Vincent
For so long, my power has existed to be absolute. Unchallenged. I've always aimed for complete control and won't settle for anything less. Unfortunately, my ambitions are being jeopardized by recent arrivals in my city, threatening to loosen...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Screams ricochet across the walls of the dark concrete room causing a dull ache in my skull. The copper tang of blood is prominent in the air, bleach and chlorine mingling with it to form a scent that causes bile to rise in the back of my throat, the occasional swig of beer pushing it back down.
"Fucking hell. They don't make 'em like they used to," Axel, my right-hand man, says, his face recoiling uncomfortably as the kid tied up to a chair watching his senior getting interrogated begins crying. He leans on the wall next to me and we continue watching as Jax, our enforcer, goes back and forth with the prick, the only response swears hurled towards my direction, Jax punching him for the disrespect. In reality, beating the shit out of him was meant to wear down the kid, whom we'd barely touched since this all began. Jax was a big guy, intimidating in stature and with torture skills that could wear down any man's resistance but this guy seemed intent on holding out on us.
They're not the first ones I've caught working my streets, selling blow to anyone with a couple of bucks like a goddamn girl scout selling cookies. It's the cheap stuff too, the kind that probably takes less than an hour to make. Honestly, it's so disgustingly amateur-like that it shouldn't bother me in the slightest. But any competition, no matter how small, was damaging. And I couldn't afford a damaged reputation, especially now, with these gangbangers running around in my city, wreaking havoc and doing whatever the fuck they want. The mayor's been chastising me for months now, calling me out for failing to hold up my end of the deal to keep the city's crime rate at bay, seemingly forgetting I could bury a bullet in his skull in seconds.
The thought of the mess this city's fallen into these past few months is enough to give me a migraine. These two could very well be my only chance of pinning this all on someone before I lose all sense of patience and drag Metropolis into the bloodiest turf war it's ever seen. Blood and bodies, however, came with repercussions, the kind that involved red tape over all my assets, my ass in federal prison and the mayor's puppets running my city.
I push off the wall and walk towards the man, his head slumped awkwardly. I stoop slightly to his eye level and he looks up at me in disgust, though it looks more like a grimace. His left eye is swollen shut, blood dripping from his nose to his chin, his breathing is shallow and strained, indicating at least one collapsed lung and a few broken ribs. His chest is littered with cuts and his fingers are sawn off, a display of the brutal violence dawned on him by my enforcer. His legs dangle as his body trembles from exertion, rattling the chains running from the ceiling to around his wrists, blood dripping down his chest to his toes onto the concrete. You didn't need to be a genius to guess that he had a few hours to be in a hospital bed before he kicks it.
I smile humourlessly at him before rising to my full height and walking towards the kid, squatting to look at him. He gulps and tenses visibly, his eyes frantically searching the room for an escape.
