For the first time in a decade, Yerevan Group was in the red.
In the business world, the expression "in the red" is another way of saying that a company is losing money or being in debt. It means that the company has more expenses and bills than the funds to pay them. From an accounting perspective, numbers in the financial records are written in red ink to invoke a sense of urgency that signifies financial losses for the business.
Because of that, Marvel had been in a bad mood lately.
"I didn't do that! Please believe me!"
A loud shriek was heard in the entire central corridor of Yerevan's mansion. The man whose voice echoed in the old woods by the walls appeared to be slightly beaten, his clothes were crumpled and dirty. He was kneeling as being held by two guards on his left and right, gripping around his shoulders and wrists to limit his movement.
"At a time like this, obviously that's something you would say," Gilbert responded calmly to the frantic screams, standing before the suspect. "I've heard enough."
"I swear it wasn't me!" The poor man still desperately tried to defend himself as if his life was hanging by a threat. "I wouldn't dare do that! I was framed! I won't betray this family!"
John Ashford, aka James Laurier, was a fully disguised informant who worked for a secret agency. He officially became a member of Yerevan Family three years ago and since then had been trusted for multiple tasks.
From my search, I found that he had been secretly trading information with many organizations, even drug dealers, to gain personal profits. He became a double agent because he was motivated by a great reward and so he connected himself with drugs, which were prohibited by the Family.
Actually, James' drug dealings hadn't been found out. It was I who took the chance to make the aftermath appear sooner by causing major harm not only to Yerevan's finance and business, but also endangering its existence since important information such as the family's association were also leaked from the inside, making it prone to be attacked from the outside.
It was just a matter of time before Yerevan would eventually find out about James' betrayal. I just helped this family to save the efforts and led them straight to the traitor with every piece of evidence I gathered...
I knew it sounded cruel. For an agent myself, I had used someone in such a heartless way possible, even though it was mostly me who caused the damage. But, I needed a black sheep and James Laurier was just perfect to be mine.
In this survival mode, the crime of this Family was my enemy, this mansion was my battlefield, and the people here were either my pawn or my scapegoat. End of story.
But, I was not alone. There were so many people like me here who were aiming for a similar thing, just using different methods. Among us, there was no winner and loser, but those who got caught and those who survived until the end.
I have to be the one who survives and lives until the end, no matter what.
From the moment I arranged a meeting with Aakash in a hotel room, I wanted him to disguise himself as a normal businessman, but his actual role was to be a broker whom I met by chance who offered me the information I needed to find the traitor who caused this mess in exchange of having sex with me, and so we both acted as if we went to a hotel to do the dealing; that was the main idea for my plans.
Since I believed Marvel would likely watch me through his people after the poisoning incident, I couldn't meet my comrades and talk freely like before - I needed a stronger motive to be able to meet and talk with them. This time, I chose to divert Marvel's attention by making unusual trading with some stranger who happened to be a broker, since I expected someone like Marvel, above all his pride and his obsession with me, would mind the idea of me letting another man touch me. Moreover, that "another man" was just a nobody, even below average compared to him. That way, Aakash may be free from being the main target because Marvel's focus would be on me and what I did, not the stranger I played with.
I didn't completely tell my organization about the main idea of my plans because I knew they would disagree. They simply wouldn't let their agent do something as dangerous as that. But, I believed every agent in my organization would do as much as I did in this critical situation; Green Organization would be dismissed if I failed this mission.
That day, though, I had calculated the consequences of provoking Marvel like that. Even if I could say I succeeded with the plans - which I was grateful for - I didn't know his reaction would get beyond my expectation.
Now, just remember what he did to me that night served me the same taste of pain just like the moment I experienced it and for a second, I went back to where it happened... Work harder, I told myself, and make him pay for doing that, I promised myself.
So, I started with Yerevan Group, then Yerevan's underground business. Since it was a legal company, the risks would be more evident as it affected its partnerships. For the time being, it would seem like the business meeting a bad downfall due to the sudden retraction of contracts, bids, and settlements from the other parties after the information of the company's dark identity such as engaging with the underworld had leaked out for its tax frauds, money laundering, gambling, and so on.
Now that the news had spread, the dirty officials who provided licenses for the syndicate to do the illicit transactions would do their best to get off the hook because their involvement with the Mafia would also be exposed to the surface, and to be honest, I didn't care.
It was true that my organization served the government, and so revealing the secret of some greedy officials who helped the gangsters in exchange for easy money might as well do the harm to the authorities, but I did all this for Charles and my family, not for those trashes.
After a moment, Marvel walked through the front foyer into the central corridor to join in. His entrance served the hallway suddenly quiet, leaving only the sound of his shoes clacking steadily against the floor. All eyes aimed at him, the crowd stepped aside to give him the whole way. He stopped when he was close enough to identify the suspect's face and locked his gaze for a while.
"Talk," Marvel finally talked to James.
"B-Boss, I swear it wasn't me who poisoned you or leaked the information to the government... I was framed! I won't betray you!" James let his quivering voice be heard.
Dozens of men were seen enraged after that dramatic confession, but Marvel didn't say anything. Not getting the answer he wanted to hear, he sighed in annoyance for the wasted time. He glanced at the watch around his wrist and then at Tanaka. Catching the signal, Tanaka nodded and immediately had his underlings bring James down to the execution chamber.
The night spoke of cold darkness below ground. There were shapes in monochrome like a scene from a black-and-white movie, but for now, the wall and the floor were muted hues where the hanging lights brought rusty orange to deepest scarlet, even the silhouettes were already more discernible than they were only a short while before.
Though the room was unfamiliar as I entered, in that so-called "execution chamber", even the silence had an eerie feeling. I felt as if the air moved like cool water with the artificially pungent aromas of chemicals, bleach, and metallic dried blood, together infused me far more deeply than it should.
"Do you know where this is?" Tanaka asked James, even if nobody would fail to notice the identity of the room. "You should have talked and admitted your mistakes when Boss was still kindly speaking to you above."
"Please... I don't deserve to be here! I'm innocent!" James stuck to his words, even though it was already too late because they had already seen the evidence I set up.
"This is your last chance," Tanaka made it clear so that James could understand his situation and if he wanted to save himself, he should have done it now.
James was forced to sit on a wooden chair by Marvel's men, both his wrists and ankles were tied up with old cuffs attached to a long chain to prevent him from running away. Marvel was standing in front of him, staring at him in silence while he kept on claiming his innocence, insisting he didn't do anything.
At this point, nobody knew what Marvel was thinking - it could be the way he wanted to torture the traitor or something as such, but it was certain that he didn't let anyone know what was going on in his head.
I was watching the judgement from the other side of the room with Gilbert beside me and some guards already swarming through every corner.
"Here, is the president going to... end him?" I hesitantly asked Gilbert about what might happen to James.
Now that we had caught the man behind all that happened lately, Gilbert might have less of the audacity toward me because his suspicion had been cleared.
"Not right away," Gilbert casually replied to my question. "Since we've already collected the proofs, this interrogation only means to claim his faithfulness to this Family, that's why we're doing it in this room to test him."
So, am I going to witness that bizarre "cutting off a pinky finger" ritual?
I didn't turn my thought into words, but from what Gilbert told me, his reaction toward the whole situation showed me that he was already so accustomed to the system Yerevan used. And I was glad I was right about my prediction that my black sheep wouldn't necessarily die.
Under my feigned cool detachment, I was watching my plans going smoothly; finding the secrets about Yerevan Family, transferring the information about the Mafia to my organization and the government, clearing the suspicion toward me about Marvel's poisoning incident, and lastly, destroying the underworld's line of business little by little.
"Boss doesn't like to give traitors a chance, and so this is his first and last warning," Gilbert continued and suddenly I could relate to James' current situation, recalling the night Marvel gave me a warning. "If the man is willing to talk, we can figure out the people he's had the transactions with, or even the organization he's been working for, to decide what to do with him next. Still, it all depends on our boss' decisio-"
BANG!!!
The faint murmur in the entire chamber changed into a horror silence after that loud blast, echoing horrifically within that windowless room. The thin gas escaped the muzzle of a gun after it was fired and the sound of a cartridge rolling down the floor filled the air. In shock, all eyes aimed at Marvel.
He was still standing there, but with his right hand stretched forward and the fingers firmly gripping around a revolver whose one of the total six chambers of the rotating cylinder had become empty.
The focus immediately turned to James Laurier as his body hit the floor with a terrific thud and an awful crack of the wooden chair almost together, followed by the clinking sound of the chain. There was no cry of pain nor word of misery from him after he fell down - it was just dreadful silence.
The blood left the artery it belonged in surges, beaten out by a slowing heart. It didn't gush in a constant flow, but in time with the weakening pulses beneath James' chest. At first, it came thick and strong, flowing from his head through his black hair by the ripped scalp, oozing from the crushed skull, no warmer or cooler than his own skin. After a few moments, more blood was still leaving his rapidly paling flesh. It gradually filled the spaces between the crimson spatters on the floor.
There were at least a dozen of men in the room, and in an instance, they became a silent, stunned crowd. Among that audience, I looked at Marvel and fear had already owned me, dominating every thought, much more than any terror. The tiny spatters of blood were on some parts of him, needing to be wiped, waiting to be cleaned, adding dramatical patterns on his outfit, just like what I saw in the movie, except there was no screen but my reality.
As he let the gravity pull his hand down, his gaze slowly shifted at me and he could see every unpleasant emotion I knew registered on my face before I could hide it. Standing there in such an unexplained manner, wearing such an unreadable expression, he locked my vision as well as my motion even without doing anything.
'The Mafia takes murder very seriously. They don't just go kill people so easily.'
I was wrong.