KIAN'S ACT

Twenty-Three

"Kevin..." Kevin remained silent as he felt the hand on his shoulder. "I'm really sorry about what happened...about what happened to Harriet." Came the condolences from the men in his family.

Kevin only nodded his head, but inside, he wanted to run wild. Inside, he wanted to scream at the top of his voice. His beloved angel daughter was dead. His only child, and now...all he got was a bunch of 'I'm sorry's'. None of that was going to bring her back.

"Thank you," Kevin responded while clearing his throat and then tapped the hand on his shoulder as he looked up at one of his cousins, Kaleb. He and Kaleb shared blank faces, before Kaleb removed his hand from Kevin's shoulders and walked to take his place around the table.

Now that Kaleb had arrived, the people that Kevin had invited were all in attendance. He looked around the table in his skyscraper office building in Sandton. The boardroom at the moment was filled with the men of the Kennedy family, all of them were made men, and all of them were familiar with this building and this boardroom because almost all important matters were discussed here.

The men sat around the table were dressed in expensive suits worth hundreds of thousands of Rands, the glasses of bourbon and whisky in front of them were half empty already, and the smell of expensive cigars wafted in the air.

Kevin held a cigar in his own hand and then sniffled, as he scratched the tip of his nose. "I know you're all wondering why I called you here," Kevin spoke up, focusing on the glass table instead of the men around him as he clenched his jaw.

Everyone around the table knew about Kevin's daughter dying. They knew that she was killed by Kian. They also knew that two other daughters of two other members were killed by Kian, and as a result it was quite obvious that this meeting was going to be about the man who wasn't quite really a Kennedy. Kian had broken the family code of never spilling any Kennedy blood and as a result, they all knew that this meeting was coming.

"I've called this meeting because we, as a family, have been disrespected. Our name has been spat on," Kevin paused and then looked up to look at the men who sat around the table, "our name –" he began heatedly, "has been tarnished, by this, by this fucking clown that we have leading us!"

Everyone was silent as Kevin spoke, his crisp white suit giving him a certain glow as the sun shined through the glass windows of the skyscraper that was the most impressive in the Southern hemisphere.

"That boy has been given too much bloody power that he thinks that he can spill the blood of a Kennedy," Kevin slammed his hands on the table. "He's forgotten that we took him in when he had no one, we made him into a soldier, and then turned him into a made man, and because of his loyalty we fucking put him in that fucking position. We did! And today he fucking slaughters my daughter and sends me her head. For what? For what? For fucking what?! A little black bitch he keeps in that fucking house that our money bought for him?!"

Kevin's aged face with wrinkles and moles and an ugly snarl, glared with anger and hate into the men of his family. He was breathing heavy, heaving in anger as he thought about the only part of his daughter that he had left. He looked back at Karl, Elisabeth's father, and Kenneth, Olivia's father, who had his fists covering his eyes. He and Karl's eyes clashed on, determination and anger burning through their eyes as Karl felt an anger unlike any other burn through his veins.

"My dear brothers," Karl began as he messed with the ruby rings on his fat, short fingers. His round face and quadruple chins moved with a bounce as he looked around the men at the table, "who's going to be next?" Karl asked lowly, yet his voice bounced with authority and animosity as he spoke in Afrikaans, "whose child is next? Hm? We've had to sit here, for over a decade and let the family be run by an outsider that we decided to grant the grace of making him a part of this family, and he turns around and spills the very blood that has fed him." Karl nodded his head slowly as if it was all making sense.