The chatter turned into complete silence when Mick entered the warehouse, closing the door behind him.  Teddy and Joey stood in the corner, guarding the arsenal of weapons they had confiscated, and Mick’s lieutenants sat in rows of chairs in front of him.

Mick didn’t sit down.  He stood in front of his men with his suit coat opened and his hands on his hips.  Although his men might not have noticed a difference in Mick, Teddy and Joey noticed it.  He seemed flustered to them, even a bit unnerved.  They even glanced at each other.  But, as usual, Mick rallied, and got to the point.

“I don’t know how much you’ve heard, but Santo Vichy is dead.  His widow, Natalie, is in my custody for her protection, and for ours, if it comes to that.  The puppet master is supposed to be Teddy Stefani.”

Gasps of disbelief filled the room, but one of puzzlement rather than shock.  Two things were obvious to Mick: they’d heard about Santo’s death and that his widow was under safe house protection.  But they had no clue Teddy Stefani was involved.

One of them couldn’t hold his peace.  “But wait a minute, Boss,” he said.  “Teddy Stefani?  As in dead Teddy Stefani?”

Mick nodded.  “That’s right.”

“But that fucker’s dead.”

“That’s right,” Mick responded.

Everybody looked at each other, while Mick looked at them.  He had already noticed the broken window in the back of the warehouse.  What struck him was how none of his top lieutenants, nor his own sons, noticed it.  But there had been a breach.  Somebody had been inside that warehouse before they all showed up.

Just as he considered the ramifications, another oddity occurred.  Two of his lieutenants, the two furthest in the back of the room, reached beneath their chairs, pulled out a gun apiece, and then jumped from their seats.

“Hands up!” they yelled, pointing their guns.

“And you, Teddy, and you, Joey, get away from those guns.”  It was the guy they all called Louie, a newly installed lieutenant.  Then Louie yelled from the top of his lungs: “Now!”

Teddy and Joey backed away from the arsenal of checked weapons, with their hands in the air, and moved toward their father.

“And you, Boss, keep your hands where we can see them.”

Then his partner yelled: “Everybody against the wall, or I swear this will be the last air you breathe!”

Mick knew it would have had to be the end for all of them if this scheme was to work.  They couldn’t leave anybody alive.  Especially not Mick and his sons.

Mick began walking toward them.

Teddy and Joey were terrified for their father.  “Dad?” Teddy said.

Joey even grabbed at Mick’s suit coat, to pull him back.  But Mick kept walking.

“We said against the wall, Boss!” Louie yelled.  “I’m not fucking with you!”

But when Mick didn’t stop his progression, Louie and his accomplice began to panic.  “You heard me, man.  Stop now or I’ll shoot!”

“Shoot motherfucker,” Mick said.  “All of you clowns coming for me?  Are you out of your fucking minds?  You think I’ll go down that easily?”

Mick could see that Louie was losing his resolve.  Because he was now a man with only one option.  The nuclear option.  He was going to be the man to take Mick the Tick down.  He was so nervous he could piss.

And he used the nuclear option.  Louie pulled the trigger and began firing away at Mick.  Shot after shot after shot.  Teddy and Joey ducked in shock, and the rest of the men in the room ducked in shock too.  Until they realized Louie was firing like a big dog, but Mick wasn’t going down like one.  Mick, in fact, was still advancing on Louie until he was in Louie’s face.  And then he removed the gun from Louie’s hand.

Louie’s accomplice began firing his weapon at Mick, too, but he had no bullets either.  So he tossed his gun and attempted to run.  Teddy pulled out his own gun and fired once, hitting the coward in the back.  His knees buckled, and then he fell.

“Guard the arsenal,” Teddy ordered Joey.  “We don’t know who we can trust.”

Joey pulled out his weapon and hurried to the arsenal.  He, Teddy, and Mick were the only ones in the syndicate who never had to check their weapons, and it was a good thing this go around, Joey thought.  But he also wondered how his father knew the two turncoats didn’t have bullets.

But Mick wasn’t asking questions he already had an answer to.  “Who hired you?” he asked Louie.

But Louie was defeated.  He knew Mick’s ways.  He knew he wasn’t about to get out of this alive.  He had already given up.

“Who hired you?” Mick asked again.

When Louie still wouldn’t respond, and was, in fact, despondent, Mick took the butt of his gun and began to pistol-whip him.  “Who hired you, motherfucker?” Mick asked angrily as he struck him repeatedly.  “Who hired you?”

Louie was down on the floor, covering his now bloody head, but he still wouldn’t say.  He wasn’t giving Mick an inch.  And that angered Mick more than the plot itself.  He trusted this motherfucker to join his organization, allowed him to move up the ranks, and this was how he repaid him?

Mick grabbed Louie by the catch of his shirt, lifted him up, and flung him against the wall.  He beat him with his fists.  He beat him until the white meat.  Everybody in the room, who should have never had any doubt to begin with, saw the viciousness of Mick that day.  He pulverized Louie.

And when Louie slid to the floor, Mick began kicking the life out of him.  Teddy, almost as angry as his father because he was this fool’s supervisor, began kicking him too.  They stomped and kicked and beat Louie until his face was unrecognizable.  They stomped his ass to death.

And then they just stood there.  Mick and Teddy and all of Mick’s men.  Because they all knew this was a turning point.  Mick had to take out his entire crew one time when they tried to pull this shit on him before.  Now it was starting up again?  Fuckers acting as if it was open season on Mick the Tick again?  What the fuck, Mick wondered with a perplexity he wasn’t accustomed to experiencing, was going on?

“What’s happening, Pop?” the usually surefooted Teddy even asked Mick.  He was even more perplexed than his father.

Mick looked at his son, and then looked at his men.  After he had called for the meeting, on a gut-hunch Mick had arrived on site a little earlier, alone, and discovered the broken glass on the backside of the warehouse, and the guns beneath the chairs.  He was the one who took out every bullet.  And although the car behind the building had not yet arrived, he sensed that there would be an outside game, too.  That was why he checked around.  He might have lost a step or two since his days of youth, but that still meant he was a step ahead of everybody else.

Mick knew the threat was contained, and his remaining men would not have been a part of this dumbass plot.  But he still was going to be overly cautious. After he discovered that the warehouse had been breached, he called in another crew to keep an eye on his crew.  They were set up to observe his lieutenants, who each commanded a section of town, at their various posts.  “Get your weapons,” he said to his lieutenants, “and go to your posts.  You’ll get instructions from there.  Lex, Crank,” he said to two men in the group, “hang back.”

“Yes, sir,” said Lex.

“Yes, sir,” Crank said.

The rest of the men began grabbing their guns and preparing to head out.  Mick began heading out as well, with Teddy and Joey on his tail, and Lex and Crank behind them.  “Contact Deuce,” Mick ordered.  “Tell him to put the twins in the safe room until further notice.”

“Deuce?  But Dad, that guy’s in his sixties now,” Joey said as if age was more than a number.

Mick gave him a hard look.  “And he’s still the best motherfucking lieutenant I have.”

Joey walked a little slower.  “Yes, sir,” he said.

“Take Lex with you,” Mick ordered Teddy, “and then you and Joey get to my office and bring your sister in.”

Teddy was surprised.  “You think they’re after Glo?” he asked.  Joey looked at him, too, alarmed.  “You think this is about Gloria?”

Mick stopped walking and exhaled, looking at his sons.  “It’s always about me,” he said.  “But she’s my daughter.  That makes it about her.  Go get her,” Mick added, as they continued walking.

“What about Crank, Pop?” Joey asked.  “You told him to hold back, too.”

“There’s a trio of dead bodies in a car behind this building,” Mick stated.  “Get Crank to supervise a cleanup crew to take care of them, and the two punks we just took out.”

Teddy was surprised to hear about the bodies behind the building.  But he knew that was just his father’s way.  He wasn’t telling anybody everything.  “And what about you?” he asked Mick.  “You’re going to be the one to bring Roz in?”

Mick looked at Teddy as if he’d just asked the world’s dumbest question.  “What do you think?” he asked, and hurried out of the door.