Page 1 of The Cat's Mausy

The Three Rings

Acity controlled by three powers of the underground. The Three Rings was formed after a war nearly tore the city apart with the signing of a treaty between the Italian, Russian, and Irish mafias. They carved out the lines, put the rules that every made man within the city limits lived and died by, and for the last fifteen years, the honest population knew peace.

Felinus “Il Gato” Drago had been fourteen when the war had broken out. There was some debate amongst those who discussed the “dark days” about what exactly started the war but most of the Italians from his generation agreed it had to be The Five Points Park shooting. Because that was the day that every child of an Italian mobster was suddenly picked up from school and brought to the Villa. The home of Don Antonio Esposito hadn’t really been designed for dozens upon dozens of children, ranging from newborns to barely eighteen years old, but they had made it work. Gardens quickly turned into fields for sports. Dozens of grocery deliveries, including more ice cream Felinus had ever seen in one place. A home theater playing cartoons and family movies on repeat. And a truly impressive number of sleeping bags arranged by age groups. It had been fun. The adults went out of their way to make it fun but eventually they would all learn the blood that had been shed that week of no school and all play.

Felinus learned within the week. While trying to sneak into the kitchen for more of the ice cream, he, his little brother, Brutus, and their friend, Zeno, would overhear some of the women talking. They would learn that the shooting whispered about hadn’t just taken the lives of made men, but had massacred a park full of parents and children too small to be in school. The whispers they heard thought that there had been an intended target but that dozens of innocent lives had been lost. No one was sure if the target had even been hit.

The three of them abandoned the idea of ice cream that day.

An incoming call beeped in Felinus’s ear, breaking him out of his thoughts. Adjusting the ice pack on his knuckles, he tapped the devise. “Yes?”

“Boss.” Snake’s voice was clearer through this wireless speaker than the previous one. The fight the hacker had with Felinus every six months or so about updating their tech again did occasionally pay off. “Someone just entered through that busted window.”

Felinus frowned and moved to the window of his office overlooking the warehouse to squint into the darkness towards the line of windows. The latch had been broken some time that summer when Felinus hired temps to deal with increased inventory. Already weak, maintenance said it looked like a screwdriver was used to make the damage that would have been easy to miss if it hadn’t been scheduled to be replaced. Snake hadn’t been able to get a good look at the vandal through security footage. Whoever had done it was smart. Keeping their face hidden in a rain jacket they had never worn before that moment, they made sure to wait for the last day of twenty temporary employees to act. If they were a regular employee, they never wore the jacket, again.

Felinus had decided not to fix that window. He wanted to see who had the nerve to fuck with him and his warehouse and instead increased security cameras at the edges of the stacks and outside the building. Something Snake had wanted to do anyway.

“Do you have a visual on them,” he asked, not seeing anything at this distance. It had been two months already but the timing couldn’t be a coincidence. Maybe the rat he had stewing in the flood lights under his office had a bit more up his sleeve than Felinus originally thought.

“Yes,” Snake said, a little uncertainly, “but…”

“What’s wrong, Snake?”

“Boss, they’ve got bags and shut the window behind them. You know the temperature is suppose to drop below freezing tonight? Hard freeze warnings for the whole state.”

Felinus thought about that for a moment, remembering the multiple extreme weather warnings to his phone and emails for the night. “You’re thinking homeless or runaway,” he said slowly. “Nothing to do with why we’re here.”

“I do,” Snake agreed. “The runaways I’ve known have told me shelters fill up fast on nights like this. A sudden cold snap is deadly if you aren’t prepared for it and this guy doesn’t have a coat.” He paused. “What should we do? They’re heading towards the lights.”

“Cazzo,” Felinus swore softly. “Tell Dog to move on the window and to turn on his headlights. I don’t want them trying to be the lesser of two evils by reporting to the police. Jam signals out of the building and have Bat and Tiger move our rat out.” He paused as he saw a shadow move behind a crate just outside of the flood light and dart back quickly. Sighing, he ran a hand over his cheek, feeling the short stubble he purposefully kept.

The shadow moved again and he heard the rat screaming against the ball gag Felinus had put between his teeth earlier when he had gotten tired of the excuses and sobbing.

“They’re running for the window,” Snake reported. “Dog’s already in position with his high beams on. I’ll keep tabs on them.”

“Good. Let me know if they do anything particularly interesting.” Walking over to the door and starting down the stairs, Felinus rolled up the sleeves of his fresh shirt.

The bay doors opened. The dark van backed into the warehouse without its lights as the man tied to the chair continued to scream and sob.

Zeno “Bat” Zippo and Alexander “Tiger” Smith were his main muscle lieutenants; usually, he’d have them deal with someone like Dan on their own. But Vinny, Felinus’s uncle and another Capo, had asked him to look into the person skimming off the top of collections for him, and Felinus could never say no to his uncle. Reminding soldiers and associates that it wasn’t just their Capo who would come for them, but the Cat as well was simply good business. But he had other concerns than a two-bit thief.

He picked up the silvery bat at the edge of the tarp laid out on the floor and tossed it to Bat. “I want names and account numbers,” he told him as Bat rested the metal against his shoulder. “Then take him for a ride and drop him at the hospital.”

“Vinny’s feeling very generous with this one,” Bat said, raising an eyebrow at Felinus. Bat had become Felinus and Brutus’s closest friend on that day fifteen years ago. His age between the two brothers making him uniquely able to fit in without issue. He had been the first to back Felinus when Felinus had taken the initiative that would make him into the Cat and Felinus returned that loyalty by bringing him into his crew officially when the Don granted him the rank to pick his own people.

“More like Dan here is the only child of an old high school friend and he’s doing her a favor by not having to identify her son at the city morgue,” Felinus said, looking at the young man on the verge of hyperventilating through the gag. Felinus and Brutus had already beaten Dan soundly before his men had arrived and his right eye was swollen shut. “Make sure he understands how very lucky he is.”

“You got it, Boss,” Tiger rumbled, grabbing the back of the chair and dragging it towards the car.

The young man screamed and thrashed against the zipties around his wrists and ankles.

“Wait,” Felinus told Tiger, walking over with Bat alongside him. “Take out the gag.”

Tiger did as he was told and Dan coughed and sobbed as the ball left his teeth.

“Please,” he cried, without sitting up. “Gatto, I didn’t mean-”

“Oh, how pathetic,” Bat sighed, stepping forward and putting the bat against Dan’s shoulder to push him into a more upright position. “Maybe some broken kneecaps are in order.”

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