There were Irish here…but there were still enough Italians that you could feel the tension between both groups about to erupt. They were spilt. Irish to my left. Italians to my right. Even the kids who were behind me were spilt. A few of them were saying hi to the kids who had come with their parents to this meeting…but no more than that.
“I was merely making small talk, Emilio,” Ms. Bridget said with a fake smile and nodded to him.
Emilio grunted a reply with the cigarette in his mouth before looking over to me. “You’re taller than I remember.”
“It has been four years,” I replied. “Though it should have only been two weeks. Neither of you were at my welcome home party…should I take that personally?”
“Let me think,” he replied, taking a long drag of his smoke. “Should I take your sister and brother’s actions against my family personally?”
I shrugged, leaning back in my seat. “That depends…do you really want to accept traitors as family? I hope not. That would make you a traitor, too, Emilio.”
He turned to glare at me, his teeth snarling. “Savino, I could understand but Klarissa…she was no FUCKING traitor!”
“Language!” I shook my finger at him and then nodded to the back of me. “Children are here. I was hoping to have a diplomatic conversation with all of you here.”
“You?” Ms. Bridget questioned and pushed further. “You called this meeting, not your brother?”
“I did.”
She shook her head, getting up. “I don’t have time for this.”
Emilio scuffed, rising from his chair. “Look, kid, if your brother really wants to talk, he knows where to find us, okay?”
I nodded to him and watched as they all prepared to leave, but when the first person in the back pushed to open the door, it didn’t budge. I watched as they tried a few times, even moving to the other set of the doors before truly realizing they were locked in.
“What is this?” Bridget snapped, spinning back to look at me. Her red hair whipped to the side with her. “Do you really think you can lock us in here, and we’ll all just be forced to work out our differences?”
“Kid,” Emilio sighed, “when has locking up hothead Irishmen and hot-blooded Italians together ever worked out?”
“It worked for my parents,” I replied with a smile. “After all, here I am half hothead and half hot-blooded. I’m so hot I’m fireproof.”
“This isn’t a game!” Bridget hissed back at me. “Let us out, or you and your seven guards will learn the cruel realities of mob-on-mob violence.”
“Oh… mob-on-mob violence…,” I repeated, nodded. “I like it. That is what I’m going to call today. A lesson on mob-on-mob violence—”
“Wyatt!—” She was cut off by the screams of the kids behind me as they ran like a hoard of white sheep to their parents and families. I could feel the heat of the fire behind me. I could hear the sparks from their videogame and the television as they combusted. But best of all, I could see the orange flames reflected on their faces, in their eyes as the fire spread. Like the little bugs they were, they couldn’t look away from the light. Their necks snapped left to right as they watched the flames spread to the right wall and then to the left, and then toward the ground.
The closer the flames got to them all, the more they could feel the heat, inhaling the smoke, the more their panic set in. The children began to cry.
“MOMMY! MOMMY!” Poor little Miss Pigtails screamed as the flames surrounded her, blocking her path in every direction.
“MARY! SWEETHEART!” Bridget screamed, moving forward toward her daughter.
“I wouldn’t do that if I was you,” I said, reaching into my suit jacket pocket before kicking my feet onto the table, grabbing the eye drops, and using them to wet my eyes.
“You did this!” Bridget yelled at me. I blinked a few times and looked over her again. She’d gotten a few people’s attention, Emilio’s for one, but everyone else…everyone else devolved into the ruthless, self-serving beasts they really were. Pushing one another out of the way to reach the door that wouldn’t budge an inch. They tried kicking the door down. Throwing their bodies into it. Betting against the glass.
“Yes, I did do this. Beautiful, isn’t it?” I asked her. “No one cares about who’s Irish and who’s Italian. No one cares about who killed whom…they just want to save themselves.”
“Little cunt.” Emilio marched toward me. But before he could get any closer, I shot at his ankles, and he fell to his feet right in front of me. Sitting up straighter before he keeled over, I grabbed a fist full of his black hair, holding his head up. Pressing the hot gun to his eye.
“Would you like to know how many strikes you have left?” I asked him, digging the gun deeper into his eye socket. “Let me take this moment to educate you. You are the brother of a traitor, the uncle of a snake. That’s two strikes. You should have come in here not on your motherfucking knees but on your stomach, praying that you didn’t end up in the ground with the rest of the Moretti family. Instead you decided to ignore me. Then you sat at my table without my fucking permission, in my fucking community center. To add insult upon insult upon injury, you called me ‘kid’ TWICE! DO I LOOK LIKE A FUCKING KID TO YOU?”
He clenched his mouth closed, sweat rolling down his face.
“That was a question, Emilio. I want an answer, Emilio.”
“WYATT! MY DAUGHTER—”