Shared Secrets

Chapter 2

Warning: Language, violence, mentions of drugs

Tom's POV

Pop! I feel the sickening crunch of bone crunch beneath my fist as I ram my fists repeatedly into Karavski's face. "I'm only going to ask this one more time," I spit into his face. "Where were you when the first shipment arrived." Karavski was supposed to be at the docks at exactly 10 pm when the first shipment of the drugs arrived to ensure that everything went smoothly and there were no police to interfere with the transaction that was to take place, but he'd failed to show. His absence created an even bigger problem when one of the city patrol cops had caught my men loading the truck with massive quantities of drugs. It had taken a fuck ton of money for him to keep his silence. More than I was willing to spend for the night so naturally I had to make an example out of Karavski.

"I-I'm sorry sir I was at the bar. I lost track of time. It won't happen again." He cries between ragged breaths. His broken nose makes him sound even worse. Maybe I shouldn't have broken his nose, but it has been a long night and this is my form of a sort of fucked up therapy session. "I-I swear I didn't mean to cause any issues tonight." God, he's blubbering, unbelievable. I can't believe this pathetic excuse of a man is my go-to bruiser. At least I'm finding out he's a big fucking pansy now and not in the middle of a fight.

I get off of him and wipe his blood off my knuckles contemplating the ways in which I should handle this. I've seen my father deal with shit like this plenty of times, but it's one thing to just be in the room when a beating is going down and another to be the one giving the beating. "Put him into the cell. I'll deal with him later." I bark at the first two men who fell into my line of vision.

"O-oh n-no p-please not the cell. I promise it won't happen again. I fucked up and I take the full blame for that-"

"WHO ELSE WOULD TAKE THE BLAME!?" I scream into Karavski's face. "Cell now." I spit at the two men who were now holding Karavski up. "No food, no water, nothing but the fucking rats to keep you company. Maybe then you'll learn how to keep time." I growl at Karavski, dismissing them with a blink. The two men drag Karavski out of the room, moaning and mumbling an apology.

The cell was my father's doing. He decided that an outright shooting sometimes just wasn't enough of a punishment for some men so he constructed a massive underground chamber with all sorts of torturous devices. One of which was an isolated cell with nothing in it, but a hole in the wall where a family of rats took up residence. That isolation cell drove a lot of men crazy after being in there for so long that they never fucked up again out of fear of being put back in there.

"Talk to me Harrison," I say, striding into the small, compact office attached to the large empty farm building my father purchased to be used to conduct business outside of the city.

"Well Tom, it's not looking too good," Harrison states glancing up from his iPhone to give a concerned look. Harrison is my right-hand man and the only one allowed to call me by my first name. The rest of the men must call me sir- another one of my father's ideas. "The shipment came in short again and the hit we took having to pay off that city cop has put us under our expected quota for the month. We're going to have to double the price on the drugs just to break even."

Fuck. That's the fifth time Darryl has come up short on the drug supply. I shouldn't have given him as many chances as I have, but his drugs are the highest quality in all of London and my father paid a hefty fine to be the only one in all of the UK to do business with the man. "Triple the price on the supply then."

"But Tom-"

"Triple it, Harrison. I know the risks and I know the market. We have the best quality of shit around and we need to make up that deficit."