She continued to stare at me, shivering. I had to stand down. This was an innocent woman and her kids, who probably had no part in her husband's wrongdoings. I had to leave them alone.
"Ya Allah, please protect me and my children," she whispered, weeping. "Only You are worthy of worship. Please save us, Allah…"
As she called out to her Lord, I could feel my heart twist into knots. It was a foreign feeling that I wasn't used to. Monsters like me weren't meant to feel anything.
Fizz had his arms folded, with an uneasy expression on his face. Fizz was Muslim too, although he wasn't religious. Out of respect for Fizz, I knew I would have to let this go, and go and look for Tariq elsewhere.
But hell, if this Tariq bastard had set his family up to stay here, knowing that we were coming to collect…
Lord knows, I wasn't going to spare that motherfucker any mercy when I found him. Twisted bastard, making his family face and pay the price for his dirty motherfucking deeds.
"Stand down," Fizz hissed. "Leave them alone. Let's get out of here."
He made his way to the mother and his children, crouching down. "Nobody's going to harm you. Don't worry. You're going to be fine."
The mother gave him a feeble nod. "Jazakallahu Khairan," she breathed, meaning May Allah reward you with goodness.
Fizz gave her a reassuring nod, before getting back up on his feet and joining me.
"Come on, let's go." I nodded towards Massimo, Sergio and the other men.
"What, we're just going to go after coming all this way?" Sergio snarled. "Aren't we going to make that motherfucker pay?"
"You said yourself feds are trailing the place, so we need to get the fuck out of here anyway," I shot back, pissed off that they had the audacity to argue back to me. They were my men. They had to follow my fucking orders.
"I checked the window, there's no cop cars," Massimo snarled. "We're staying here until the job's finished. Nobody makes a fool out of us and lives to tell the fucking story!"
"I said stand the fuck down, Massimo!" I roared. "No innocents, remember! This is just a poor woman and her fucking kids, Tariq isn't here! There's nothing we can fucking do!"
"Know your fucking place, Massimo," Fizz seethed, narrowing his eyes, as he shot Massimo a warning look, meaning that he meant business.
This only riled up Massimo even more.
"Fuck it, Massimo," Sergio sighed. "Let's get out of here."
"Good man, Sergio," I sighed. "Tomorrow, I want you to work on the security control system with Leonardo, cross-search Tariq's face and see if he comes up on any security cameras. We'll have a better chance of finding him that way."
"Understood, Boss," Sergio nodded.
We made our way to the door, ready to make our way out of the apartment, after a wasted fucking trip, and wasted fucking time.
"Thank you, Allah," came the mother's sobs, as she continued to pray to God, as we continued to make our way out. "I'm eternally in Your debt."
"One second, Boss, I need a piss," said Lorenzo, another one of my men.
I rolled my eyes agitatedly, stopping at the door. "Fine, hurry the fuck up then, Lorenzo."
Lorenzo nodded, darting towards the bathroom.
"What a day," Fizz sighed.
I narrowed my eyes, as my eyes scanned the room. Lorenzo had just gone to the toilet, Sergio was standing next to Fizz, all of my men were here…
Except one.
Where the fuck had Massimo gone?
"Massimo?" I breathed, panicking as I searched the room, trying to figure out where the hell he went, and what the hell was going on. "MASSIMO?!"
And then I felt my heart stop beating. My surroundings blurring around me, as the full extent of what was happening hit me from a million directions at once, each time like a stab to my fucking heart.
I couldn't breathe.
I couldn't fucking breathe.
"NOOOOOOOOOOO!" Fizz bellowed, collapsing to the ground, rocking himself backwards and forwards, as he sobbed and screamed until he was blue in the face.
It felt like he would never stop screaming.
We heard several gunshots, and each one of us knew full well the extent of what this meant.
Bullets flying.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
One bullet.
Two bullets.
Three bullets.
I could feel my eyes fog with tears as I willed my body to move, and ran straight back to the room we'd been in earlier, my vision going hazy, my knees going weak, barely able to carry me up.
The only time I'd ever shown any emotion in my dark world.
"I told you we had to teach that motherfucker a lesson," Massimo seethed, as my eyes darted to the ground…
Where the mother and her children were bleeding out to their death and had their brains blown out all over the room, and the last words that were uttered from the mother's lips before her and her children stopped breathing…
Were "La ilaha illallah, Muhammadur Rasulullah".
There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.
She was just a woman who'd done nothing wrong. Her children were so young… so fucking young.
I screamed bloody murder as I watched the color drain away from the kids' faces. They were too young to be reunited with their Lord. Gone too soon, they hadn't even lived their fucking lives yet.
There was so much blood…
So much fucking blood.
I would never be able to forgive myself for letting this happen. For not getting Massimo the fuck out of here, knowing how riled up he was.
But I never expected him to go back to the children and defy me like this.
I knew that this scene was forever going to etch itself into my memory. Haunting my dreams every day, replaying itself into my mind over and over like a form of motherfucking torture. The rules of the Cosa Nostra had been broken. This was the price I had to pay for the fucked up life I lived. I'd chosen this way of life, and I had to deal with the consequences.
Even if it killed me.
From this day forward…
I would never be the same again.