war, with thick Kevlar vests, spare bullet belts, and radios, along with other junk strapped to their belts. A large rifle-like gun leaned against the wall beside each guard. The huge weapon reminded Vincenzo of the elephant gun he’d fired a year ago at an African Safari. It had enough stopping power to kill a charging pachyderm.
What the fuck is all this for? I thought this was a peaceful meeting.
“Vinny, come join us,” Phil, the Boss for the Montreal area called out.
The three family leaders sat in leather armchairs situated around a circular coffee table in the middle of the hangar. One chair remained empty. A bottle of booze sat on the little table, an empty glass placed in front of the unoccupied chair.
Vincenzo walked over, leaned down to the table and grabbed the bottle of Johnny Walker to pour himself a shot. In all his years of running errands for his father, he had only met two of the men sitting at the table. The third man was hardly seen by anybody.
The last thing he wanted was for them to see his hands shaking. He poured fast, set the bottle down, and with the ease borne among men of stature, he sat down, arms stretched out, and legs open.
“It’s Vincenzo, not Vinny. Don’t ever call me Vinny again. Only my mother got to call me that, God rest her soul.”
The three men exchanged glances as Vincenzo took a large swig of the whiskey.
“Now that we’re all here, let’s get started-”
A gunshot in the distance cut him off.
Vincenzo jumped a little and leaned forward. “What the fuck?”
All three men turned to him. Another gunshot rang out through the night.
He studied their faces, one by one.
What the hell is going on?
Phil, the man who called him Vinny, spoke first. “Does your father know about the two men you brought with you?”
“What men?” Vincenzo asked.
Phil looked at his colleagues and then back at Vincenzo. “Is this how we’re to conduct a meeting? One that is supposed to be based on trust? Your family was asked to be here out of respect. Your family has ties to the old country. The Fuccini’s are one of the strongest families in Sicily today. But you come here and lie to us. How do you expect us to respond?”
Vincenzo felt stumped. He held the lowest rank. He knew it and they knew it. It should be his father sitting here. Was this an ambush? Would they try to take out a boss’s son? Was that the purpose from the beginning?
Whether it was or not, he couldn’t come to them from a place of weakness. He had to show strength. One day, he would run the Fuccini family and these men would have to respect that.
“I brought my own security. That is how a Fuccini family member handles things. If you have a problem with that, talk to my father.”
There was a moment of silence before Phil responded. Vincenzo lifted his glass and sipped the whiskey. As soon as he did it, he judged the sip to be weak, feminine. He needed to hold their stare, not back down, and especially not sip his beverage as it smacked of nervousness, which meant weakness to these men.
Shit, I wish I could walk in the fucking door again and do this all over.
“We have no issue with security. Look around you.” Phil gestured with a wave of his arm. “I have security everywhere. What we have an issue with is you have defied the terms of our meeting. We made sure every family knew the terms. This meeting was to broker peace among us. We hire a joint security force, unbiased to any family. Our drivers wait in their cars. The location was only announced hours ago and was distributed through your store in Mississauga. That’s it. Any other guns or security detail would be considered hostile and the family member who brought them would be expelled from the meeting.”
Okay, now you’re talking to me like I’m a baby.
“Look, Phil, my men were here to watch my back, that’s it. They weren’t hostile.” Vincenzo pointed his finger at Phil. “Killing them was a mistake. That was hostile. You will have to make good to my father.”
Phil laughed.
“What the fuck is so funny?”
“We won’t have to make good to anyone. Your father knew the terms and he agreed to them. It is you who will have to make good, and you’ll have to do it to everyone in this room.”
Vincenzo had no idea what to say. Losing his temper right now would go a long way to kill any sort of deal for the Fuccini family, and that would go against his father’s wishes.
“We watched,” Phil continued, “as you slowed your car and pretended to piss on the road, your headlights turned off so that your two guys could run and hide. What do you take us for, amateurs? We have men posted ten kilometers in every direction. A fucking Cessna couldn’t get within a hundred meters of this building without being blown back into the last century. Maybe you’re not ready for this. Is it possible your daddy sent the wrong man?”
Vincenzo had heard enough. Two good men were dead. He needed this deal because if peace could be brokered, the families were supposed to work together in a more financially connected way. Within a year, his father had told him, they would be three times richer than they already were. But he wouldn’t sit there and be talked down to by some asshole who just had two of his men clipped for the crime of protecting him.
He stood up, swallowed the last of his whiskey and slammed the glass down hard.
“We’re done here.”
“I don’t think so,” Phil said. “The meeting hasn’t even started. But it won’t start until you tell us how you will make good on your disrespect.”
Vincenzo scanned the faces of the other men present. He looked up and examined the faces of the security detail closest to the foursome. What were they thinking, challenging him like this? He had done nothing wrong, yet he wouldn’t bow down to these men like he was a pussy. No way. They would always remember this night. If he caved, years from now the word on the street would affirm that anyone could push the Fuccini family around.
But he couldn’t leave without the peace deal in hand.
There had to be another way.
He reached in his jacket and pulled out his pack of cigarettes, flipped one out, placed it on his lips and started patting himself down for a lighter. He came up empty. The nearest guard watched him. Vincenzo stepped around his chair and walked up to the guard.
“Got a light?” he asked.
The guard shook his head in the negative.
Vincenzo turned back to the three men watching him. He reached in to his pocket and touched his keychain. “Ahh, here it is.”
He yanked the keychain out and grabbed the guard’s hand at the same time. The Kubaton was about the size of a regular Bic pen, but it was made of steel and twice as thick. Vincenzo slapped the Kubaton on top of the guard’s wrist and twisted up with force, snapping the wrist bone.
The guard screamed and dropped to one knee in front of Vincenzo. In that moment, he flipped the catch on the Kubaton and slid the hidden knife out. Knowing another guard might attack him at any second, he spun on his heel, and in the same motion, sliced the knife along the exposed neck of the guard, deep enough for a killing blow.
He was still turning back to the men in the leather chairs as the guard gagged on his own blood and fell to the floor of the hangar.
Vincenzo grabbed the huge elephant gun off the wall and aimed it at the nearest guard.
“Everyone, be cool. Stay cool or more people die.” He had to aim it at someone, lest a guard use his M16 to redecorate his face. “There will be no making good from me. It is you three who will make good to me and my family.”
All the men standing along the perimeter of the building edged closer. Phil raised a hand and the men stopped.
“Enlighten us. Why do we have to make good to you?”
They seemed all too calm. “For killing the men I brought with me.”
Phil smiled and looked around at the other two bosses, who smiled along with him.
In that moment, Vincenzo wanted to use the first bullet to erase that fucking cocky smile off the man’s ass of
