Page 68 of Disobedient Pawn

“This is what happens when you’re too weak to rule. You lose control of a—”

Crack. Liam slammed his fist so hard into the side of Devin’s jaw that he was out before he fell back onto the ground.

“Fuck he’s annoying,” Liam said and shook out his hand.

“Yeah, he really is. Thanks for shutting him up.”

As I stood, I played back over the entire interaction. Something was off. But what piece was I missing from the puzzle?

NOVEMBER 10 – THURSDAY 9:47 PM

Myles

There wasn’t a more boring job than switching the drugs from the latest shipment I picked up to baggies with the Kings’ logo. I didn’t understand Nash’s reasoning at first and questioned why we were wasting our time with something so tedious.

Nash explained it was a form of Lingchi, but I had no idea what the hell that meant. “It means death by a thousand cuts. It’s a Chinese torture technique, and we need to utilize this mentality to take down the giant.”

Now I got it. Sales had slowly started to dip for product sold by the Kings. It was an inferior cut, less of a high, and they charged a lot for it.

We re-packaged the Kings’ drugs with The Last Rank symbol and sold them exclusively to a few trusted dealers. They sold for us at a reduced price to those who usually couldn’t afford this high-grade party favor. We were raking in the money. The dealers sold out in a matter of days rather than weeks. All the money was put into a shell company’s account in the islands, and we only used the funds to advance our cause.

The guns were trickier. We were only involved in the final pick-up of those, and the warehouses where the crates were stored were locked down like Fort Knox.

“For the love of my fucking eardrums, can you stop singing?” Theo grumbled at Blake.

“Why? Mom says I have the voice of an angel.”

“Mom is fucking deaf. She doesn’t count.”

I snickered. Blake glared. “Yer terrible, my friend,” I said, and Blake muttered that we had no taste before getting up and leaving the room. “Make me a coffee,” I yelled after him.

“No.”

Theo and I shared a look and then chuckled. Blake would make me the coffee. He couldn’t stay mad long. It was one of his most annoying and best traits as a friend.

“What do you think is taking Nash so long?” Zipping the little baggie, I tossed it into the box and started on another.

“Don’t know, could be a million things.”

What Theo didn’t say—but we were both thinking—was that he’d done something to piss off his father and was now being beaten to within an inch of his life. We’d all offered for Nash to move out and stay with us, but he said it would do no good and only anger Lawrence, further. He couldn’t run and he couldn’t hide.

Our latest recruit Rory was right when he called Nash’s father a vicious piece of shit that needed to be stopped. Lawrence only had one good quality, and that was his business acumen.

“Hey, look who I found,” Blake said, walking in with Nash and Liam following. As predicted, he handed me a coffee and even brought bags of potato chips.

“What took you two so long,” Theo asked.

Liam flopped down in a chair while Nash paced like we’d locked him in a cell. “Your brother Devin got shot tonight.”

“Did he die?”

“Naw, it was a leg shot. He lost blood, but he’ll survive.”

I looked Nash in the eyes. “Too bad, it was almost my lucky night.”

Devin was a prick of the highest order. I could deal with jerkish behavior, but Devin took it to another level. He hated and resented me for having Ma and Da for as long as I did while he was shipped off to school here in America. As far as I was concerned, he could keep Da, the man wasn’t much better, but I was happy that Ma wasn’t forced to see how Devin turned out.

He was ruthless, conniving as a snake, and would happily skin a cat for fun. He had a strangeness to him that was darker and sicker than anything that Lawrence did or would do, but Devin couldn’t control it. He couldn’t hold back when needed and wasn’t as good with business, building alliances, friendships, or furthering connections. Devin wanted blood, and the more of it, the better. He was a straight-up psycho, and if my father wasn’t controlling him, I had no doubt he’d be a serial killer by now.