The Life: Sacrifice (The Life 3)

I had a feeling that things would go there after doing my research on Dempsey and learning that he had that in him. It only pissed me off even more that he’d gone anywhere near my boy with that mentality in him. I’d asked Marvin not to come but to be on standby just in case things did take a turn but held out hope that they wouldn’t.

Of course, sending Gabe with them is self-explanatory. I’m hoping Marvin can diffuse the situation before my son gets it into his head to take matters into his own hands. That’s my job. At least this whole situation had alerted me to the fact that I had eyes on me, men and women who were trying to bring me down, and even worst, they were planning on going after Pop.

I’m not worried too much about that. I’d spent the last twenty or so years cleaning up the spills from my family’s past and plugging up any holes left behind. The fact that ninety-five percent of our businesses were now legit was also in my favor, but it’s that last five percent I have to take care of now before this thing gets out of hand.

This means I can’t make any drastic moves in the near future, like going after Ricci on my own. Gabe hasn’t said or done anything in the last few days since coming back home, but I can’t shake the feeling that all is not as it seems.

His team is convinced that he’s not up to anything, but what do they know? The boy had dragged them off to Sicily without them being the wiser until they got there. At least I know he’s protected with them around if nothing else since they’ve already lost the fight even if they don’t know it yet.

The fact that Gabe got the drop on them the first go-round means he’s set the stage for all interactions going forward. I know my son; he’s never going to give them the lead, not ever. They’re his now. Whatever, I’ll figure it out. Right now, I’ve got this hump Dempsey and his cohorts to deal with.

“Tommy, I need you and the boys to work on something for me.”

“What is it, boss? Anything.”

“This cazzo, Dempsey, I want you to find everything you can on him, his family, his friends, anyone who’s associated with him. I wanna know who he owes, where he gets his dry cleaning done, where his kids go to school, who his wife is fucking while he’s out being a racist piece of shit. I want it all; you got me? Go back twenty, thirty years, to when he joined the academy.”

“Alright, boss, but uh, ain’t they watching you now?”

“I give a fuck who they watch. If their eyes offend me, pluck those shits out.”

“Everybody?”

“Everybody.” I’m gonna burn this motherfucker to the ground.

GABRIEL

It only took five minutes into the car ride back home for me to realize what Pop had said to my Uncle Marvin, or at least for me to get the gist of it. He spent the time switching off between trying to comfort his son and keeping me calm. I don’t know why they thought I would do something; I hadn’t said a word, and Lance didn’t give a shit about some low-wage scumbag with one too many bags of Doritos under his belt using some outdated insult that really just boils down to calling him lazy.

And as if to prove my point, Lancelot said just as much to his dad. “Dad, that word doesn’t mean the same thing to me as it does to the people on television and in the news. Gabe and I defanged that word when we were about ten.”

“Oh! How did you do that?” Lance looked at me as if to ask if I wanted to explain.

“You do it.”

“Okay, remember how Gabe and I met? When those kids used to bully me? Well, when Gabe went back to New York that time, I think we were like seven, he did some research, like a lot. You know how Gabe is. Anyway, like a few years later, he told me what the word actually meant and why people use it incorrectly. Gabe, you explain; you’re better at it than I am.”

“Fine! Basically, it boils down to this. That word, in a nutshell, means lazy. I simply told Lance that a people who built a whole nation over centuries without pay while their families were being split up and sold as free labor can’t realistically be called lazy. It’s a myth, a word used to inflict pain and fear, but it’s just a lie.”

“So, you see, dad, I’ve known that since I was ten, so that word says more about the person throwing it around than the recipient.”

“And what does it say about them?”