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I shake my head. “South Williams is a block from Niche. Mav doesn’t allow his dealers to make sales within three blocks of his club properties.” I pop up from the chair, tossing it to the side and slapping him upside the head. “Those kids were sixteen. One of them coded in the fucking ambulance on the way to the hospital.”
He whimpers, flinching back in a pathetic attempt to retreat from me. It does little other than irritate his already extensive injuries, causing him to hiss in pain.
“What’s the matter, Steven? Your arms hurt?”
“My a-arms,” he stutters. “But also… my legs. And my chest. It hurts…” His words come out strained. “…to breathe.”
“I bet it does. See, what’s happening right now is because you can’t touch the ground, there’s nothing compressing the veins in your legs to pump the venous blood back up to your heart. Blood’s been pooling in your legs for hours, which is why they’re so swollen at the moment. Not to mention—” I kick at his shin, eliciting a sob. “—painful.”
Tears run down his cheeks while snot pours from his nose. It’s starting to set in that he’s not escaping his fate, and he’s handling it just as they all do… like a bitch. Since I never shy away from a teachable moment, I go on.
“Your arms hurt not only from the decreased blood flow, but also your shoulder joints dislocated about two hours ago. I gotta say, they held in there longer than I originally estimated. However, by now the soft tissue in your arms has stretched to a point that I’d imagine has you feeling a bit tender to put it mildly, and your rotator cuffs are no doubt shot to shit. I won’t even bore you with the extensive nerve damage you’ve more than likely sustained.
“Now,” I continue as I step around him, circling him like a predator does its prey, “the thing no one ever realizes with suspension is the high probability for asphyxiation. Right here—” I press my fingers into his back on either side of his spine, and he winces. “—is your Latissimus Dorsi muscle. The position of your body right now is causing it to act as a corset along your lower thoracic region, making it difficult to breathe.”
Releasing him, I continue to round his tired broken form until I’m positioned in front of him once again. Rico moves with me this time, now standing off slightly to the side rather than directly behind him.
“It hurts, doesn’t it? Feeling like your lungs can’t take a full breath. Like your body’s shutting down on you. Those kids were probably scared as fuck.”
“P-Please, Nick. I’m sorry. I promise I’ll never do it again. J-just don’t do this.”
“Look at that!” Taking a step back, I offer up a wide smile. “Honesty. That’s all I wanted, Steven. A little bit goes a long way.”
He freezes, eyeing me cautiously as my unexpected change of pace disarms him.
“S-so… you’re not going to let me suffocate?”
“As a reward for being truthful, I will not let you suffocate.”
Steven’s body visibly relaxes. So much so that he doesn’t even immediately register when Rico presses the gun to his temple. He pulls the trigger before the first signs of understanding dawn across the asshole’s face. The thunderous echo booms around us, and I remain unmoving as the residual spray of blood and brain matter decorates the floor before me. My gaze dances across the spatter, mapping patterns in the chaos, and as another body is added to the countless ones who came before him, I’m reminded of just how fucking numb I’ve become to it all.
CHAPTER 2
NOW
NICKY
Thirty minutes later I’m upstairs, showered, and exiting the office building with Rico at my side. The cleaning crew’s arrived, with two of them transporting Steven’s remains to the crematorium while the rest stay to scrub the basement. I toss my blood-spattered suit in the pile of shit they’ll be torching and pull on my sheepskin-lined brown leather jacket as we push out into the night.
It’s January, which means it’s cold as balls here in New York. It’s a bit of a hike coming out here to Killington—a good thirty-five minutes from my home in Dutchess—but with the heat I have on me these days, I don’t like to shit where I eat.
The lay of the land is pretty straightforward. Queen City is neutral territory surrounded by five towns: Dutchess, Hope Falls, Middleburgh, Hydetown, and Killington. Dutchess and Hope Falls belong to my organization, the Queen City Dukes, as do portions of Jersey and Connecticut. Middleburgh and Hydetown are Rebel turf, along with portions of NYC. Killington territory is split down the middle.
This particular building is owned by me and Mav under a shell corporation to avoid detection. We use it for whenever one of us calls a Parley—a formal meet-up between our organizations the other can’t refuse—or on nights like tonight when there’s a mess to be handled.
Removing my phone, I thumb out a message to JP who’s posted up at the hospital the boys were taken to. As of right now, it looks like both are going to pull through. I instruct him to check in with the contact on our payroll who slips us patient information so I can have continuous updates on their status, and to ensure all medical bills are forwarded to me. The family will never know of our involvement. The whole thing is funded under the guise of a juvenile drug prevention initiative—a cover I ironically don’t have to use frequently.
Thanks to that code Mav and I live by, teen drug use is practically nonexistent in Queen City and our surrounding territories. I can’t tell you the last time one of our guys was stupid enough to pull some shit like this, and the fact that it was a fuck-up in my crew is going to have Mav talking shit for months.
We hop into the SUV, with Rico opting to drive. I seize the opportunity to try and relax, allowing my head to drop against the glass as I eye the darkened structure we’re currently backing away from. The tingle of a shudder begins to build in my spine, but I shake it off.
“You good?” Rico asks, shifting the car into Drive and turning onto the access road.
“Yeah.” I exit out of my text thread with JP, switching to the one I share with my sister. “Just old ghosts, ya know?
He nods in understanding, letting sleeping dogs lie. We tend not to speak about that night.
Four years ago, shit went sideways when it was discovered I had a rat in my crew. He’d grown obsessed with my sister, Joanna, and when he found out she was sneaking around with Bishop—a fact that even I’d somehow missed—he snapped and kidnapped her, bringing her to an old warehouse out here in Killington. After we got her back, Mav and I burned that shit to the ground, bought the property, and built this in its place. I wish I could say our scorched earth approach wiped the slate clean, but the unfortunate truth is we’re all still suffering the repercussions of that night.
