Forever Changed

Chapter 20: Rats and Resentment

Mattia POV
(3 Months Married) 

This was a fucking disaster! I couldn't believe we'd been hit yet again. This time losing another three hundred grand in product and worse was the fact that this time two guards had been left with bullet holes in their heads. The situation was escalating and my father was going to lose his fucking mind when I called him.

The look on Nico's face matched mine. We were both vibrating with anger over the loss of both our men and our product. Somebody was fucking with us and I didn't like it. The fact that we'd just upgraded the security systems in all our warehouses and doubled the number of guards working overnight shifts meant this shouldn't have happened again. Something wasn't adding up and my brain was bouncing with thoughts of who might be involved. . 

"I need to call Papa. He's going to lose his shit when he finds out what has happened."

Nico grimaced. He knew the shit I was going to get from our father. He didn't pull any punches with any of his sons. The only ones who got any softness from that man were our mother and little sister. Everyone else got the sharp edge of his anger and when he deemed fit, the back of his hand. 

"I just don't understand how they got in and out of the fucking building undetected. The logs show none of the alarms were triggered. The guards in the watch room didn't even get an alert that a door had been opened, there's no footage of the shooting or them removing the goods. And the guard at the boom gate said he didn't see anybody enter or leave. How is that possible? Something isn't right here Mattia. I'm starting to think we've got a rat."

I was thinking the same thing. We'd had problems in the past with men thinking the way to make a quick buck was to betray us to our enemies. Those men didn't survive long in our world. We paid our men well, took care of their families and a lot of those who worked for us were extended family. The fact that one of them could be betraying us made the burn even hotter. 

As I walked by the two fallen men I grimaced when I saw that one of them was in fact a friend of our youngest brother. Antony was going to be upset to learn his friend had been gunned down while working the security job he'd helped him get. Fuck! I pulled out my current burner phone and pushed the button for the one assigned to my father and waited for him to answer. His greeting when he picked up was as short as expected.

"Yes."

"It's me."

"What has happened?" 

We had untraceable phones for calls such as this one. We all carried them and they were turned over every seven days. A lot of our conversations needed to be anonymous. 

"We've had another unwelcome visit. Around 300k this time plus 2 of ours."

"Fucking bastards. I do not like this. That is five in three months and one million gone. We need to move our items to the agreed location and call a meeting for tomorrow at our usual place. Alert your teams."

Even though we were on burner phones we were still careful with how we spoke. We didn't need any recordings of our business surfacing. Nothing incriminating was ever discussed unless we were face to face.

"I will handle it."

He hung up without replying. I could hear the anger in his voice, but worse I could hear the disappointment. These days I worked hard to make my father proud of me. Not an easy task when he was such a hard man. 

We had countless arguments in my younger years, some of them turned physical when I disagreed with his plans for my future. I didn't want the responsibility or the traditions of his position and told him so. He'd bloodied my nose that day. He had knocked me off my feet the day I refused to marry Angelique and when I didn't give in he'd hit me until I did, until I agreed with his wishes. Our world wasn't for the weak and just because we were his sons, his blood, it didn't stop him if he thought we'd disrespected him. It was the way it had always been.