The Blackthorn Syndicate

Chapter 2 - Noah

In the twenty eight years of my existence, I had learned that there was no greater fear than that of one's own life. For the brave few, you could dangle someone else's life in front of them and they were sure to cave.

There were few occasions anyone would gamble on either of those things.

Even more rare occasions where they would risk it for money, no less.

But then there were these fuckers. The eight men kneeling in front of me, their hands tied behind their backs.

I leaned against the wall of my warehouse, staring all of them down.

We all knew how this was going to end, no one came into this warehouse to be interrogated and left on their feet. The storage cupboard filled with body bags said enough.

"Mr. Richardson, you are mistaken!" The first one whimpered.

Not so brave now.

Too bad they didn't think of this before selling information about my arms deal with the Aldgate Mob to the Italians.

I couldn't help but roll my eyes. I looked at the watch and checked the time. I wanted to be home in the next hour or so to take out my weekly frustrations on Lola, my whore of choice.

The man started crying, begging that he had nothing to do with this.

If I didn't have to kill him for his treason or his lies, I sure as hell wanted to kill him for his blabbering.

This was the perfect moment the rest of them decided to start begging for mercy.

Mercy didn't exist in my line of work.

My younger brother - Harry wasn't enjoying this as much as I was. According to him, we should just get it over with clean and fast but what is the fun in that? If anything, he would rather be anywhere else. I knew he must want to discuss something important if he had to come here and see him and Jovan - his second, break apart grown men like stick figures.

I looked at Jovan and nodded. He smirked in response and saw this as an opportunity to take out his knife. We did need to set an example, afterall. The third man from the right was first to lose control over his bladder.

I smirked as the first scream tore through, silenced all too quickly as the door shut behind him.

"You both are lunatics." Harry comments as he looks over at me and I grin.

There was no denying it. I enjoyed every fucking second of it. There was no changing me now.

Harry stares me over then shakes his head and sighs,

"I have intel that the Italians are going to try and assassinate you tonight during the meeting."

I waive my hand, that's practically every other Tuesday.

The Italians were the major distributor of arms before the war, when the war broke out the market became large for anyone who wanted a piece, that's when we - The Blackthorn Syndicate expanded.

Now, a year since the war ended, people want peace and the arms business is going back to what it used to be. That means territories are tight and in good faith no one poaches to any one else's customers.

Unless you could take the other person down, and I sure as hell can take the Italians at any moment.

"Well, I didn't expect them to send me flowers. You know how things work, Harry. We can take them."

Harry stares at him solemnly, making Noah confused. This wasn't the intel, there was more.

"The Prime Minister, Clement Atlee is appointing a new Minister of Transport along with a new law where each shipping licence would need to be renewed yearly in hopes to crack down on drug trafficking. We cannot afford raids on our exports if we want to fund this war with the Italians."