Shantaram (gregory David Roberts) / quote 68 of 69
Loyal to the men, not the mafia
But I was alone, and for two reasons. The mafia was theirs, not mine. For them, the organisation always came first. But I was loyal to the men, not the mafia; to the brothers, not the brotherhood. I worked for the mafia, but I didn’t join it. I’m not a joiner. I never found a club or clan or idea that was more important to me than the men and women who believed in it. And there was another difference between the men in that group and me—a difference so profound that friendship, on its own, couldn’t surmount it. I was the only man at that table who hadn’t killed a human being, in hot blood or cold. Even Andrew, amiable and garrulous young Andrew, had fired his Beretta at a cornered enemy—one of the Sapna killers—and emptied all seven rounds of the magazine into the man’s chest until he was, as Sanjay would’ve said, two or three times dead.