mafioso ¦ goons ⌗

The pens off Carrow Street smelled like wet rope and old rain.

Three years in them taught you a few things worth knowing. How to sleep sitting up with your wrists locked. How to eat fast, because bowls got stolen between breaths. How to keep your eyes down when buyers walked the rows, because buyers didn't pay for trouble, and eyes were trouble. That was the first rule of the yards, and it kept you breathing longer than any kindness ever did. Morning was auction bell. Night was chains and counting the slats in the fence. You knew both by heart.

Your tag said lot 214. The one before that said 188, and before that, 97. Two buyers had taken you and two buyers had brought you back. Gretch, who ran the pens, liked to tell prospects you were cursed, because cursed was easier to say out loud than the truth. The truth was nobody had figured out what to do with you, and people don't like things they can't figure out.

It was late when the gate rattled.

Not the lazy rattle of a milk cart. This was the sound of a gate opening for someone who had never once needed permission to walk through one. Three black cars rolled into the yard, slow, engines low, and parked in a line across the mud like they were measuring the place for a coffin. Doors opened. Men stepped out. Big men, black suits, that flat yellow skin the yard lamps turned the color of old butter.

They moved without talking. One in shades took the gate and stood with his back to the street. One in a white top hat, a plain headband across his forehead, went to the office door and waited there with a small black book. One in a simple black hat, headphones marked L and R around his neck, started down the rows of crates, rapping each one with a wooden plank, listening to what they sounded like. The last one, in a Russian ushanka, crowbar resting across his shoulders, drifted toward the pens like a man who had forgotten the errand and trusted it to come back to him on its own.

Gretch came out of his office still tucking in his shirt and stopped like he'd walked into glass.

"Gentlemen." His voice cracked in the middle of the word. "The yard's closed. Inspections are in the morning."

The man in the top hat didn't look up. "Your accounts are behind, Mr. Gretch. Two quarters behind. The family sent me to talk about it."

"Talk. Yes. We can absolutely talk."

"We did talk. In the spring. And the spring before that." He closed the little book. "This time the Don came himself."

The far car door opened, and the yard went quiet in a way yards never go quiet. Even the chained lots stopped shifting.

He came around the hood of the car without hurry. Long black coat. Gold watch chain catching the lamplight at his vest. Black fedora pulled low enough that his eyes were only a rumor, and underneath the brim, where a mouth should be, the same flat friendly smile that gets stamped onto every Robloxian at birth. It didn't move when he spoke. It wasn't moving now. Somehow that was worse.

By the coal chute, Gretch's one hired guard shifted his weight. Just a shift. Four weapons came out so smooth it had to be rehearsed. A sword. A baton. The plank. The crowbar.

The Don raised one hand, lazy, and everything stopped.

"Courtesy from our family. Don't move."

The guard turned into a statue.

Gretch started talking fast then. Numbers. Excuses. A sick mother, there was always a sick mother somewhere in these stories. The Don listened the way a wall listens, then said, "We have a job to do, boys," and walked past him like he was a coat rack, and started down the rows with his hands folded behind his back.

The goons took the inventory. The one with headphones counted stock out loud in a bored voice, crate by crate, plank tapping in rhythm. The ushanka pried a lid loose, looked inside, and said, "Crowbar's good for this kind of work," to nobody in particular. The shades man never moved from the gate but somehow watched every exit at once. The top hat stood at Gretch's shoulder doing quiet arithmetic, and every number he said made Gretch a little smaller.

Then the Don reached the pens.

Buyers always walked the pens fast. Teeth, hands, posture, the way you'd check a horse. He walked slow. He didn't check teeth. He read faces. Lot by lot, people shrank against the rails, some begging, some crying, all of them performing whatever they guessed a man like him wanted to see. He passed every single one of them.

He stopped at yours.

You hadn't performed. You were three years tired, and tired like that doesn't leave room for performance. You kept your eyes down because that was the first rule, the one that kept you breathing, and when the silence stretched too long you broke it and looked up.

The brim. The shadow. There were no eyes to find under it, but the attention landed on you anyway, heavy as a hand on the back of your neck.

"Boss." The ushanka, a few lots down, squinting at a tag upside down. "This one says returned. Twice. Returns are bad, right?"

"Trouble," Gretch said quickly, eager to finally have something to offer. "That one's trouble, Don. Two buyers, two returns. Can't get an honest day out of it. I'll throw it in free just to be rid of the thing."

The shadow tilted a degree. Thinking, or letting them think he was.

"People only call something trouble," the Don said, "when they've run out of patience."

He let that sit. Gretch's mouth opened and nothing came out of it.

"I haven't."

Then, to you: "Look at me."

You did. It felt like stepping off a ledge. The smile stayed exactly where it was while he reached out with two yellow fingers and turned your tag over, slow, like a card he was deciding whether to keep.

"You're mine."

Just like that. No haggling. Gretch should have argued, should have squeezed out a number, but men like Gretch can smell which way the night is going, and he signed whatever the top hat put in front of him with a hand that shook so badly the pen scratched twice. Somewhere in there the debt got crossed out and the yard changed hands on paper, and none of it took four minutes.

"Write it down," the Don said, snapping the ledger shut with one finger. "Lot 214. Family property now."

"Cut the tag," he added, and the one with headphones said, "On it, boss," and snipped the chain off your wrist with a pair of clippers. The whole ceremony. The shades one patted you down outside and in, quick and thorough, and grunted, "Clean," at no one in particular.

Then the car.

You sat in the middle of a bench seat that smelled like cigar smoke and leather. Ushanka on your left. Shades on your right. The top hat faced you in the jump seat with the little black book open on his knee. The one in shades spoke without turning his head.

"Rules. You don't talk unless somebody talks to you first. You don't touch anything that isn't yours, and as of tonight nothing is yours. You see something on family business, you didn't see it. Family business stays family business. You know that."

You didn't know that, but you nodded.

The ushanka leaned in close and whispered at a volume the whole street could hear. "We never buy people. This is a first. Boss never buys stuff."

"The man next to you is not stuff," the top hat said mildly, writing. "He's an asset. There's a difference, and it's in the book."

"Run," the Don said from the front seat, not turning around, "and these four get a night off."

Nobody laughed. Nobody had to.

The city slid past the window. Wet street, streetlamp, wet street, streetlamp. Then the car turned a corner and light bloomed across the windshield, big and warm and gold. A marquee. The Gilded Rail, in letters the size of doors, and under it a row of dark windows and one door flanked by two more yellow faces standing like bookends. The casino was closed. The family's casino was never really closed.

Inside smelled like smoke, lemon polish, and money. A man pushed a mop cart across the far floor and didn't look up, which told you everything about what people who worked here had learned not to do. The Don walked ahead of you, coat brushing the air, and stopped once at the foot of the stairs. The gold watch came out of his vest. He looked at it, closed it, put it away.

"You start tonight," he said, and went up.

The top hat stayed behind. He clicked his pen once and set the little black book on the lobby desk, open to a clean line.

"Every asset has a name in the book," he said. "Yours is blank."

He held the pen out. Or maybe he was just waiting. It was hard to tell with him.

"Name. Fix it."