by AM Cosgrove
“Jesus Christ, man. Ethan Adams did this to you?”
“Yeah, how’d you find me?”
“Well, when you didn’t answer me, I got in the car and started hitting all the places I thought you might have been. It was just lucky I found you here.”
“Did you hear the conversation?” Jack tried to get to his feet and his brother had to steady him as he stumbled his way to his car.
“Enough to know what is going on. Ethan said he was going after John and that he was going to split the family up to do it. And if you tried to stop him, he was going to kill you and Mirabelle.” Will opened Jack’s car door and helped him inside. “Did I miss anything?”
“Pretty much sums it up nicely,” Jack groaned as he tried to get comfortable.
“Do you have a towel or anything? You’re bleeding all over the place.” Will opened the back door and checked in the duffle bag sitting on the seat.
“There might be one in there I can’t remember.”
“You’ve had a right good smash on the back of your head. It’s a wonder you can still remember your name.”
“Funny.”
“Listen, I’ll take what I can get in this mess,” Will said, holding the towel to his brother’s head while taking a seat in the back of the car.
“We are going to have to tell John.”
“Yeah, he is going to have to listen to you now.”
“He probably won’t, but that doesn’t mean we just abandon him. We are going to have to go to war with the Adams family.”
“Agreed. But we have to be damned sure that we are going to be able to win it or else—” Will’s voice trailed off.
“Yeah, I know, Little Brother. You don’t have to tell me what the consequences are going to be if we fail.” Jack sat there a moment, thinking. He was glad that while he’d had the ever-living shit kicked out of him, that in the end, he had someone who was finally listening to the things that he was saying. It was a mildly comforting thought.
“Alright, Kid. We really should go have a talk with John about all of this before things start getting out of hand.”
“Are you going to be able to drive? Maybe we should leave your car here and I’ll drive.”
“If we do that, someone is going to find the seat all covered with blood and the next thing you know, we will have the cops all over us again, and we don’t need any of that hanging over our heads any more than we already have.”
“Good point. I’ll follow you out,” Will said, getting out of the car and closing the door behind him.
Jack pulled out of the parking space and up out of the underground. Will followed closely on his tail.
They made their way through the streets slowly. Jack looked around at all the people popping around the streets. He often wondered what it would be like to just be a normal man from a normal family. Get up, go to work every day, come home, play with the kids, and never have to look over his shoulder. It was something that he knew he would never be able to experience in this lifetime. It wasn’t the path that had been laid out for him and he knew it, but it did give him an appreciation for what Will was trying to build for himself. Knowing he had two older brothers gave him the chance to try to experience life outside of the family. He admired Will for that. Although he wanted nothing to do with the family business, he never failed to turn up when he was needed the most.
His phone rang. It was John.
“Hello, John,” Jack answered.
“What the hell is going on?”
“Nice to hear from you too, Brother.”
“Will just called me and then he said something about someone chasing him or something, and the phone hung up and I can’t reach him.”
Jack looked in his rear-view mirror, but couldn’t see Will’s car.
“What the fuck?” Jack cranked the wheel hard and pulled a U-turn right in the middle of the road. He took off back in the direction from which he had just come.
“John, I’ll call you back.” Jack hung up the phone. It didn’t take long for Jack to find Will and his car.
His car had been wrapped around a light pole. He was standing next to it, unhurt but dazed. People had started gathering around.
“Will!” Jack called out of the window.
Will looked at him confused for a second.
“Will, get in the damned car.”
Will stumbled over and got into the car. Jack put the pedal into the floor mat just as the sirens started up in the distance.
Jack hit redial on the Bluetooth.
“Yeah, did you find him?”
“I got him, he’s alive. Where the fuck are you?” Jack asked as he roared onto the freeway.
They pulled up to John’s house a half an hour later. John was standing outside on the front steps when they arrived. Will had just finally started breathing normally again and wasn’t quite so dazed.
“What the hell happened?” John asked as they got out of the car. “You two look like you’ve been through a war.”
“That is exactly where we have been.”
John ushered them inside.
“Who?”
“Adams family—Ethan Adams, to be exact,” Jack said as he took a seat in his brother’s front room.
“I fucking told you that was a bad idea, but no, you don’t listen to me when I talk because you know better. Now you’ve got your brother wrapped up in it.” John crossed his arms.
“They started it, John.”
“I don’t want to hear your conspiracy theory bullshit any—” John started before Will cut him off.
“John, you might want to listen.”
“Don’t tell me he’s got you convinced that there is some big plot by Ethan and his lot to take us down.”
“That’s precisely it.” Will sat down gingerly next to Jack.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Now I have two of you with your head in the fucking clouds.” John threw his hands up in the air and walked over to the bar. “I need a fucking drink.”
Will shook his head. “You might as well pour the rest of us one while you’re there because this is one hell of a thing, John.”
“I don’t understand why you both are so hell-bent on blaming the Adams family for this shit? The only thing that Jack has ever done to them, is that broad he tried to fuck and then got into it with her boyfriend.”
“Yeah, that was a setup, John,” Jack piped up.
“Right, you’ve said that already, but I fail to see how this is fitting together.”
John passed out drinks to the other two.
“That is the thing. They figured if they discredited me with you that you would oust me. Then they would slowly drive Will away, leaving you all by yourself at the helm, and vulnerable to whatever it is they were planning.”
“And what makes you think that because you have convinced Will that this is the case that I am going to believe you.”
“Because I am your brother, damn it, and you are supposed to be on my fucking side!” Jack roared standing up to face his brother.
Will stood up and held up a hand to both brother’s chests, separating them for the moment. “I think I may have something that will help. But I need the two of you to settle the fuck down for a moment.”
Neither man moved and continued standing there staring at each other.
“Now!” Will’s voice growled, suddenly stern.
As much as Jack didn’t want to budge, he also had to trust that whatever Will had, would be enough to put his brother’s mind at ease; and maybe, just maybe, convince him that Jack wasn’t crazy.
Jack sat back down onto the seat as John turned and walked across the room.
William pulled his phone out of his pocket.
“What is it that you have to show me, Little Brother?” John asked, eyeing the younger of his siblings.
“Is this true?” John asked, looking directly at Jack.
“I didn’t know about the recording, but I did call Will when Ethan’s goon squad had me cornered in an underground.” Jack shrugged, interested in the sudden turn of events.
Will hit play on the recording, and the three men listened to the slightly muffled conversation from hours before between Jack and Ethan Adams.
John walked silently over to the bar and poured himself another drink. It was after the recording stopped, right at the part where Jack had fallen unconscious. The sound of tires screeching made it unbearable to listen to any further.
“I never would have guessed,” he said when he finally found the words.
“I know. I get it. I’ve been a bit of a cockup for the last… however long, and it didn’t look good.”
“You have, but I made a mistake in not trusting you and your judgment. I thought for sure that it was nothing more than a simple payback for something shitty you had done.”
“No sense dwelling on the past when we know better now,” Will said, putting his phone back in his pocket.
“The question is, what do we do with this information now that we know what we are up against? As strong as we are, we are nowhere near the powerhouse that the Adams family is. “
“True, but at the same time, they think that you have already started slowly leaving me behind. They don’t realize that Will knows, and now you do. This could be something we could use to our advantage.”
“Fair enough, but how? The second we start making any waves in their direction, they will know that we’re not as split up as they thought we were.”
“That’s why we are going to have to make it seem that we are still on the outs. Then when they let their guard down, that’s when we band together and strike.”
“Sneak up behind them when they aren’t looking, and hit ‘em in the back of the head with a frying pan,”
Will piped up.
“Something like that, Little Brother… something like that.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Jack
The room was filled with smoke hanging in the air from pipes and cigarettes. There was a din of voices that you could barely hear yourself think over. There wasn’t an empty chair anywhere in the building. John and Will were milling around, talking to each of the occupants and their people. Jack stood there trying to get his head in the game. His stomach was in knots. If word somehow got out that he was here, and that they were planning what they were, there would be hell to pay.
“Jack. Good to see you,” Malachi Murdock said, walking up to him.
Malachi had been one of his childhood friends, if you could call it that. Their fathers had been friends when they were growing up, and they had spent many days and nights at each other’s houses. As they had got older, they had fallen out of touch as each had stepped up into their respective family’s dealings. They might only speak twice a year on things related to their family’s joint ventures, but nothing more than that.
“Good to see you too, Mally,” Jack said, shaking his hand.
“Aye. Heard about what’s been happening to you, and I had to come. I know we don’t talk all too often nowadays, but I couldn’t leave my old friend hanging out to dry. “
“I appreciate it. It’s been one of those weeks I’d rather not face alone nor repeat.”
“Alone is never a good thing my friend. Not in dealing with this sort of shit,” Malachi said, gazing out over the room. “But as it would seem, you aren’t going to have any troubles in that category.”
“No, it would seem not. My brother put the call out, and it looks like almost everyone answered it.”
“Aye. You come from a well-respected family, and as it would seem, the Adams doesn’t have much love from this crowd. “
“No, it would seem not,” Jack said, taking a sip of his drink.
“I honestly can’t believe that Ethan would be so bold as to come after you and yours. I mean I know you aren’t anywhere near the size of them, but at the same time, you are well respected and liked to some degree.”
“We have always been fair about the things that we have done. John has been trying for years to clean up the shit and make us a respectable lot. Which is why Ethan was able to start picking at threads like he did. I wasn’t always on board with everything that John was trying to do…” his voice trailed off.
“Well, Brother, we cannot always agree with everything that is done. This isn’t your fault, you know? This is just something that had to happen at one point or another. You cannot blame yourself for this. Ethan simply just saw a crack in the foundation and took advantage of it.”
Jack nodded and took another sip of his drink. Malachi was right. He shouldn’t blame himself for this. At the same time, however, he also wondered if things wouldn’t have happened this way if he had just been a little more in tune with his brothers.
“Alright, people. I don’t want to keep any of you long because we all have things to do, but this is a matter that concerns all of us,” John started, “First off, thank you for coming—”
“Get to the point, John. If we wanted some sort of government speech, we’d pay more attention to the criminals in parliament,” a voice hollered from the back of the room.
The room burst into laughter and shouts of, “Here! Here!” came from every corner.
“Fair enough. The majority has spoken,” John laughed. “I called you here because Ethan Adams has decided that he no longer wishes to be a friend to the Rann Family. And as such, has taken it upon himself, to start peeling it apart from the inside out. Lucky for us, we could see through his bullshit.”
“That doesn’t tell us what this has anything to do with the rest of us?” another voice shouted from the other side of the room.
“The Rann Family, as you know, has been around for well over a century, and is one of the oldest families in the London underworld. The Adams, have decided that we are a threat to their ever-growing family—”
“They fuck like rabbits, that’s why they are ever expanding,” yet another new voice, added to the conversation. The room again erupted in howling laughter.
“That they do. But in reality, they have slowly started to encroach on everyone in this room’s territory. They have been doing it for as long as I can remember. Not one of our families is large enough to take them on individually. However, if for a moment, all of us could put our differences aside and work together, then we might be able to, at the very least, stop the growing spread. Slap their hand hard enough that it’ll back away from the proverbial cookie jar. Give them pause.”
“What happens when they fight back? You know Ethan Adams isn’t one who is going to simply sit back and accept whatever is thrown his way.”
“Well, we will have to continue to band together and make sure he knows it’s not him against one of us at a time, but rather, him against all of us together. Together we are far larger than Ethan and his goons will ever be.”
“So, you really think Ethan will simply back off if we all come for him at the same time? Please, John, don’t think that for an instant, he won’t start picking on the lesser of us and the more he picks at the more will fall—” someone said, this time the voice came from the middle of the room.
“Not if we have each other’s backs. It can be done.”
John looked around the room. Each group and table were discussing and nodding amongst themselves.
“If we are going to survive in this world. It must be done.”
“Were with you, John,” Malachi spoke up, startling Jack
for a moment, and raised his glass.
Soon the room erupted into more calls of support, and Jack released the breath that he hadn’t realized he had been holding.
Jack walked into his room a few hours later. It was dark except for a nightlight. He didn’t even see Gloria sitting in the chair by the window until she spoke up.
“She’s been sleeping quietly for the last four hours,” the woman’s voice floated through the darkness. It was oddly comforting.
“Have you been here the whole time?” Jack asked, stepping around the bed so he wouldn’t have to talk loudly and run the risk of waking up Mirabelle.
“Yes,” she said quietly, adjusting the blanket she had thrown over herself.
“I hope you aren’t going to get into any trouble with the hospital.”
“Son, I am almost to retirement age. I have spent the best years of my life tending to folks. It has gotten harder and harder for me to do my job every day with all the new aged machines and protocols that they have in place. Seems less and less like a job of nursing people back to health, and more of a job where you have to follow rules and regulations, and then, with whatever time is left, you tend to the patient.”
“It seems to be the way of things a lot of times.” Jack nodded in the darkness and looked out the window at the darkened streets below. The full moon cast a cool glow about the city and it almost looked peaceful.
“In any case, I am here, and I will stay here for as long as Mirabelle needs me because that is what I set out to do with my life forty-some years ago. Help people who need it. And right now, she needs it.”
“Has she said anything more to you about what—”
“That, Mr. Rann, is between me and Mirabelle. I won’t break her confidence like that.”
Jack laughed and Mirabelle stirred.
“Jack?” her voice slurred with sleep.
“I’m here,” he responded moving to her side and climbing up into the bed with her.
“I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me. Going to fix myself a tea,” Gloria said as she quietly got up and left the room, closing the door behind her.
When she was gone, Jack gently scooped Mirabelle into his arms and held her close to his chest.
