My heart rate didn’t change. My adrenaline didn’t kick in. The move was anticlimactic because I expected this. Little was known about Lucian, including the validity of his word, so I didn’t arrive with high expectations. A man’s reputation always preceded him, and if he didn’t have a reputation, good or bad, that was never a good sign.
“We’re finished here, Balto. I got what I want—but you won’t get what you want.” A man of short stature, Lucian was only intimidating because of his obsession with explosives. There was no way to know where he kept them—or if there was a detonator in his pocket.
I didn’t rise from my seat, not finished with the meeting. “I don’t care how a man earns his living. I don’t care if he kills for a paycheck or he sells bread at a bakery. A man’s worth is dependent on his word. When the money, guns, and women are gone, that’s all we have left. Lucian, think about what you’re doing. Think about what kind of man you want to be.” My black T-shirt was thin enough to allow the slight breeze to breathe across my skin. My jeans felt a little loose because I wasn’t packing a weapon. I’d agreed to leave my pistol off the premises.
Lucian cocked his head slightly as his oily eyebrows rose up his face. “I want to be the man who outsmarted the Skull King. Now leave my property—and have a good day.” He extended his hand to the edge of the patio where the front of the house was located. My men waited there for me, prepared for anything.
I still didn’t rise. “My reputation precedes me—and I earned it. I strongly suggest you sit back down and finish this deal as planned.”
“Are you threatening me? You’re surrounded and outnumbered.”
“Am I?” I asked, maintaining the same calmness because that would only annoy him. The second a man got angry, he lost. And I was doing laps around this loser.
His eyes narrowed farther.
I waited for him to make the right decision and sit back down. He had no idea what was waiting for him at the front of the house if he didn’t uphold his end of the deal. Maybe he’d taken the most valuable diamond in the world, but he was about to lose something that couldn’t be replaced.
He chose wrong. “Leave. Now.”
I knew he wouldn’t shoot me because that would start a war he would spend the next decade fighting. But he’d crossed me because this exchange was personal rather than professional. I rose to my feet and left the table, walking beside him as we returned to the front of the house. My three cars were in the driveway, windows tinted and bulletproof.
We approached the gravel walkway as his armed men stood at attention, watching me closely in anticipation of a sudden movement.
“Leave,” Lucian said. “Before I tell my men to open fire.”
I walked to the middle car and opened the back door. Handcuffed and bound, a man sat in the back seat with the same oily black hair. His face didn’t have a single bruise because he’d been treated well while in my captivity. But all of that was about to change.
I yanked him out of the car.
He started to scream against the gag that swallowed his words.
Lucian stepped forward, visibly pained to see his brother be yanked out of the car and pushed to his knees on the gravel. “Let him go.”
I grabbed a pistol from one of my men and pointed it at the back of his brother’s head.
“Fire!” Lucian ordered.
Before his men could do anything, each one was hit by a sniper. They crumpled, dead around him.
His brother shook as he rested on his knees, his back rising and falling as he breathed through the tears that grew in his eyes.
Lucian held up his hand. “Alright. I’ll give you what you—”
I squeezed the trigger.
His body fell forward, and he was dead before his face smacked into the gravel. His body fell with an audible thud, and his blood soaked the rocks surrounding him.
Lucian’s previously cool persona was long gone. He stared in horror at his only brother’s body, so much pain written on the surface of his black eyes. Instead of retaliating, he just soaked up the despair, taking in every single drop like a dry sponge.
“You paid for that diamond with your brother’s life—hope it was worth it.”
1
Balto
I sat at the bar with a full glass of scotch in front of me. Quiet conversations from the other tables hardly reached my ears because people kept their private business to themselves. It was almost midnight on a Wednesday, so all the honest and hardworking people were in bed asleep. Anyone drinking at this hour was a criminal.
Myself included.
I stared into the amber liquid that dulled the headache at the back of my skull. Booze was the cure to all illnesses. It killed pain, depression, and horrible memories. It gave men a reason to keep living when there was nothing else to live for. We looked forward to the next glass before we even finished the previous one.