“Yes, sir.”

With that, the phone went dead. My orders were given, and I would follow them without guilt or regret. I reached over to the table and gripped the gun in my hand. The cold metal slipped into my palm with ease and familiarity, fitting snug within my grasp. It held power, power that flowed through it and into my body.

My heart began to beat a little faster with anticipation.

“Let’s go over this one last time,” I said as my finger gently stroked the small trigger. All it would take was one squeeze, one small movement, and that would result in a man’s life ending. It seemed almost ridiculous to think that something so small as a bullet could have such an impact on the world around us. “You came into DePalma territory—”

“I didn’t know! They gave me the package. They told me where to take it. I swear, man,” he objected, cutting me off with his fucking blabbering and only spiking my anger.

If there was one thing I didn’t stand for, it was disrespect.

Without hesitation, I lowered the gun and fired. The kid’s scream filled the small one bedroom apartment as he dropped to the ground, cradling his knee and crying out for forgiveness.

“Please, man! I… I just started here. I didn’t know.” He was sobbing now, choking on his words and pleading for mercy. He was young, if I had to guess maybe around eighteen to twenty years old.

“Who gave you the package?” I snapped.

Panic and desperation poured off him, his eyes still searching the room frantically as if by some miracle someone was going to appear and save him from a fate that had already been signed and sealed and was about to be delivered. “I don’t… I don’t know. He… he told me that if I did it, th-that it would be my way in.”

While shaking my head, I took a step forward. I knew this was where I should feel some kind of mercy, watching tears stream down his cheeks like a young child, begging me to spare his life, adamant that he didn’t know what he was doing. But mercy was not something I held for people who disrespected my family and me. We were stronger and more powerful than any other around for that damn reason because when it came to business, no one was allowed a free pass.

Maybe a better man would have seen the pain in his eyes, the honesty behind his words, and allowed him to walk free. He was young, stupid, and easily manipulated. He, like so many other young boys in our world, would do anything to feel what it was like to hold power over so many others and to be feared by thousands.

They fed off this dream like vultures, desperate to have the world fall to their knees in front of them, greedy for the money and the women that would be drawn to them. They saw these things and jumped at the chance to work for a made-man and prove their worth, eager to show what they were made of.

It made them feel important, self-assured, but around here soldiers were easy to come by. There was another kid like him waiting in the shadows for an opportunity just like this, to show someone bigger and stronger than them that they had the fucking balls to do it. But there was a huge difference between balls and brains. There was no excuse for being a gullible and reckless idiot because all that led to was mistakes, and he was about to learn that mistakes came with lessons and consequences.

The lessons we learned came in many forms. Some were there to test us, shape us into stronger people and allowed us to build resilience. Others were put in place in order for us to prove our worth, and our capabilities.

This was not one of those lessons.

Unfortunately, for the young boy crumbled at my feet, this was a lesson that was not for him, but instead, one for whoever it was that had sent him here.

You don’t fuck with the DePalma family and get away with it.

“Please…” he whispered, his face paling as he stared in horror at the blood that seeped through the cracks in his fingers and dripped down onto the worn dull carpet. He was shaking, probably feeling dizzy, like the darkness was settling over him, but he needed to fight it in order to make it out of here alive.

“You want this all to stop? For it to go away?” I asked calmly, my finger twitching impatiently. I was done, bored of this already. I didn’t want to deal with his sniveling any longer. His pathetic cry baby tone was simply irritating me.

“Yes! Please,” he cried.

I raised my gun, holding it only inches from his forehead. His tears dried instantly, and I saw the moment he realized that this was where the line ended and it was his stop.

“Done.”

The loud bang resonated in my ears, sending shock waves through my body. He dropped in dead weight to the floor as I slowly released the trigger on the gun. My men didn’t move.

“Take him and drop him over the line. Somewhere they will find him,” I ordered, my voice completely neutral as I turned away without even a second glance.

Witnessing someone’s life being drained from the body—it was nothing new. Some people allowed it to eat at them like a disease.

But me. I was immune.

My men worked on gathering him up as I moved out of the small living room and into the kitchen, where the owner of the house was standing at the counter with a coffee mug in his hand.

“This gonna come back on me?” he asked casually, tugging nervously at his scruffy gray beard.

I shook my head. “No. The family appreciates your call.” I pulled a wad of cash from my pocket and placed it on the counter next to where he stood. “You have any neighbors asking questions about us or the noise… you give them my name.”

He nodded, grasping the money in his frail hand like it was his lifeline.

“I’ll send someone to clean this up.”

He nodded. “Thank you, sir.”

With a short nod of my head, I headed out the back of the house to where my men were loading the offending body into a car. They would dump him at the edge of DePalma territory. Whether the family found him or the police, either way, they would know he paid the ultimate price for their stupidity. At this stage, I was unsure about whether he was ordered to cross the border into DePalma territory or whether the guy really was that stupid, but we would find out soon enough.

If he were ordered to come out here, they would know instantly who took him out, and retaliation would come. I wasn’t afraid or scared, but I rarely ever was. Threats of violence were things we dealt with on a daily basis, we lived and breathed them, and when someone came at us, we destroyed them.

This was just the way it was.