The Cleaners
We were supposed to be ghosts. Nameless faceless bodies that came in, did their job, collected their money and vanished with no one the wiser that we had been there at all. Sitting at the table of this family meeting has me baffled as to why rethinking our entire history would be a good idea. The families used to keep this kind of job in-house to avoid exposure and to keep as much "family business" within the family as possible. But as soldiers got sloppy and technology advanced, the families could no longer leave cleanup duties to chance.
There were rules of course. They not only protected us from the families, but they protected the families from us. We had headquarters in most major cities setup as home chefs or furniture repair shops. We receive a call for a dinner reservation or an appointment request to fix an antique piece of furniture on a secure line. The caller would then provide an address and a time for us to come by. Our cleaners or repairmen were dispatched to the location and secured the property before starting the job. We rapped up the bodies, cleaned away any evidence, fixed broken pieces of furniture, threw out what could not be saved, and departed the scene. Once back at headquarters, we identified the bodies, cleaned them up as best we could and returned them to their perspective families for a proper burial.
When contacting the families we were not allowed to give any information on who made the dinner reservation, what happened to the person we cleaned, or where the cleaning took place. Not only were we not allowed to tell, but families were not allowed to ask. It was the only way to ensure everyone's safety. During drop offs, delivery men were not to be questioned under any circumstance. The penalty for breaking these rules varied, but was often death.
Our family was the keeper of secrets. Above all, you must keep the secret of our identity. This rule was so stringent, even wives were not allowed to know about the family business unless they played an active role in it.
None of the families knew our actual identities. More so, they were not supposed to. Similar rules applied to the paid assassins. If the rules were broken, and a member of our family was sought out for information on a cleaning job, the person who sought them out disappeared, and the family was heavily fined for breaking the rules. If the family decided to push back and not accept the consequences graciously, the only thing left of the family would be the widows, girlfriends and children.
Surprisingly, the cleaning services we provided was setup as a legitimate business. This business helped fund several other legitimate businesses that coincided with the main business of the family to make us more efficient. Not surprisingly, the businesses were just as or more successful than the cleaning business itself.
Being a cleaner is not exactly an easy life. Every male and female born into the family is given the opportunity to train and learn the family secret business. If after their initial training, they were found to be untrustworthy, they were placed in one of the family's many legitimate businesses after finishing college.
Those family members who were deemed trustworthy, were retrained in several different areas that included extensive hand to hand combat and weapons training, advanced first aid, chemistry and biology, observation, comprehensive reasoning and planning, escape techniques, smuggling, counterfeiting, and extreme survival.
The only people who compared in training were Black Swan. They were an elite family of assassins, whose signature was that they left no clues as to how they gained access to their target, when the target was killed or how the target was killed without a full autopsy. Sometimes, even then no clues were able to be determined. Their kills were clean, well-organized, and planned to the very last variable. If Black Swan took a job from a family, the moment they accepted, that person was already dead. The only chance a person had was if the family refused the job. Fortunately, they did that quite often.
The Black Swan family is precisely what this family meeting was about. My grandfather Edward Sr. had guided this family into unprecedented prosperity training my father, uncles, aunt, as well as my mother and her sister. He has protected our anonymity since he was old enough to learn the true secrets of the family which is for over 60 years. Now all of a sudden he wants us to go public so that he can arrange a marriage between myself and the heir to the Black Swan family. Needless to say, I think he lost his damn mind. The old age may have caught up to him.
"Everyone quiet! I have earned the right to be heard out in full before any of you pass judgment on what I am proposing." My grandfather said as he looked around the room staring each of us in the eyes. He was right of course. He deserved to be heard out before we shot his idea back to hell where it came from.
"As you all know, the family has been separated in the last 20 years or so. Spread out to the 4 corners of the country to chase various dreams, desires, and new business opportunities. When we entered this business, it was a major shift from what the family was originally doing. I am not proud to say we started out as thieves, blackmailers, drug pushers, and bootleggers. I never wanted any of that tied to my name; to my family. So I approached my father and asked him if there was a way I could change the business and the image of the family into something more respectable, would I be allowed to do it. My father looked at me with curiosity and pride in his eyes as he asked me what direction I saw our family going in. Thus the cleaners were born.
"As you all know, once you are a part of this life, there is no out. There only 3 options; participation, obliviousness, or oblivion. I chose participation. Honed my skills, and forged a new era for our family. One of the perks of this change in direction was the anonymity this niche I created afforded this family. It has been an invisible shield of protection for over 60 years. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end.
"Many of the heads of the other families know who we are as they were around for the transition that our family made. They were sworn to secrecy never to reveal our identities to anyone in their family. Otherwise, we would expose them to the other families for misdeeds they have done and had our help in cleaning up. For 60 years this form of cooperation and codependence has worked in our favor. But recently someone has broken the rules.
"They see our family's position as one of power and wish to yield it over the other families. Not only our family, but the Black Swan family as well. Through my sleuthing, I was able to uncover a plot to take down both of our families to gain the power, fear, and prosperity we yield.
"The plan has two parts. One is to marry the heir to the Black Swan, and have the men of their family trained in the way of the Black Swan after the marriage. It will be a request of the groom to forge tight family bonds. The next phase will be to slowly kill off our family, and take over our position quietly. Then use the information they gain from the cleaning jobs to blackmail other families for more territory, money, and power.
"The rogue family has already started implementing several phases of their plan while they quietly try to gain favor with Henry, the current head of the Black Swan family. Your uncle Marcus, my first born son was their first target. Their second target was Jared, the son of Levy Uley. He was originally arranged to be married to Henry's granddaughter Isabella. She is the heir to the Black Swan family." The entire room gasped.
Uncle Marcus was born with a defective heart. The doctor's didn't expect him to live past childhood, but he persevered. He found the love of his life when he was 4 years old, and the two never separated since. My Aunt Didmye was so heartbroken over his sudden death, that we believed was a result of heart failure, she died days later from a brain aneurism. My cousin Alec was crushed. He lost both of his parents in the same week. To find out that it wasn't a natural death, that Uncle Marcus was murdered and subsequently Aunt Didmye as well was earth shattering. Because when you love someone the way they loved one another, there was no way one could live without the other. While Alec was devastated, even he understood this.
My father Carlisle was the first to find his voice. "Father, are you telling us that my brother was murdered? Why? How did they even know he was a part of the family? Not all the men are cleaners. There was no way anyone could have known even if they did know who our family really was."
"That is part of the other reason we are here son. Someone has betrayed us. Someone in the family has taken sides with our enemies to bring us down. I have spoken at length with Henry, his son Charles, and Levy. They believe they have been betrayed by a family member as well. With Isabella's betrothed out of the picture, her father has to entertain all interests he receives from other known families, and only known families. We feel it is in our best interest to go public to the other families as well as our own. It will allow us the advantage of being aware and prepared."
My brother Emmett was the one to ask the question that I am sure was at the forefront of everyone's mind. "Prepared for what?"
My grandfather took in a ragged breath and responded, "Prepared for war Em. We must prepare for a war. From what we have been able to gather so far, more than one family is against us. The problem is that, once we take them down, we have to assume responsibility for their businesses…all of their businesses. Regardless of how they were acquired, this family and its name will never be tied to such deplorable atrocities as human trafficking, drugs distribution, and child labor. So not only will we be taking on the task of taking out possibly 2 made families, we will also be taking on the task of systematically shutting down all of their operations worldwide.
This endeavor is highly dangerous, and while we would have help from the Black Swan family in pulling this off, I need a unanimous vote from my family before we get any further involved. So what say you all?"