I hadn’t slept this late in years. I’d never been late for my monthly meeting before. It was probably going to make things even more tense than they normally were.
With only one piece of dry toast and my backpack for company, I was out the door and heading down in the elevator in record time. I drummed my fingers on the wall as it descended at what felt like a snail’s pace, as if somebody had hit the slow setting on the fuckin’ thing.
These meetings shouldn’t have been such ordeals, but Giovanni was a real cocksucker. Hell, the higher up in the family you looked, the bigger an asshole the Acardi tended to be.
All that should have happened was Giovanni ticking a box in a notebook that my quota was met, as agreed, they pay me my fucking money, and I give them a list of things I need in the next shipment of supplies and equipment. Instead, we did all that, plus Giovanni had to give me a spiel about how great the Acardis were, how lucky I was as a lowly non-Italian to be blessed with working with them, don’t forget my place, what the fuck do I need all this shit for, blah, blah, blah, it was never-ending.
Out on the street, I hailed a cab and gave the driver the directions. Thank fuck it wasn’t the same cabbie from last night. That would have been awkward.
It was eleven twenty-nine when I stepped out on to the sidewalk again and craned my neck up at what was officially called the Trafford Tower, but which everybody in the know called the Acardi Building. Construction workers milled around, looking like they were doing nothing in the kind of way that only construction workers could.
Even with all the rebuilding work going on in the city after the earthquake last year, it was a quick and relatively hassle-free trip. The real ordeal would happen way up there at the top.
Ryan
“Do you know who I am?” Giovanni asked.
“Met you dozens of times, haven’t I?”
You could almost see the steam coming out of Giovanni’s ears. It was so fucking easy to get these guys pissed off. You didn’t even have to know what buttons to push, just push any fucking button and that would do it.
“Johnny, do me a favor and hold a gun to this cocksucker’s head.”
The soldier behind me and to my right stepped up and pressed the barrel against my ear painfully. It was an empty threat, and Giovanni knew that I knew it. And that was pissing him off even more.
I’d been very careful to keep the intricate details of my manufacturing process to myself. The people working under me were doing very specific tasks, and none of them were involved with too large a chunk of the entire thing.
Much of it was over the heads of all but the brightest chemists working in the industry at the moment, but I was always careful to look out for new guys who seemed to know a little bit too much about what they were doing. They tended to get mysteriously sick and have to leave.
The fact was that Alberico Acardi would have Giovanni’s head on a stake if Giovanni had me killed, even if they were cousins. I tried to calculate how much money my product was making for the family, based on how much I used to sell it for. It could very well have been in the billion-dollar range by now.
All from little old me. They didn’t want that cash cow’s milk to dry up. Still, the gun was hurting my fucking ear, and it was a pain I could do without.
“OK, you’re Giovanni Acardi.”
“I snap my fingers and you end up in a dumpster, motherfucker, don’t you forget it. Alberico is too soft on you. If I had my way, you’d be in that lab in chains, not in here smart-mouthing and getting paid a king’s fucking ransom every month.”
Yeah, Alberico was a real fucking peach. The first time I realized I’d come up on the Acardi’s radar was when six guys jumped me and I was given this deal that honestly confused me as much as it did Giovanni.
Get paid, great autonomy, run your own lab… or we kill your mother and bury you alive with her corpse for a while until you have a change of heart. I thought Alberico must have been reading some crazy Art of War kind of shit at the time, like I’d be a better chemist for them if I was under the illusion that I was valued.
I did my best to give them every reason to believe that was true. I developed new products, and never missed my quota, but they screwed the pooch with that initial strong-arm shit. They threatened my fucking mother, and I was going to piss on their corpses because of it.
Giovanni twitched his head to the side and Johnny put his gun away. I rubbed my ear.
“Well, long live Alberico,” I said.
“What gave you the idea you could be late for a meeting with me?” Giovanni asked.
“Hell of a night.”
“I don’t care if-”
“Had some problems with the Cannibals.”