Running with the Firm

Introduction

I’m Calliope Von Strange also known as Ms. Lily Anne Conelly, daughter of “Big” Pat Conelly, one of the most respected and loyal members of the Firm. He was also a very good friend to the entire Kray family for a very long time. I love my father very much, he was a very kind man that did everything to take care of me and my two other siblings, Sarah and Les. Our mother checked out after Les was born leaving dad to take care of us. Sarah was four at the time, I was two years old and Les was just four months old. It’s safe to say he was overworking himself a lot. He had a total of four jobs at one point and even then we were struggling really bad. For a while dad would have to leave us with friends for days if he couldn’t get time off or if we didn’t have food. Everytime he left I just felt this terrible feeling like he wasn’t going to come back for us. That feeling made me live in fear of losing my family for a very long time. It was an awful way of living. But then dad met these very kind men, Ronnie and Reggie Kray, that helped us a lot. They ran the entire East End and Central London from the late 1950s til the late 1960s. 

They met our dad one night at one of their clubs and dad told them our struggles (after a lot of pints of course). The next day we were being woken up by our dad saying we were moving to a new home that would be ours. The Krays had bought us a house to live in, and in exchange our dad had to work for them. He didn’t mind that much because he was mostly their body guard in the beginning and we also got a stable place to live. My dad was all for it. For him the job was easy because he was a professional boxer when he was younger. It’s very funny, my dad was a short man but was one hell of a boxer. That’s how the brothers knew him kinda already. They were huge boxing fans and heard my dad’s name being thrown around a couple of times. When they met him, they were beyond happy to help us out.

When dad started working with the brothers we instantly had an upgrade in living. The house that was gifted to us was so big, it had a total of four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a dining room, a laundry room, a study, a huge living room and a lovely backyard. We were so blown away by how nice and fancy it seemed to us. I remember dad’s reaction to seeing the house for the first time. He started crying and hugged us tightly. He promised us that this would be a better life and that he wouldn’t let us go back to how it was before. We all began crying in our new house holding onto each other very tightly. This was a new beginning for us and to be honest, it was the best chance we could ever get.