by Matt Rogers
He wrenched Gavin to his feet once more. Already the left side of his face was starting to swell, ugly blotches forming on his cheek, above his eyebrow, his left eye beginning to seal shut.
‘I hit hard, don’t I?’ Slater said.
Gavin nodded.
‘Let’s try that again. You want to know who sent me?’
This time, Gavin nodded.
Good, Slater thought. I need my story to match up.
He seized Gavin by the throat, backing him into the far wall of the elevator. They collided with the metal panelwork with a dull thump.
Slater said, ‘You and your family have been bad boys, Gavin.’
Gavin nodded.
‘So you admit it?’
Gavin shook his head.
Slater slapped him a third time.
And held him in place, pinned to the wall with a vice-like grip.
Gavin began to openly weep.
‘I would have slapped you either way there,’ Slater said. ‘Just to let you know.’
‘What do you want, man?’ Gavin muttered, blood drooling from the corner of his lip where he’d bitten his tongue.
‘I want to talk.’
‘So talk to me. Stop fucking hitting me.’
‘This is open palm. You don’t want to see what a closed fist looks like.’
‘I’ll answer whatever you want.’
‘That’s the goal.’
‘I swear, man, I will. What do you want to know?’
Satisfaction rippled through Slater. No more than half a minute, beginning to end, and he’d already broken the guy. Gavin Whelan didn’t deserve to associate with a major crime family. As Slater had imagined, he was a spoilt brat who deserved nothing less than what he was receiving now.
‘You’ve shamed the family by giving up so quick,’ Slater said.
Testing the kid. Probing. Trying to find out if there was any morsel of resistance left inside Gavin that might make him falsify claims.
Gavin shook his head. ‘Just leave me alone, man. Ask your questions and leave me alone.’
‘Abigail,’ Slater said.
Gavin nodded. ‘Yeah. I was too pushy. I get it. Her dad already came for me, but a couple of my boys jumped him before he could get his hands on me. Not my fault. They were too harsh on him. I’m sorry.’
‘What do you know about the hit?’
‘What hit?’
‘Okay,’ Slater muttered. ‘So you’re just a young dumb dipshit. You’re not involved.’
‘Involved in what?’
‘The family business.’
‘They don’t tell me everything, man. So I don’t know much.’
‘I figured. Now I’m going to tell you who sent me.’
‘Okay.’
‘A man named Russell Williams. Say it back to me.’
‘Russell Williams.’
‘My name is Will Slater. Say it back to me.’
‘Will Slater.’
‘Repeat both those names.’
‘Russell Williams sent you. You’re Will Slater.’
‘Good. Now remember this.’
Slater backed up, and for a moment he felt a twinge of empathy for the young Whelan, but then he figured Abigail definitely wasn’t the first, and she was probably the only one who had an ex-military father willing to do something about it. The kid hadn’t heard the word “no” before, and he showed he picked his targets wisely, given the fact that he approached Abigail at a firm his family had their juicy paws all over.
So Slater lined up and kicked him square in the balls, and Gavin crumpled down onto all fours, and Slater kicked him in the ribs, breaking a couple of them.
Unbelievable pain. That was guaranteed.
Good.
Slater needed Gavin to remember this.
He needed the kid angry. Livid. Swearing revenge on anyone he could get his hands on.
He needed the young man running to every connection he could think of.
Passing it up the chain of command until it reached the top.
Slater left the kid there on all fours, retching and crying and gasping for breath, and he turned away from him and pressed the button for the fifth floor of the townhouse.
He hoped the rest of the family was home.
62
They were.
The elevator doors chimed open at the top floor, revealing a cavernous loft converted into a modern kitchen and dining room, and Slater had both guns up and aimed at the space beyond in case of emergency. Safeties off.
It proved unnecessary.
He marvelled at his luck — it was about time something went his way. He stared at a scene straight out of a Hollywood mafia movie, with seven burly men seated around an opulent table right near the glass windows looking out over the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The table was a big show-off thing, made of refurbished metal. The sunlight bathed them all in a soft glow.
They were deep in conversation, gesticulating back and forth about what Slater imagined were all kinds of important underworld issues.
Supply chains, and profit margins, and loyalty.
Probably.
They varied in size, with the smallest resting a shade over five-eight and the rest somewhere between five-eleven and six-two. All big enough. They seemed to have overcompensated for their status by packing on muscle to look the part, but it made them tight and stiff in their undersized suit jackets, wholly unprepared for any kind of brawl that might unfold. Not that anything would happen up here, in their safe space, in what constituted their den.
Until Slater backed up and kicked Gavin Whelan in his broken ribs and sent him stumbling, screaming, crying, into the open space. Blood sprayed from the guy’s mouth as he shouted for help.
It was sensory overload.
The very definition of it.
Perhaps in their wildest fantasies the Whelans expected to be interrupted by an aggravated intruder, whereupon they could make use of all the repetitions of bench presses they’d been doing in the gym, but they never would have expected their broken, mangled family member to stumble into one of their private meetings screaming bloody murder.
Slater had both P228s pointed at the table before any of them could wheel their shocked gazes around to take in the sight.
He screamed at the top of his lungs, ‘If any of you move, I will shoot you in the head!’
Simple enough.
They got the message.
Slater knew it wouldn’t be enough. There were seven of them, and one of him. Sooner or later one of them would muster the confidence to go for their weapons, if they had them in the first place. No way to tell from here. A marble kitchen island separated them from his line of sight — he could only see from their waists up.
He started rounding the island, moving toward them, but he knew they would go for their guns in the next couple of seconds if they were going to at all.
He snapped his aim to one man and fired, one pull of each trigger, two enormous explosions of noise in the loft. He made sure the bullets passed by either side of the guy’s face, leaving a few inches to spare on each side. The displaced air alone scared the shit out of him. The lead carried on and embedded itself in the sheet of bulletproof glass behind, creating spider-web cracks in the surface.
The guy flinched and ducked and probably came close to having a massive heart attack from shock alone.
Slater said, ‘Sorry. Thought you went for a gun.’
Now they got the message.
Well and truly.
No-one moved a muscle.
Slater had proved himself a madman.
He made it to the other side of the kitchen island and came to a standstill, sweating through his tee from the sheer exertion of the last few altercations. He could feel the veins throbbing in his neck, racing blood around his body, but he didn’t dare stop now. Gavin Whelan cowered behind him, out of his line of sight, but the kid was no threat. He lay balled up on the ground in the foetal position, hands on his ribs, wincing through the
waves of pain coursing over his body, from cheek to throat to torso to genitals.
Slater regarded the seven men in front of him. All fit, all able, besides the eldest of the bunch, who sat at the head of the table.
Slater said, ‘Tommy Whelan.’
The old man nodded. He had craggy weather-beaten skin, blotched red and white, and a tuft of blonde hair atop his head, so thin you could barely see it. His mouth was drawn in a hard line, and his eyes were narrow unforgiving slits in his sad face. It seemed he wished to break every bone in Slater’s body, one by one, and then leave him to starve to death, for even daring to intrude on the meeting.
Little did he know it was about to get a whole lot worse.
Slater said, ‘How are you related to Gavin Whelan?’
‘He’s my grandson,’ Tommy said.
‘Oh, good. I just fucked your grandson right up.’
‘Is that him behind the kitchen island?’
‘It is.’
‘He sounds hurt. Gavin, my boy, you alright?’
A whimper floated across the loft.
‘That’s a no,’ Slater said.
‘Why’d you do that?’
‘He pissed me off.’
‘What’d he do to you?’
‘He looked at me funny.’
Tommy Whelan shot Slater a thunderous look. It could have melted steel.
Slater found himself barely fazed. He’d dealt with a whole lot worse than an old cranky mob boss.
Tommy said, ‘Better get to the point.’
‘I don’t think I will,’ Slater said. ‘I’m rather enjoying this. Watching all of you squirm. What a useless reputation the lot of you have built up. All cowering scum.’
Silent fury rippled through the ranks.
Slater shrugged, as if he was coming up with an impromptu plan. In reality, he’d forged the foundations of it on the drive over to Manhattan.
He said, ‘Maybe I should give you all a chance to redeem yourselves.’
It seemed brash. Ludicrous, given the circumstances. But he’d done the calculations. He’d ran the hypotheticals in his head. He’d figured, if they were all Whelans, he could handle no more than eight. Seven slotted neatly into the upper end of the spectrum. Cumbersome, but manageable.
He said, ‘Alright. All of you stand up. Right now.’
Chairs scraped back, and the procession of seven Whelans got to their feet.
Slater said, ‘You should all think long and hard about this. If you come out on the losing side of this, your reputations will be ruined forever. I’ve tapped into the CCTV camera over my right shoulder and I’ll have footage of this entire debacle. If it goes my way, you’ll all be fucked. Forever. Imagine how humiliating this will be.’
‘What?’ Tommy spat.
Slater said, ‘All of you lift up your jackets.’
They complied. Hands went to suit jackets and yanked the material skyward, revealing belts, revealing holsters.
Slater said, ‘You. You. You. You. Guns out of your holsters. Two fingers, like pincers. If any of you even think about trying to use them you won’t even know what hit you. You’ll just be dead.’
They complied. They didn’t even think about trying to beat him in a battle of reflexes. They’d seen how unnaturally fast he’d jerked in the direction of the first guy, firing the twin shots before any of them put it together. They weren’t willing to chance it.
‘Toss them over the kitchen island,’ Slater said. ‘Now.’
They threw them.
Thunk.
Thunk.
Thunk.
Thunk.
The guns clattered down on the marble floor, out of sight. Slater darted back in that direction, making sure Gavin didn’t get his hands on one of the weapons by chance, but the kid was still curled up in a ball with his eyes squeezed shut, wracked with agony.
Slater sidestepped from pistol to pistol, punting them toward the open elevator doors. He scored four goals in a row, slotting each sidearm home. The four weapons skittered to a halt inside the cable car and spun softly on their axis’.
Slater jogged over to the elevator, reached inside to the control panel, and thumbed a random floor.
He ducked back out.
The doors whispered closed.
The Whelans watched the strange developments with an unfolding fascination.
Slater turned around, smiled, and tossed his own guns behind him. Flexed his open palms, exposing his vulnerability.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Prove your reputation.’
63
Potentially the most foolish move in underworld history if he came out on the losing side of the equation. The stories would be told for generations about the moron that stormed into the Whelan compound without resistance, made it to the top floor, and threw everything away to get into a pissing match with the whole family.
But it was the way it needed to go.
Shooting six of them dead and leaving Tommy Whelan alive to deliver a message wouldn’t have the intended effect. It might spread through a few degrees of separation, but it wouldn’t get much further than that. He needed to utterly embarrass them, humiliate them beyond description, send them crawling to their connections with their tails between their legs, demanding swift and ruthless justice on the human vermin that dared to make them look so foolish.
That’s what he needed.
And he would only get it this way.
The seven of them stood there awkwardly, unsure of what to do. They probably thought it was a cheap trick. The first one to step forward would receive a bullet to the head from a secret weapon Slater wrenched out from behind his back.
He lifted up his own T-shirt, and twirled on the spot.
A full three hundred and sixty degrees.
He smirked. ‘I’m not bluffing.’
Tommy Whelan managed a laugh. He couldn’t believe anyone could be so moronic. Seven men could overwhelm the toughest man on the planet through sheer bodyweight. They could all pile on and all the reaction speed in the world wouldn’t mean a thing. It was the nature of physics.
But Slater had already put a mountain of thought into it.
He wouldn’t fail.
Because in reality, it was six on one. Tommy Whelan wouldn’t get his hands dirty. And Slater would make sure to beat the first guy so bad that the other five would doubt themselves, and then they’d be hesitant to step into range, because it would be like putting their hand voluntarily into a buzzsaw.
That’s what he was relying on.
It all came down to the first exchange.
Slater thought of Shien. He pictured her big innocent eyes staring in awe at some training facility in the middle of nowhere. He pictured the humanity being stripped from her, piece by piece, as Williams fashioned her into a killing machine and ruined her chance of having a normal life before she had the ability and the wherewithal to decide for herself.
He saw flaming red, and his muscles supercharged.
There we go.
It all unfolded as he thought it would. It came down to the half-second gaps between actions, and he knew that’s where he had the upper hand.
The first guy burst off the mark, clearly the most confident. Tommy Whelan’s laughter had injected him with courage — he’d sensed the momentum shifting back in their favour. He regained his mojo first, and broke into a sprint, desperate to get his hands on Slater first. He likely figured this was an event that would go down in folklore, so he wanted all the bragging rights for future dick swinging contests.
Big mistake.
He came in way too fast, fists cocked, ready for the wildest swing of his life like it was a bar-room brawl. Slater met him with equal pace, throwing him off his game in every sense. He’d been anticipating a couple more feet of space before he needed to throw, but suddenly Slater was right there in his face.
Slater sliced an elbow upward, from floor to ceiling, a strange manoeuvre that required near-dislocation of the shoulder joint to pull it off.
Thankfully, Slater had drilled the move thousands upon thousands of times, and it was etched into muscle memory. And he had all the burning rage and motivation of a nine-year-old girl’s wellbeing in his mind, which added to the ferocity of the strike.
Not that he needed any additional power in the first place.
The elbow struck jaw and Slater’s whole arm vibrated with the impact. One of the loudest cracks he’d ever heard echoed off the walls and the first guy’s legs simply gave out underneath him. A mixture of shock, pain, and disbelief. Slater figured he must have shattered a few teeth, on top of breaking the guy’s jaw. He pitched forward and Slater twisted into the right hook, dropping the elbow back and aiming to punch a hole right through the man’s flesh. His calloused knuckles struck the side of the head and practically dumped the guy’s body into one of the cabinets, breaking a couple of the cabinet doors off their hinges and sending the unconscious rag doll sprawling to the kitchen floor surrounded by wooden splinters.
Slater realised — amidst the crazed explosions of sight and sound — that he still had a couple of seconds to work with. The rest of the party were only now bursting into motion — they’d opted to observe their comrade’s mad charge first before committing themselves. Slater stomped down on the first guy’s elbow joint, producing another snap that rippled through the loft.
A couple of the Whelans visibly winced.
‘Okay,’ Slater said, trying not to pant from exertion. ‘That was cute. Now you’re unsure, aren’t you? But you’re not all going to stand there. That’d look awful — reputation-wise, I mean. Imagine that. There’s five of you. One of me. And the CCTV’s catching all of it. You going to let an unarmed man hold an entire esteemed crime family up by their balls?’
It had its intended effect.
Three charged at once.
Two held back.
Slater kicked the first guy in the stomach, stabbing with the ball of his foot, like a twenty-pound whip. It probably tore a couple of muscles, or broke a rib, but it didn’t incapacitate him.
It didn’t need to.
He froze in place, shocked to the core by the power with which Slater hit.
Good.