Chapter 12: Sticky notes.
The small mistake they made was that, to not listen to Joseph, to not get every word he said, and even if they would, they wouldn’t understand it, how could they?
They are young, they are selfish and egotistical, people who have a legacy, people who only love the money and the power they have. They would never understand the feeling of losing a child, because that’s not the same as losing a father or a mother, a sibling... no, it’s not.
The difference between the two is that they knew that they would die, they were mafia lords, Dons, the most powerful ones, but they knew it, that death is upon them and it can happen fast, and well, it did. But losing a young child is the greatest pain in the world. Even if it wasn’t their child, they grew close and did everything to be kind and a father-like figure to her.
She suffered a lot, but in the end, she smiled, and that brought the biggest pride in their heart, and at the same time, they got loyal, they chained themselves to Joseph because in the end it was him who made it possible for her to smile.
Maybe there was something else too, maybe they were ready to go down the road of criminals, because they were just like Joseph, no way of living a normal life after all the things they did. They will be eventually hunted down... so why not help and serve the same man who helped them?
Their lives are nearing the end and they knew it too... so why not actually use their skill, their experience in the field, to help him?
They are going to die, then die for something... and that something was also Joseph. Yeah, it’s better to die for some cause than just wait until they will be found and shot dead, just how their colleagues were... even those who never got bribed.
Everything was stripped from them... then when the opportunity was given to actually make their life better, their child was stripped too... they are ready to die and that’s how they were in the last years. They were building up a whole ass family for Joseph, they bought everything in the shadows through shell companies, through black market, through their connections. They bribed, they made everything work like a fine watch, but they did not act on it. They didn’t make a name for themselves, because they waited for the exact moment for Joseph to get out of the prison... not as a young boy as he went in, but as a man who was engulfed by the same feeling as them... the darkness.
They knew it too, that if he came out of that cell after ten years, he would be the same, but the blood will chain him to his name, to his family, and to the pure purpose of the Cassian family... to be criminals, to be Dons.
And that’s exactly what happened to him... they knew through the year who he changed, because one of the guards was bribed by them. It was a hard thing to do, but they did, and that guard was the one that leaked information to James.
But how did he do that?
Well, James still got food and to get the food the door was opened every time to give it to him, and somehow, in some way, the guard put sticky notes in his bread, in his food on the plate, with information about what is happening outside, what happened to his family, how they actively did and who did it.