章節 8: Chapter 8: Honor and Responsibility
Diego aka Arrow’s POV
“Tell us who you’re working with!” Marcell yelled.
There was a loud pop of his fist connecting with the bleeding man tied to the metal chair, his once pristine white shirt was now more red than white. The blood hadn’t even had the time to dry before Marcell’s fist cut open a new wound on his lip.
“Angel,” I spoke quietly, being sure to use his made name. “Let me try to speak with him.”
This was our normal shtick. Marcell would soften them up, lull them into thinking they had experienced the worst of us, put their bodies into so much pain that they would be so relieved when I would step in. I wasn’t the best of us. But they didn’t know that.
Marcell nodded his head. A malicious grin took over his normally endearing face. His boyish charm morphed in this warehouse. Both of us became ungodly forms of the men who existed at the heart of who we were, when we were asked to do our duties to the family.
My uncle ensured that we would perform regardless of the assignment doled out to us. How could we say no, when we knew that the mere rejection of his authority as Don resulted in death? He would tell us that when we were ready to say no to either be prepared to die for the cause we were so willing to abandon the family for or be prepared to put a bullet in his head.
But we all knew that there was no way out, and because of that understanding we adapted. In some preservation of our morality, we did it in the names of the men they made us. It was easier that way. It was easier to wash the blood off your hands at night when those hands belonged to a man named Arrow. Not Diego.
I knelt in front of the bleeding, and now a sobbing, man in front of me, listening to my cousin's footsteps fade off in the distance of the open warehouse. We wouldn’t have true privacy, but the man in front of me didn’t need to know that.
“What’s your name?” I asked him, keeping my voice low. His one partially-swollen eye that still remained open looked at me, shocked.
“Neo…” he responded, his voice quivering.
“No,” I reprimanded him firmly. “Not your made name, your real name.”
The man who called himself Neo looked around the room nervously, sensing a trap that didn’t exist. His breathing was growing rapid and I was nervous that he was going to make himself hyperventilate and pass out. He wouldn’t be any good to anyone if he fainted.
“It’s just you and me, Neo… Your secret is safe with me,” I encouraged him.
“P-Pete,” he stuttered.
“Pete,” I repeated. “See, that wasn’t hard. Pete. Do you have a family, Pete?” I asked him, standing up looming in front of him.
“Please, don’t hurt them,” Pete begged.
“Pete. It would be very wise of you to remember that you are in no position to tell me what to do,” I stated, my tone shifting low and menacing. Pete’s eye grew wide—his other was swollen shut, but stretched and pulled to open. “I’m not going to repeat my question.”
“No family, just a girlfriend.” Pete spilled out the information quickly.
“Girlfriend?” The revelation caught me off guard.
“We just started seeing each other. I swear man, she doesn’t know anything. She thinks I deliver packages… Like the mail,” Pete assured me, his demeanor changed since he mentioned his girlfriend. Gone was the quivering shell of a man who was just enduring the pain, now he had something to fight for. Something to protect.
“Where did you meet her at?” I asked him, unsure really why it was important.
“What?” Pete asked me, just as confused as I was.
“I don’t like repeating myself, Pete.” I reminded him.
“W-we met at one of her friends' birthday parties. They had it at this bar in mid-town. I bought her a drink,” Pete answered my demand nervously.
“What was it about her?” I asked him.
“She has this smile man,” Pete stated. “It completely takes my breath away.”
“Arrow,” Marcell’s voice barked from behind me, startling me and my hijacked interrogation of Pete.
I wordlessly left Pete tied to a chair bleeding from various cuts from his face and followed my cousin, still confused about how and where the interrogation had gone awry. Interrogating traitors, enemies, and worthless scum was like breathing to me, I no longer even had to think, but something had shifted inside of me since my date with Katie.
As if the man inside of me who I had so securely locked away had his taste of freedom and no longer wanted to sit quietly in the recesses of my mind. He wanted his fair shake at life. Making my job ten times harder.
“What the hell was that, Arrow?” Marcell chastised me quietly once we exited the warehouse. Our men were patrolling the exterior of the warehouse, ensuring our safety and the safety of the goods stored inside.
“He doesn’t know anything,” I stated.
“How would you know that? From what it sounded like, you and ‘Pete’ there were talking like two girls at the lockers in high school…” Marcell commented sarcastically.
“I don’t need to drive my fist in his face in order to figure out that he wasn’t the snitch, Angel,” I said defensively, growing tired of my cousin’s tone.
“What makes you so sure?” Marcell asked.
“He’s got a new woman; he wouldn’t risk a woman untied to the family being in danger just for a few extra thousand in his pocket. Pete’s been with the family since he was sixteen, Angel, we know him. We know he would only betray us for a good purpose, this isn’t it,” I insisted.
I was rising in defense of a man who, yes, we did know, but was nothing to us other than a man who did the work we didn’t want to do. In truth, Pete had every motive to betray our uncle. No one, not even I, would blame him for taking a few extra thousand dollars, but new love was enough purpose for men like him to take extra precautions. Like me.
“Are you sure you’re not just projecting, Arrow?” Marcell asked.
“Big word,” I deflected.
“Sure. Whatever makes it better for you, but you know that we can’t let him walk. If Aldo finds out that we let Pete walk under the excuse that he has a new side piece, he’s going to have someone else end him. All your softening heart will end up doing is make it more painful of a death for Pete, and make you look weak to Aldo.” Marcell voiced the complete and utter truth.
Disgust was thick in the air, as a look of compassion replaced the hardness in my cousin's eyes. The responsibility sat on me as the Underboss. As the one given the assignment directly from my Don to find who the snitch responsible for the robberies of five of our trucks in the last week. The directive straight from the Don’s mouth was to ‘Take the hand of every man who dared to touch what was his.’
Time seemed to slow when I reentered the warehouse. The trek back towards Pete seemed to take a lifetime, the cold metal of my Glock weighing down my belt as if I needed the reminder of the task at hand. Pete’s eyes were filled with an emotion akin to hope when I came into focus, quickly replaced with dread as I reached behind me into my belt, unclipping my Glock.
“You have my word no one will know about her,” I promised as I pulled the trigger.
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