[JT]:Anything you can do, I can do better.
[Hex]:Sure. Now go color or whatever it is 24-year-olds do, you little shit.
[JT]:Just don’t miss, old man.
I huff a bitter laugh, shaking my head as I shove my phone away.
Didn’t matter how much I wanted to keep JT out of this life—I never had the choice. Our mother was already a cold body in the ground by the time he was ten and I turned eighteen. Old enough to sign custody papers, too young to understand what I was signing up for.
JT followed me everywhere. He had to. I was his whole world by default, which meant he saw everything. The fights. The blood. The men with dead eyes who smiled while calling it business. Worst of all, he saw Ned Stauder for what he really was—not just a threat, but a parasite in pressed slacks. The kind of man who could make you disappear in pieces and still have the paperwork come back clean.
Ned doesn’t have charm or brains. No, what he’s got is a sick instinct for sniffing out pain. He finds the cracks in you like he was born to break people. After my mother’s death, he offered me money for one fight. Then another. Then ten. Before long, I was bleeding on concrete for cash while he sat in the corner, sipping bourbon like it was the fucking ballet.
He made sure it was always in his rings. His name behind every drop of blood. I fought until my knuckles split and my soul went quiet.
But he didn’t stop with me.
He watched JT. Waited. Knew my brother’s brain worked like a machine and saw dollar signs. When he finally made his move, it wasn’t with fists. It was with wires and cameras. Started him on surveillance gigs, tech runs, hacking jobs no fourteen-year-old should’ve been anywhere near. Told him it was “just work,” like that made it better.
I found JT once, scrubbing footage clean after someone got shot during a backroom brawl. He didn’t flinch. Just looked up and said,“I tried not to watch.”
That night, I made a deal.
Told Ned he could have me—every fight, every broken bone—but JT stayed clean. No more jobs. No more blood.
He laughed in my face, but he took the offer. Said it was a shame, really. JT had promise. Maybe one day, when I finally broke, he’d come collect on the kid again.
That was the leash. Still is. He never really let go, just loosened the rope enough to make me think I had breathing room. That’s how men like him operate. They don’t kill you. They keep you alive long enough to watch everything you love hang from a hook.
JT got out. Got him in front of the right people: tech contracts, security firms, clients who paid for his mind instead of poisoning it. But Stauder’s shadow is long. You see it in the habits we still carry. The way our stomachs tighten when an unknown number calls. The way JT keeps cameras in every corner of his place, footage rolling even when he’s home.
Eventually, I found a way to get us both out.
But some nights I still wake up with blood under my nails and the sound of his voice in my ear telling me it’s never over.
20:00
Back to business.
The market buzzes behind me as I slip out the side street, keeping my pace easy, unhurried. One block away.
18:45
I slip on black latex gloves, the material snapping against my wrists as I reach the service entrance. It’s exactly where JT said it would be—discussing the plan late after the bar closed last night—tucked out of sight, away from the main street. A steel door with no markings, nothing to make anyone look twice. I yank it open and step inside.
The hallway smells of fresh paint and industrial cleaner. No security. No cameras. For now.
17:30
The elevator panel is sleek, keycard only, but JT took care of that too. I tap in the code he sent me, and the 14 button lights up.
I lean against the wall as it climbs, eyes locked on the numbers ticking up.
16:15
The doors slide open to a quiet, pristine hallway. Security cameras are spaced out along the ceiling, but JT assured me they’d be looping yesterday’s footage for the next half-hour. All marble floors and recessed lighting. It doesn’t smell like people actually live here, just expensive candles and new money.
I move straight to 1407.
