Crumbling Empire

With the lights pitch black, and unable to see beyond a few feet, Pierre jumped back around the corner of the wall. He could hear Vito and Bruce yelling out. A few gunshots rang out, but not in Pierre's direction. He peeked back around the corner with his gun ready. The kitchen was empty outside of Michael's deceased body.

Pierre went back behind cover; his heart was in his throat. He had so many questions. Why did Vito shoot Michael? Did they find out he was planning on leaving? Were they going to shoot him next? What will happen to Michael's wife Anne. As these thoughts raced in his mind, Pierre tried his best to calm himself. He had to focus on the task ahead of him, which was getting out alive.

With the lights out, Pierre couldn't see from very far away. He heard more gunshots coming from the front of the building, along with the eastern wing of the mansion. He thought about running out through the back, or escaping from the west, but before he could do anything, Bruce was standing in front of him. Bruce looked down at the terrified man below him before handing him an assault rifle.

"Take one of these. We need you in the front of the estate. We're under attack!" he said to Pierre.

Pierre was handed the oversized gun and assisted to his feet. He awkwardly followed Bruce until they passed by the locked door to the basement. The door called for Pierre's attention and Bruce was quick to notice.

"Don't worry about the stock. We'll get it moved after this situation is dealt with."

That wasn't what was on Pierre's mind. As Bruce turned back around, Pierre raised his gun.

"Give – me the key." Pierre stuttered.

Bruce froze in his tracks. He could sense the gun being pointed at him. He slowly set his rifle down, lifted his hands up, and turned around.

"This isn't the time to grow a conscience," he said.

"Why did Vito shoot Michael?"

Bruce slowly took a step forward towards Pierre, and Pierre took a step back in return.

"Michael was a traitor." Bruce said trying to deescalate the situation.

"He was my friend. He was going to have a family."

"Look, that's in the past. There's nothing that can be done about that. You have a problem with it, take it up with Vito, God, and the man upstairs. But now isn't the time to fuck it all up."

Pierre could begin hearing noise beyond the locked door. Through the sound of gunfire, yelling, and bodies falling by the wayside, he heard the voices. Voices that were slight and scared. Voices that had been through more, then even he, could imagine. He wasn't going to be the one that helped in the suffering of the innocent.

Bruce took another step forward. Pierre composed himself and locked his eyes down the sight. "I'm not going to ask again. Give me the keys to the door."

Bruce slowly lifted the keys from his pocket.

"Alright, fine. You can have the keys. Let's just not do anything rash." He said as he tossed them to the floor in front of Pierre.

Pierre slowly reached down to pick the keys up. As he felt their cold metal, he could see Bruce's expression twist into that of a cocky demon. The barrel of a gun tapped the back of Pierre's head.

"What do we have here?" Vito asked.

Pierre's heart sunk. He thought he was good as dead. The barrel of the gun pointed straight at him shifted a few inches before ringing out a shot. Pierre's ears rang out, the gunshot deafening his senses. Before he could pull himself together, Vito kicked him to the ground and removed the gun from his grip.

Pierre covered his ears, trying to contain the ringing noise. His vision blurred as he tried to look back up at Vito. His gaze was met with the blunt end of a rifle smashing into his nose.

"What's the situation?" Bruce asked Vito.

Vito picked the keys up and tossed them back to Bruce. "Fuck if I know. We need to get the power back on though. I can barely see shit."

The two men paused. Bruce rose his fist to the air. The two men noticed that the gunshots had stopped.

"Your men finish it?" Vito asked.

Bruce yelled out a few names to no response. He readied his gun and went to the corner of the hallway. The mansion had become eerily silent. Bruce peeked around the corner. A single gunshot echoed through the halls and a bullet broke into the skull of the criminal. Bruce instantly fell to the ground, his soul evaporated before his body reached the hardwood.

Vito jumped back and lifted Pierre up to his feet. He held him in a chokehold in a hostage position, or at the very least a shield. From the depth of the shadows, a single figure escaped into the foray of the living room.

"Everyone else is dead. Set the body aside if you don't want to join them," said a gruff voice from the midnight figure.

"I don't think so," Vito said taking a step back.

Pierre's senses were still dull from the gunshot and hit to the face. He could see blood dripping onto his shirt. He tried to glance up at the figure in front of him, but everything was in a haze.

"Do you know who you're dealing with? We aren't Camorra's leftovers. We work for "God" Mancini."

Vito hoped that name-dropping the boss would work in his favor. Make the attacker second guess what kind of business they were getting themselves into; but the shadow didn't even flinch at the revelation.

"Like I said, set the body aside," the shadow ordered.

Vito went from aiming at Pierre to aiming at the nightmare in front of him; but before he could move a hair on the trigger, the shadow drew its firearm and made a single shot. The gunshot rang out like a crack from a whip, and before Pierre could register what had happened, he felt Vito's grip on him loosen.

Vito fell back and his body broke through a glass coffee table. Pierre stumbled a bit to the side and fell over as his cognitive ability slowly began to realign itself.

The shadowed figure moved forward towards Pierre and let out a whistle. Soon afterwards the lights to the estate came back on. The attacker was nothing more than a single man in a suit. The man approached Pierre with his revolver still drawn.

"So, what's your part in this?" the man asked.

"Do what you want to me, just please, let the others go."

The man grinned and pulled the trigger. A single clack from the revolver rang out. "Guess you could say I'm out of bullets," he joked.

He opened the chamber to his revolver and dumped the shells onto the floor in front of Pierre. As he began reloading, Pierre rose back to his feet.

"So, you aren't going to kill me?"

"Kid I've been in my line of work for a while. I've seen the eyes of killers, and I've seen the eyes of pretenders; and you're not the former."

Pierre walked over to Bruce's corpse and grabbed the keys from his pocket.

"What are you here for?" Pierre asked.

The man finished reloading and holstered his weapon. Now that he was in the light, he could see all the blood on his yellow shirt.

"Don't suppose it's going to wash out, is it?" said Pierre.

The man ignored Pierre's question and took the keys from his hand. He went over and unlocked the door. The door opened and he flicked the lights on to the basement. The two men slowly stepped down the stairs. As they reached the bottom, Pierre felt an immense feeling wash over him. The basement was full of women of different nationalities and backgrounds. Ranging from the age of young teens to late twenties. The sight of two children in particular made Pierre sick to his stomach.

As the two walked over to the women in chains, the women flinched and tried to look away. As the man began to free them from their chains and cuffs, another set of footsteps began to come from the stairs. A startled Pierre turned to the sights of a gorgeous woman.

The man looked back as he was unlocking some of the victims from their captivity. "Simone, I'm not one for words – Can you help me out here?"

Simone nodded and began speaking in a few different languages to everyone in the room before eventually speaking in English.

"Please, do not worry. We are here to help you. The men that have done this to you are dead. We want to take you somewhere safe. We want for you to be able to go home," Simone reassured to the group.

Some in the room began to cry, others smiled, but many were still frozen. Pierre didn't know if it was disbelief, or perhaps reality that hadn't set in yet. He wondered how long they had to numb themselves from the world they had been living in. Would that numbness ever go away?

After the women were free from their captivity, the man and Simone assisted the victims into the cargo truck.

As they closed things up, Simone entered the driver's seat while the man worked over to the passenger side. He looked at Pierre one last time.

"This is where we part ways. I don't know what your place in all of this before was but leave this life behind while you can."

The man opened the door and began to step inside.

"Wait!" Pierre yelled out.

The man stopped momentarily and looked back.

"I never got your name…" Pierre said.

"You can call me Jack," the man responded smiling.

Jack closed the door, and the vehicle began to drive away.

"You sure we can leave one of them alive?" Simone asked Jack as she looked at Pierre through the side mirror.

"It'll be fine. He won't cause any trouble," said Jack as they drove out of view from the mansion.

Pierre stood in the driveway alone. He turned around and walked back into the estate. A trail of bodies for at least thirty men were laid out across the entryway and surrounding hallways.

Pierre returned to Michael's body. He removed the car keys from his pocket.

"I am so sorry Michael," whispered Pierre. He hoped that Michael's soul could hear him. In the pool of blood laid Michael's yoyo. Pierre lifted it up and brushed it off. Glancing it over, he decided to place it in Michael's hands. He would've wanted it on him in the afterlife.

Pierre began to drive away from the mansion. The life he had known for the last two years was dead. He thought about going to see Anne. He thought about taking the next boat to America. He thought about returning to the slums of Paris had it not been for the war. As Pierre left the view of his old life, he felt reborn despite not knowing what lied ahead.