Mihael Keehl had Family.

In 1995, the Czech police found the fingerprints of a notorious mafioso, Hynek Keehl, at the scene of the gruesome double homicide of gang associated Bartolomej Krajnc and Ludvik Wiśniewski. He was given three life sentences, and the papers that year celebrated the capture of one of the Czech Republic's most wanted and most evasive criminals. Hynek left behind two young sons, the untended grave of a pretty wife, and several more bodies that could never be definitely traced back to him.

It was decided, thanks to intervention from a well connected organization, that Hynek's eldest child be educated and raised by experts in England. It didn't matter in particular what happened to the younger, Pepik Keehl, who was only 3, because he didn't even talk yet – no genius worth tapping.

This was how Mello came to Wammys's. Hynek was his father.

Now, after 8 years of orphanhood, Mello was walking out the front gates. Wammy's had been like a diversion; now he would return to the life he'd been saved from.

Mello used the credit card that was his inheritance to check into a hotel in Manchester as Michael Ruvie, where he used the computer in the small office across from the front desk to purchase a plane ticket online, to Prague.

One step at a time, he thought; everything would come together. Mello had confidence in his own ability to improvise.

And what an infinitely lucky thing it was, in a world where corruption and criminal puissance ruled, that Mello had the powerful resources of the Mafia built into his genealogy. Despite Wammy's best efforts to make Mello as much of an orphan as possible – teaching him to be fiercely individualistic, separating him from his living relatives – they did not succeed in making him entirely alone. Keehl was a name with a little push in the European underground, and there was a sprawling network of people willing to call a Keehl brother.

Wen he landed in Prague, his first phone call in his search for a useful connection was to the prison. It took two emails asking for information from Misha Kell, a 22 year old journalist Mello invented, before Mello was given a number at which he could reach Hynek Keehl.

'Hello?' His father said, when he answered. 'Is it possible… is this my Mihael?'

'It's me.' Mello said, awkward.

'It's a miracle.' his father said. 'You've remembered your father.'

Mello remembered him – wiry, busy, suspicious, Catholic. He remembered coming down the stairs from his room at night to find his father was laughing at the television or discussing with gang members, a glass in his palm. When he spotted Mello crouched in the shadows on the stairs, he would chuckle and say that Mello was... what were the words... "not one to miss out". Mello would lose sleep watching card games, overhearing some conversation, seeing his father exclaim "bah! Stupid!" at the news. His father had blue eyes, blond hair, straight teeth, and long hands. Mello was fascinated by him. And his father had been proud of Mello. Mello remembered that, the embarrassment of being special. His father would introduce him to people as though he expected Mello to ascend and become God, someday. "He's a bright boy", he would say gruffly to friends. He supported Mello's curiosity, encouraged his interest in the lifestyle that was his birthright. "Lemme explain" was his motto; "yer smart enough to understand."

'I'm in Prague.' Mello said. 'I need a certain sorta help.'

'D'ya got a pen?' His father asked.

'Yeah.' Mello was calling from a payphone two blocks down from the hotel where he'd been sleeping, tucked away on a busy street.

Hynek Keehl gave him the name of a man, Dmitri Javorsky, who was driving taxis nearby. 'He'll come getcha. You must be... almost 15 now.'

'Yeah.'

'Happy birthday, Mihael.' Hynek said imploringly, 'Trust God.'

They ran out of time. Mello stood dry-lipped, with the phone to his ear, for several numb, guilty minutes. If he'd wanted to, he could have been calling his father all this time. It had never even occurred to him. He'd been convinced by his handlers to guard his anonymity. It felt dangerous, now, to be using his identity. But it was worth it. Hearing his father's voice was like finding his place in a book after having forgotten to bookmark the page.

When Mello called the number his father had given him, Dmitri Javorsky answered on the first ring. 'What?' he barked. Behind his voice, honking and tire screech rose and fell like symphony.

'My name is Mihael Keehl.' Mello said. 'Hynek is my father. He says you'll come pick me up.'

Suddenly, Mello felt liked he'd been punched in the gut by his own immaturity. He fiddled the phone cord in one hand and looked out at the bustling street, feeling like a lost boy.

'Mihael...' Dmitri mused. 'Keehl. Ok. Where are you?'

'Wilsonova. By the museum.'

'Ok, Kheel. I'm on my way.'

Within fifteen minutes, a Mercedes was pulling up at the curb. Inside, a middle aged, mustachioed man in a blue coat. 'Keehl!' he called out the window.

Mello hurried over, pulling the lapels of his jacket up around his chin against the battering wind. He yanked open the passenger door and climbed in. 'My father told me to contact you.' he said.

'Good.' Dmitri said. 'I'm here to help.'

The car pulling away, with Mello trapped inside, was finality. This was the plan. He was making fast decisions, now, and he was about to find out what he'd signed up for.

'What're you doin' wanderin' around here?' Dmitri asked as they sped down the main street. 'I heard you disappeared. Pepik, too.'

Mello was startled by Dmitri's bluntness. 'I went to an orphanage.' he said. 'But I've run away.'

'Ok.' Dmitri said. He drove aggressively, angrily, but his shoulders were relaxed and his face was slack. 'What can I do for you?'

'I need people.' Mello said.

Dmitri's mouth fell open, and then he laughed so loudly it startled Mello. He banged the steering wheel with the palm of one hand. 'People!' he repeated. 'Keehl wants people!'

'I want in.' Mello said, mortified and furious at being made ridiculous. 'I want in the gang.'

'You are Family, Mihael Keehl, and Family means something.' Dmitri said, but didn't say what.

They drove through the city with the radio playing American pop music. 'Do you know Destiny's Child?' Dmitri asked Mello, 'do you know Britney Spears?'

Mello felt like he'd been submerged in a new world, drowned, found Atlantis. Sometimes Dmitri spoke too quickly for him, or said something he didn't understand, and it shamed him to have lost so much of his first language.

'I also speak English.' Dmitri told him while they hovered at a red light. He never did, though.

After several minutes of speeding, Dmitri parked the black Mercedes taxi in front of a pale pink house, which was flush with its neighbours and tilting slightly. 'Home.' he said. 'I will introduce you, then I have to go back to work.'

Mello hefted his backpack onto his shoulder and followed Dmitri inside. The house opened up like a paper fortune teller. On the floor, red carpets and gold thread overlapping in a kaleidoscope of patterns. Above, a chandelier full of real candles. The walls were covered in paintings and photographs.

'Here is my Evzen,' Dmitri said, pointing at a framed picture of a strict looking boy posing with his hands in his lap. 'He graduated high school this year. You'll meet him, he's coming for dinner.'

Mello was led through the busy hall into a kitchen overrun with knit dishcloths and little porcelain chickens. A woman was at the sink washing a mixing bowl. 'Why are you home?' she called over the sound of running water. 'Go back to work!'

'My darling.' Dmitri told Mello, pointing at the woman's back. 'She hates me.'

'I hate laziness.' Dmitri's Darling snapped. 'Who is this?'

'Mihael Keehl.' Dmitri said.

Dmitri's Darling sighed and opened her arms. 'Little Mihael.' she said. 'I thought I would never see you again.'

Mello felt his face flush white. He had never been so uncomfortable in his life.

'Come help wash,' she said, seeing that he was shy, 'and tell me about your life.'

Mello dropped his backpack on a chair. There were magazine clippings covering the counter, and books. He saw a newspaper story about a shooting in Velká Chuchle next to a recipe for fruit dumplings.

Dmitri waved goodbye, stepped forward to kiss his wife on the cheek, and chuckled when she hit him with a towel.

Mello, outsider, was eager to make himself useful, eager to be distracted from absurd thoughts of how joyful it would have been to be a version of Mihael without dead mother or imprisoned father, to be known by these quaint people and to be familiar with their brand of nosy friendliness. He rolled up the sleeves of his shirt and started wiping the stove.

'You're a nice boy.' Darling said, ignorant of the untruth of her assumption. 'You and your brother were here once, when your father worked. You were very young.'

Mello nodded.

'We were so sad when we heard they separated your family. But it doesn't matter. You're here now. Are you staying?'

'If you'll have me.' Mello said. 'I have money.'

'Shut up.' Darling said. 'You will do chores.'

'Of course.'

Darling bossed him around. She told him about her son, who played football and ran track. 'Your father,' she said, 'was so in love with me in the old days. He was so in love with every woman in the world.'

Mello was allowed to taste test the dough for dessert. He whipped cream by hand. When Darling wanted him to get out of her way, she grabbed him by the shoulders and moved him. 'I think I'll keep you.' She said, when the meal was finished and the table set. 'Very useful.'

Dmitri was home at 2100, and behind him trailed the terse boy from the photograph. 'So many police today.' Dmitri complained, pulling out a chair at the table. 'I wasted so much time moving the car.' Liquor and a pitcher of water took the place of a centrepiece, and Dmitri reached for the former. 'They kick taxis out of some of the areas.' he said to Mello. 'They kick us out of the busiest, best places!'

'Potato.' Darling said, carrying a pot full of them over from the stovetop.

'What's up?' Evzen greeted Mello, when he took a seat. 'I'm Evzen.'

Mello met his eyes. They were dark, old. Evzen must have been 17 or 18, but he had the countenance of a savant. '... Mihael.' Mello said. 'I'm Mihael.'

'It's good to meet you. Welcome to the family.'

Darling gave him three potatoes. 'So skinny.' she said, shaking his arm vigorously. 'You need to work.'

While the table lapsed into rowdy conversation, talk of cars and tourists and people they all knew, Mello thought of Matt. With only an hour's difference between them, he would be in his room playing games or something. Would someone bring him cupcakes? Who would he ask? Darling would have a fit over Matt. It was impossible, but if Mello had let him tag along, she'd have had a fit over him. Tomorrow, Matt would hurry by the rankings posted outside the cafeteria on his way to be late to class and his name would be at the top. He would probably stay in first place for the rest of his time at Wammy's. When he was free of the school and the orphanage, graduated and adult, he would be erased from its records as Mello had been. He would be adrift, left to ask himself that most fundamental of philosophical questions: whether or not to commit suicide.

There was no L, only nothing and engineering. Ha. Was engineering enough to live for? Could a man live for nothing?

Mello accepted a shot glass of hazelnut liqueur and lifted his glass in a toast – to family.

'Now, who wants chocolate?' Darling asked. 'Evzen, get it.'

Evzen stood like a spider unfurling. He was dressed in dark, sharp clothes – leather jacket, pointed shoes.

They split a bar of milk chocolate while Dmitri told Mello stories about his father as a young man. 'Hynek and my brother Andreas stole cars.' Dmitri said, flippantly. 'They sold them to buy nice things for their girlfriends, your mother and a silly woman, I don't remember her. Andreas... Kira got him in April.'

Darling put her hand over her heart. Evzen, who was texting with his phone face up on the table, looked up with a frown at his father.

'Kira?' Mello asked, surprised.

'It was terrible.' Dmitri said. 'Andreas was a good man. So many good men had heart attacks this year. So you understand, Mihael, that there are no people left for you.'

Evzen snorted. Darling scoffed. 'He's a child, he doesn't need this talk. Show Mihael your room.' she snapped, smacking Evzen's hand.

Mello and Evzen drifted out of the dining room and up the stairs. Evzen walked with his shoulders flung back and his flinty eyes flicking everywhere like search lights, like he was weighed down by a constant paranoia. He smelt overpoweringly like cologne and cigarettes.

'Are you,' Mello started to ask, feeling dwarfed, 'in the Mafia?'

Evzen opened one of three doors on the second floor. 'Did you really come here just thinkin' we'd hook you up?'

'... Yeah.'

Evzen lit a cigarette. 'I don't live here, so you can do whatever you want with the room. Put your things in the closet.' he told Mello, opening the door and showing him the empty inside. There were scratches all over the wood in the belly of the closet, like a cat had gone insane inside. 'I'm goin' out. Come with me, we'll see what you're like. You need a warmer coat, it's cold at night.'

'It's that easy?' Mello asked. 'You'll take me?'

'You're family.' Evzen said. 'For family, everything's easy. We need recruits, anyway.'

'Your dad laughed at me.'

'Because you talk funny and you don't know anything. You'd laugh at yourself, too.'

'...What about Kira?' Mello asked, offended and scowling.

Evzen shrugged. 'Kira's why we need recruits.'

Evzen dug through a bin that was tucked away under his bed for clothes. He threw a long black coat to the floor at Mello's feet. Most of the time, he kept the LED light off his phone pointed at his face, his thumbs frequently texting. 'And we'll need this.' he said, snaking on his belly to reach towards a back corner near the headboard. Mello heard tape rip as he pulled something away from the bed frame.

'I can use a gun.' Mello said, eyeing the glock Evzen was holding when he straightened up. 'Give it here.'

'Just so you know, little Keehl, if you talk like that to me any more I'll fuckin' pound you. If you have any manners, start usin' 'em. This is mine. You get that.' He pointed at a baseball bat leaning against the dresser.

Mello's stomach swooped. His eye twitched.

'Time to go.' Evzen said, ignoring Mello's simmering silence.

They went back out through the main house, where Dmitri and Darling were sitting at the fire.

'Where's he going?' Darling barked at Evzen, grabbing him around the arms when he swept down to kiss her goodbye and shaking him roughly, looking straight Mello, who tried to hide the bat behind his thigh.

'Leave boys to be boys.' Dmitri said. He was reading a newspaper with little square glasses on, and looked up only to gesture that Mello and Evzen should kiss him goodbye.

'Warm coats! Idiots!' Darling called when they turned to go.

Evzen turned on his heel and patted the jacket on his arm to show it to her, and then they left.

They took the same car Dmitri used to drive tourists around Prague. A wooden cross hung from the rearview mirror and swung every time Evzen turned too sharply. Mello kept the baseball bat between his knees, holding it tightly. 'What are we doin'?' he asked at a red light outside a museum.

'I got robbed a couple days ago.' Evzen explained, 'We're gettin' my shit back.'

Mello nodded. He watched the streets, buildings, people go by out the window. Prague was different at night. Prague was different with a baseball bat in hand.

Evzen parked the car abruptly in front of a house tucked away from the lights of the popular areas of the city. Without a word of explanation or direction, he stomped out of the car and across the overgrown front lawn. Mello strode behind, heart in his throat. There was a television on inside, which he could see through the window.

Evzen banged on the door.

An older woman answered in a robe. 'It's one in the morning, what are you doing banging on my door?' she asked, and then saw the baseball bat Mello was cradling. Her teeth clenched.

Evzen pushed past her without a word, and she made small resistance, let him bump her shoulder on his way in. Mello did the same. It was powerful. Mello had spent all his life learning the letter of the law, the moral imperative of it. But, as Matt used to say... fuck it. He was above the law, when he was holding a weapon.

There was a boy about Evzen's age sitting at the kitchen table smoking.

'Fuckin' think you can take my shit?' Evzen spat at him – actually spat on the carpet. 'Eat my fuckin' Doritos?'

Mello did a double take, readjusted his grip on the bat.

'I didn't do shit to you.' The boy said. He was nonchalantly slurping the milk out of a bowl of cereal.

The woman came back and started arguing. 'Josip's been here all night.' she said. 'He ain't steal shit.'

'What's that, then?' Evzen asked, pointing at a toaster oven on the yellowed counter. 'That mine?' He scanned the cramped kitchen madly. 'Is that my fuckin' coffee grinder?'

'No.' Josip said.

'You're gonna give me 4000 korunas and I'm still gonna fuckin' beat you.' He spat again. 'Just for standing in my home without my permission.'

He looked at Mello, beckoned him forward.

'This kid's gonna hit you.' Evzen said.

'I only have 2000.' Josip said, not sounding particularly scared. 'Your Doritos are gone. Bitch.'

'Hit him.' Evzen ordered Mello, while the woman started shouting for them to get out. 'Hit him!'

Mello held the bat up like he was waiting for a pitch, like it was a game. He crossed the kitchen in his new black coat under the expectant eye of the Mafioso he'd just met who called him family and swung the bat into the strange boy's head, sending him and his cereal crashing to the floor. There was a liquid, metallic sound when aluminium collided with bony scalp.

'We'll come back every day 'til we get my money.' Evzen threatened in the background.

The woman was screeching.

On the ground, the boy: starting to rise, reaching for Mello's pant leg. Milk spread slowly across the kitchen tile. Mello hit him again, in the arm. 'Don't touch me.' he hissed. He was inflamed, hearing the voices around him through the thick barrier of his ears ringing. He hit the boy again, swinging the bat all the way up over his head and bringing it down with a clang on his shoulder, making him shout, making him sorry. Mello couldn't see his face, just saw red, hefted the bat again -

Evzen snatched him up by the scruff like a cat with her kitten. 'This kid's gonna fuckin' kill you for 4000 korunas, OK?' he said, sounding rough and shaken. 'This fuckin' kid wants to fuckin' kill ya for 4000 korunas, and he wasn't even robbed, ok? You don't fuckin' cross us, don't come in our territory again. This kid's fuckin' crazy and he's gonna kill you for a toaster.'

Josip looked afraid. He was staring at Mello, and then he was puking in the milk.

Evzen and Mello walked out side by side, after Evzen collected the appliances that had been stolen from him and searched the drawers for valuables, taking watches and chains and a rosary from around Josip's neck. Mello was not in his body. He was snapped. He didn't feel like he'd swung the bat enough to be satisfied, he didn't feel done, he didn't feel better.

'Ok, Keehl.' Evzen said in the car. 'I think you're gonna do fine.'

Mello watched the dark sky out the window. No stars, no light. Just blurring black city, sinful city. There was no God, here. There was no going back from the black hole he'd just discovered in himself, the chaotic uncontrollable directionless violence.

'Want a watch?' Evzen asked, when they parked in an empty lot to avoid a traffic stop and turned their lights off.

Mello dug his fingers through the spoils, which Evzen had put in the cup holder of the taxi. He pulled out the rosary, wet and bloody. Trust God, his father had said, when he sent Mello here. He put it around his neck and liked the sacrilege, the imagery.

Evzen put a watch on. 'Shit fuck.' he said. 'They saw us.'

Mello looked up from his new treasure and saw flashing red and blue lights down the road. 'What do we do?'

'Nothin', we're not doing shit wrong.'

Mello's mouth was dry. He watched, frozen like a deer in headlights, as three cruisers pulled into the lot and several officers stepped out their vehicles, flashlights on.

'Why'd you avoid the stop?' One of the cops asked when Evzen got out to say hello.

'We didn't, we're lost. You know where Sterboholy is?'

'We're going to search the car.' The cops said.

Mello got out, too, and went around to stand next to Evzen. Evzen offered him a smoke to share while they waited, watching officers run their hands over the seats and under them.

'What's this?' A cop asked, pulling out the bat.

'For sports.' Evzen said, grinning.

'Where's the ball?'

'We left it at a friend's house, didn't we, Mihael?'

'Yeah.' Mello said.

'You can't have this without reasonable precedence.' The officer said. 'Ok? It's a weapon.'

'Did you just make that up?' Evzen asked, crossing his arms. 'How're we gonna play baseball, now?'

'I guess you aren't.' The cop said.

Mello could tell they were reluctant to let them go, but they did. Evzen had the gun hidden under his shirt, and when they skated away from the traffic stop and into downtown, he invited Mello to check his pack of cigarettes - only two of the remaining darts were tobacco; the rest were packed with cocaine.

'Pigs are stupid.' Evzen said. He didn't seem rattled. His face was blank. He had dark eyebrows that hung over his eyes, making him look brooding all the time. 'Take a bump if you want.'

'Do you have connections in the States?' Mello asked, holding one of the coke filled papers, not sure how to snort it and not wanting to make a fool of himself asking. 'Do you want one?'

Evzen snatched it while they idled at a stop sign and sniffed it. 'Yeah, why?'

'I need to go there.'

'You're a total little shit, aren't you, Keehl?' Evzen said in a low monotone. 'You got somethin' you're tryin' to do.'

'Yeah. I gotta kill someone.'

'Keehl, I'm not gonna laugh at you anymore, ok?'

'Good.'

'If you can get there yourself, I got a friend there who'll meet ya if I tell him to. Dad's got some guys there.'

'Thank you.' Mello said.

'Ok, crazy.'

Evzen parked the car in the Javorsky driveway and grasped Mello's hand in the light from the stereo. His skin was calloused and warm. For a weird moment, Mello thought about kissing him on his wet red mouth. 'Bye.' he said instead, pulling away and scrambling out of the car.

'See ya tomorrow.' Evzen said evenly. He got out of the car, too, and walked around the side of the house where he'd parked a Suzuki bike. He straddled it and squealed away down the street, leaving Mello to tip-toe back into the house, up the stairs, and into his bed.

It was quiet and cool in Evzen's room. Shadows from headlights in the street whisked across the ceiling like a baby's mobile. It smelt like Matt's room had, in Wammy's. Between the crisp sheets, surrounded by cigarette fog and bittersweet memory of Matt rubbing sleep from his eyes on Saturday mornings, aroused by fury and confused self-hatred after his black-out atrocity, soaring on the approval of a musky bad boy with a leather jacket, Mello took himself in hand and jerked off thinking about fear and freckles.