against the tightness in my throat. Thinking about that night always made my muscles ache. The terror I felt, the sheer panic when whoever it was got on top of me and held me down…
“But people weren’t happy. And there were whispers behind his back about it. Those whispers made their way to me as I slowly reached out to people, trying to figure out how I could get back and fix what he did.” He took a moment and grabbed my hand, forcing me to look over at him.
“Îmi pare atât de rau, Scarlet,” he said, his voice cracking with emotion. I’m so sorry. “I’m so sorry that I wasn’t there for you. I wasn’t there for you that night, and I wasn’t there for you when you were on the run.”
“There’s nothing you could have done, Motshan.” I rubbed my thumb over the back of his hand and tried not to let the tears spill over. “I was fine, honestly. And I’m kind of happy with how things worked out,” I said with a smile.
“Of course you are,” he said, letting go of my hand and settling back in his seat. “You have three dicks at your disposal every day and night. Who wouldn’t be happy with that?”
I laughed with him and then sat back in my chair, nervously running my fingers through the ends of my hair, tying and untying knots in the black strands.
“Okay, so let me see if I have this straight. On the day of our father’s funeral…which is when, by the way?”
“Next Sunday,” he answered.
“Oh, so we are doing this on the Sabbath. Good thing we aren’t religious,” I said with a laugh. “Okay, so, next Sunday is the funeral, and after that, at the wake, you plan to announce to everyone what you plan to do with the businesses and the family in general. Anyone that disagrees or questions your authority there will be shot on sight, yes?”
He nodded in the affirmative.
“And then once you’ve killed however many people,” I whispered with a shiver. I liked killing as much as the next guy. The thrill you got from it was unlike anything else you would ever experience. But the thought of killing that many people in a single room with so many witnesses… He had better hope the people on his side were the ride-or-die type.
“You’ll then go to the wedding reception of whoever the fuck is getting married in the Mad Dawgs and basically commit another mass murder there, essentially extinguishing the entire gang and any threat they may have held against you.”
“Correct.”
“Okay. And why tell me and the guys all of this? Where do we come in?”