Death Kings

Chapter 26

Etienne

"You ain't good for nothin' boy," my stepfather snarls while kicking me in the ribs. I'm already down on the ground from the punch he delivered to my gut. "If it weren't for ya momma, I'd done kill you." He spits in my face, then lights a cigarette.

Oh, putain non! Oh, fuck no! My blood runs cold, and my body trembles. I know what's coming next.

"Look at you laying there trembling. Worthless! No wonder you got that black eye today. You little pussy," he hisses. I got this black eye because I let the bully get the first hit in. I wasn't expelled for the fight like he was because it was self-defense. I mean, breaking that little putain's nose was unnecessary, but it got my point across. Don't pick on my tiny nerd friend.

That friend later became my second in command of my gang, Les Mangemorts. He is now running it and doing an excellent job. He has a head for numbers, investing our funds after payouts into lucrative legal businesses. It's the reason the cops of Blanche leave us alone. We give back to the community and keep other gangs out of our territory. We never sell drugs to minors, we don't sell dirty drugs either, nor do we do any form of sex trafficking. Those are inflexible rules, set in stone. Any infraction of those rules is a death sentence.

I feel the burning of the cigarette on my neck. I cry out in pain, which earns me a kick to my ribs. I can feel at least one snap. It's all I can do not shout out again. It's getting hard to breathe.

He lights another cigarette. The smell alone makes me want to vomit. But I swallowed it down because the last time I had my face shoved in my vomit until I was choking on it. I won't make that mistake again.

"I bet you just laid down and took the beating from the little punk." I can see his blurry sneer from my one good eye. I don't dare cry. That will just earn me a belt around my throat.

I want to move away from this man, but I can't. I've tried before and when he caught me, he dragged me to the basement we are in now with his belt tight around my throat. He tied me backward to a chair and then striped my back with that same belt he had strangled me with.

I lay there waiting for the next singing feeling in my throat. He snubs his cigarettes out on me five more times. The burns all clustered on the inside of my forearm.

The worst part of it all is I had to lie to my momma the next morning. I hate lying to her. I told her I was jumped on the way home from school.

The reason is on more than one occasion he threatened to do my momma what he was to me and then fuck her in front of me while he choked her with his belt. I'd never forgive myself if somethin' happened to my mama. She was the only thing good in this world until I met them.

I come awake sweating and trembling. Jaxson rubs my back in a soothing motion. I drift back to sleep with ease.

Later that very day, Mama opens the door to four boys my age, at fourteen. One of them looks exactly like me. Only where my hair is black with a violet tint to it, his is platinum blonde just like the pasty white boy beside him. One boy looks like a girl with curly hair the color of fire down around his shoulders. He sure is pretty. The other boy is the shortest of them all, with golden eyes and mahogany brown hair.

Mama gasped, then looked back at me. "You both look just like him." Her eyes dart back and forth between me and the blonde boy who looks like me. "You must be Callum, Thibaut's other son. S'il vous plaît, entrez les garcons. You must have a lot of questions if you tracked us both down."