Anders

5 When It Rains, It Pours

Bobby

These were my streets. My last name was Lowery, but I owned every block in the Anders territory. Some faceless cunt wasn't going to change that; not without one hell of a fight.

See what I did there? I chose to focus on what was important in the immediate nature of my survival. I couldn't afford to think about Bryan's words that just kept bouncing around in my head.

Or his body pressed against me.

Or his lips on mine.

And I most definitely had no time or energy to devote to the memory of how it felt right. It felt like I was doing the exact thing I was supposed to be doing. And it fucking hurt.

Being that close to him, touching him, tasting him was painful. He shredded my heart like I'd never allowed to happen before. And he was the only one that could fix it. Having him in my hands, literally, hurt inside and out.

And I couldn't stand it.

I just wanted to fall back into him with his stupid crazy temper pushing me more than I ever wanted to admit I liked. He wasn't backing down and it felt good. He was fighting for me.

But it added insult to injury because he was the one that wrecked us. I knew I couldn't stop him. If I was honest, I knew I didn't want to; I wanted him to give me an excuse to take him. But there were bigger things than contemplating dating a sociopath that demanded my attention.

Specifically, I focused on warehouses and safehouses. If I were making moves to take down such an established organization, the first thing I'd need to do was weaken them. To weaken the Anders crime organization, you needed to rip their products from their grips.

If they couldn't protect their own interest, no one would believe they could protect anything else. If I took their stuff, I could sell it and use the money to fund my own revolution. I could end them.

I suspected that our newfound enemies would take this approach. It was the smart play. Aside from those little stupid bangers that Bryan made an example of, they'd been smart.

We'd been in the dark about their impending presence and attack. Even the streets were quiet, no one was willing to cross either entity.

With Bryan taking my advice seriously, we moved product around, changed pick-up and cash drop schedules, and spread a bit of chaos. It was easy to blame it on delayed shipments and new personnel.

To any outsider, and many of those inside the organization, it looked like a simple hiccup. Only the most trusted personnel knew the real reason behind the changes. That was by design.

By that I mean that other than Blake, Bryan and myself, the only other people that knew were Justin Tucker, my number two, and Victor and Nick. I hadn't bothered to learn how to tell them apart but I knew they were the most trusted lieutenants in charge of our product pick-ups and deliveries.

And Ray. He was an outside resource whose only connection to the Anders syndicate was me. He never came around or could be linked to anything we dealt with. That's why he was perfect for tracking leaks and weak links.

But we couldn't move quickly. If we panicked, it would tip our hand and reveal that we knew there was a threat on the horizon. And, because we had to move slowly, one of our most important warehouses was vulnerable.

I didn't want to step up protection details because it would be the equivalent of putting a neon sign on those locations revealing their importance. And it would show that we had something to fear. And I wasn't going to show fear.

Ever.

Brainstorming the problem with Ray led me to my ingenious plan. We'd already been moving product to different locations, making the stashes smaller to reduce the damage if they were stolen. This left several main warehouses sitting idle or with a drastically reduced stash.