Page 4 of His Dark Discipline

Six months later…

Jawbone blunts my knuckles.

Blood sprays against cold concrete wall. The man spits a tooth onto the floor.

“Tell us where it is!” I bark as I ready myself for another blow. Normally, I’d leave this kind of work to one of my enforcers. Doing it myself is unnecessary. But I’ve been taking greater and greater chances lately. Even my men have noticed.

The son of a bitch is tough. I’ll give him that. He looks up at me through his one good eye, as though daring me to hit him again.

“You tell us or you die,” I remind him. “He doesn’t deserve this kind of loyalty. You’re just a hired gun.”

This guy, Berry or Benny or something, works for one of the other smalltime gangs in the city. They’ve been stealing from us, so I’m coming down hard on them and dismantling their entire little wannabe-drug-syndicate in one fell swoop. Once he gives up his main stash location, my men will burn it to the ground, and they’ll be finished.

“Scar…If I tell you,” he grunts, “can I come work for you?”

Despicable. Selling out one employer to get a job from another.

“Sure.” I nod. “We’ll work something out.”

Of course we won’t. I can’t trust a man like Benny. I also know he’s into little kids, and I don’t fuck with scum like that.

“45th Street. On the corner by the old tire factory.”

I nod to one of my men who whispers into his phone. Grabbing a rag, I wipe the blood from my hands and leave the room. Of course, he never will.

It’s a cold, dark world that I live in, but it was the world I was born into. Crime, poverty, and despair were rampant in my neighborhood. Everywhere I looked I saw the worst of humanity. And my parents did nothing to protect me from it.

My mother drank to escape my father, and my father took his anger out on everyone around him, including me.

I took my first steps into the criminal underworld at the age of twelve, running drugs for a local boss. At the time, I thought he was bigtime. Later, I realized he was just another pawn in the larger game. A game that I wanted to run.

It didn’t take me long. By the time I was out of my teens, I was already commanding half of the city. The other half fell by the time I was thirty, and I’ve ruled it ever since.

They fear me. And fear creates order.

If you’re in the game, you’re fair game. But everyday people, normal citizens trying to go about their lives, are safe from me and my men. No women. No children. The only men who feel my wrath are monsters like me.

I take my own car home. Since leaving Lily, I’ve become more solitary. I tried distracting myself with women, but it had the opposite effect. Their lack of perfection reminded me of Lily’s. With nothing to fall back on but my life of crime, I’ve begun to question everything. But I’m a rat in a maze now – a maze I built for myself. And there’s no escaping it.

As I’m pulling in, my

cell phone rings.

Marla.

“Shit.”

I have to answer. We’re still business partners, after all, but every time I see her name on the caller ID now I flinch.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Lily told her what happened between us. And it would serve me right too. The shame of my actions still flows through me every morning and every night like the waters of the River Styx. As I pick up the call, I hold my breath.

This could be the one…the one where she tells me she knows.

“Yes.”

“Oh, thank God you answered,” Marla says with a heavy sigh. Instantly, I relax.

Not this time.

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