“I know who my father is, thank you.” I snapped out, stretching my arm and shooting in his other knee.
“I’m your fucking package.” I shot into his right foot. “I come with the note: if you fuck with this family, we fuck back.” Then again in the left.
Then his chest twice.
He grinned up at me, a dark red mark over his face. “How’s your brother?”
I shot again at his crotch. “How’s yours?”
“FUCK YOU…”
“You think you’re going to die, that’s why you’re so brave right now. Why you can even smile. You think this is as bad as it gets…but, Elroy.” Crouching down beside him, I pressed the gun into his bullet wound. “I’m a very good doctor and an even better shot. Which means I’ve missed all of your most fatal organs and know how to keep you alive just long enough to see what my brother will do.”
His eyes widened.
“Do you know what this is?” I said, taking out a vial from my coat pocket along with the syringe, slowly filling it up. “I guess you don’t and it doesn’t really matter. Just know it will hurt, and no one will hear you scream. You walked into the wrong barbershop today.”
Forcing his eyes open, he shook, but it didn’t matter. It only made it hurt more as I injected it into his eye.
“My brother has saved my life more times than I can count and you almost took him away before I could say thank you.” I rose back to my feet. “Pray he recovers fast enough to kill you himself because if it were me…I’d make sure you never died. I’d take you to the edge and bring you back over and over…and over again.”
He passed out either from the pain or fear…maybe both.
When I rose back onto my feet I looked around at the neighborhood, and of course there were more than a few people, all of them staring at me.
“GRANDPAPA!”
Rotating back toward the shattered store, looking through the broken glass door, I watched as Gabby, just as Ivy had done for Ethan, crouched down beside her grandfather crying, holding on to him. Rushing back to him, he grinned up at me.
“G...ood…thing…I drank…the wine…huh?” He laughed and coughed up blood.
“GRANDPAPA! GRANDPAPA!” Gabby screamed, shaking his arm, looking up at me. “HELP HIM!”
I couldn’t. There was nothing that could be done.
He knew that and just kept smiling at me, hugging her with one hand while he reached up for me with the other. Kneeling down, I took it.
“Your brother…Il bur…attinaio…” He laughed, and then he was gone.
Your brother, the puppet master… His words seeped into my mind like poison and I stared down at his blood…as it crept over the black and white checkered floor.
No.
Slowly rising from the ground, I just watched the blood as it rolled over the ground toward my feet. Gabby’s sobbing was fading into the background as I tried to deny this feeling coming over me.
He didn’t plan this.
Not with Gabby.
Not with Ivy…no.
But then I thought about how I had everything I needed to save his life.
How everything was so tightly cleaned up. How he’d gotten everything he wanted.
Boston was on its knees.
The Finnegan brothers…were dead or dying.