There Will Be Freedom

10. The Animal Kingdom

Justin's POV

Jeremy, Keegan, Finn, Jaxon, and I sat around a table in my father's house. A large projection screen was rolled down and there were large stacks of paper in front of me. I had been off the grid as far as crime work went. I had been using the past month to get readjusted, but the time had come to start tackling the massive elephant in the room.

"So, I guess we should just jump right into this then." Keegan clicked a remote and a picture of an old man came up on the screen. "Well, to be honest, Aro's finished in these parts. He has no heirs, he's kind of going crazy, and no one really believes he's making any more money."

"Also, no one can trust him so they don't do business with him," Finn interjected. "He's losing allies fast. Apparently there's some big revolution coming up. They've gone overseas to handle things. Shinobu is shipping drugs to China, James is distributing slaves all throughout South America, and everyone else has just pretty much given up around Chicago."

"Jeremy ran them all out," Keegan nodded, "but that doesn't mean there are people trying to muscle in on our territory. Since you've been gone, we've kind of left everyone in the dust. We don't really need to deal with them anymore because they're fairly irrelevant."

"Forget the Russians, or the Irish, or the Japanese. We go after the other Italians." Jeremy spoke for the first time.

"This is a man by the name of Giuseppe Mangicavallo," Finn pointed to the screen. "He's sixty-five, from Sardinia, and has five sons; two of which are here in the States. He deals mostly in diamonds, but in the past few months has ripped off several of our gun shipments. He's becoming a pain in the ass, but doesn't live here anymore."

I flipped through the police record I had in front of me. He was incredibly crafty and had started out as a thief, lifting everything from famous paintings to knocking over high security banks. But that was a long time ago. Since retiring, he left most of his dealings to his sons.

"They hate us and I mean, hate us," Keegan continued. "They've been here for about a year trying to knock us off the map, but don't really have the resources to do so. No one knows what to make of them yet."

"Who are the sons?" I asked.

Keegan clicked the remote and a strong looking man with dark black hair appeared. "We're only concerned with two of them. His first son is Aberto, age thirty-five. Married, no kids, has a mistress in New York. He's horribly sloppy. He's been arrested three times since being here on drug charges, DUI, shit like that. We don't really see him as a threat."

"The next son is Adriano," Finn said. "He's thirty, no kids, married once, but divorced before he came over here. He's the real mastermind now—almost like you, Justin."

I glared at Finn for daring to compare that piece of shit to me.

"He's a strong-willed, no kind of morals, really evil kind of guy, but can't find his footing. Right now, they're trying to get in on the drug scene. It's not working too well for them. It's not going to take long for them to realize that they need to bump us off before they can even try to make a name for themselves here."

"Who do they think they are?" Jaxon crossed his arms.

"The three younger sons are here too, but don't really stay here permanently." Keegan clicked the remote and a new slide appeared with the whole family on the screen. There were four sons all sitting around their father.

They were the complete opposite of us; maybe the more stereotypical version of what people thought Italians were. The Mangicavallos were olive skinned, with dark hair and deep eyes that weren't really intimidating but were trying to be. They were tall, but buff, like they spent all their time in the gym, and slicked back their black hair.