#before you leave the mafia you need a source of clean money or at least some savings and a legit job lined up

[legendaryrooftopscene]

Man decided to quit the mafia with no exit strategy. His only idea was to run a restaurant that was bought with mafia money from when he was still in it and he really thought there would be no issue.

[spaghettificationandpretzels]

The Reaper and the Death Angel Part 58

Series Masterlist

Part 57

Contains: So much angst, like all of it, medical procedures, drug use and overdose, hurt/comfort, bugs in bodies.

7K words

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"You're not soldiers, you're all little boys play acting at being warriors without all the hell it takes be truly be one."

You got closer, "morte prima di disonore, it means death before dishonour and the star is the five point star that represents crime in the Italian mafia. So much for the problem going away."

They looked at you with worry, Tig gritting his teeth, "are you saying the white guy's in the mob?"

You nodded, "he's not just in the mob, that tattoo is unique to Italy, that family that Jimmy told us about is here and they have friends."

"Hide the bodies now and clean up, make sure there isn't a stitch of blood anywhere. The cops will be here soon so hurry up, I need to call Hale and get ahead of this then update the CIA." Sam arm was holding you up as you hobbled to the chapel, "Chibs, are you alright to patch Tig up?"

He nodded, "yep."

Tig looked worried and you cut him off before he could say something, "I don't have the time to patch you up Trager, I have my own wound to deal with but first I need to talk to The CIA and Hale. Your flesh wound is the least of my worries."

You turned to Sam, "I need to have this conversation in private, can you help me to the dorm please?"

Tig's eyes went wide, "shouldn't you be here to help Chibs?"

Your patience was growing short, "no, Chibs is very good at what he does. I offered millions of dollars of medical training free to anyone who would take it and you all said no. Maybe if one of you had stepped up to the plate instead of leaving me to do it, you might have more hands on deck." Sam helped you to the dorm and you called the CIA.

You swallowed your pain as the adrenalin faded fast, "we have a problem, the Clubhouse was just attacked, two guys drove in and shot the place up. One was a Tenth Street Killer and the other was a made man, from Italy. One of the gun buyers is in the Mafia, he says it has to do with the ports. The Club has already put plans in place and we're good on our end in terms of manpower. I just need to let you know what's going on in case shit jumps off."

Vance sighed, "I'll send the paperwork to Hale now, you have the agency's support to deal with this. I know it was talked about before we dealt with Lobo but the Club needs training so this stops happening. I'm sure Anvil will do it and we'll bankroll it. Is anyone hurt?"

You took a deep breath, "Don't worry about bankrolling it, it can come out of my cut. We have to make sure this all looks good and money for this coming from a strange source doesn't look above board. Trager took one to the shoulder and I have a bullet in my thigh, no one needs serious medical care."

He groaned, "you could have led with that. Go fix yourself up and get some rest and take a few days to assign everyone training that fits them, I'll send you any info we have on what's going on with the mob and these Tenth Street Killers. If you change your mind about who's paying for it just let me know."

You rubbed your face, "thank you, talk later?"

He huffed, "yes, I mean it when I say in a few days. I know I can't order you to do anything anymore but you need to take it easy before something happens to you and the Club is left to its own devices."

Sam helped you back to the chapel and up onto the table and you called Hale.

"Let me guess, it's not my concern?"

You sighed, he didn't sound happy, "no it's not. I'll have the paperwork for you in the next hour. You can come by and dot your Is and cross your Ts and I'll keep you updated but this isn't a matter for you to concern yourself with."

"Are you alright? You sound like you're in pain."

Part of you wanted to cry, Hale seemed to care more than some of the men in the room, "I'm fine, it's mild. Do you know what you need to do or do I need to explain it to you?"

"I know what I need to do, I'll be here soon with some deputies. Fix yourself up, we can talk later."

Juice was standing there looking very worried, having returned with the first aid kit ten minutes ago so Chibs could start on Tig, "can I do anything to help?"

His sincere tone softened your upset, "see those long tweezers?" He nodded again, "undo the package by the sides, making sure not to touch them then push them towards me by the bottom of the package."

He did as you asked and you went to pull them away from the plastic sleeve. You looked at Sam, who knew what you were about to do but before he could tell you to use lidocaine, Jax came screaming into the room with Opie and Happy. Before he could touch you, you stopped him, "please, I just sterilised myself, don't touch me."

Jax stopped in his tracks and looked at your bleeding leg, "oh my God y/n, you need a doctor."

You huffed, "I am a doctor and I can look after myself." You shook your head and went to speak but Sam acted before you opened your mouth, taking the disinfectant and pouring it in the plastic sleeve and over to tweezers to resterilise the tool.

He gave you one last imploring look to numb the area before you yanked the tweezers away. You watched Jax go every shade of pale as you shoved the tweezer in the wound track and went fishing for the bullet. It didn't take a lot to stay quiet, "that's so fucking hardcore." At least Happy had his head on straight. You finally found the bullet, pulling out with a grunt.

"Where are the fucking sutures?" Juice rustled around in the bag and found nothing.

"I have them Lass."

You huffed, "I don't have time for you to be done with them. Juice, hand me that stapler please."

Jax blinked, he was stuck between staying to be there for you and running out of the room, "at least use a local darlin."

You huffed, "left inside pocket, the small one with the three sections, what do you see?"

Jax looked hard, "nothing."

You nodded, "that's right, nothing. I get three vials of lidocaine at a time, I told everyone that if one was used, someone needed to contact Anvil or me so they could be replaced. Two vials have been used and I was never informed. The last one is over there and the top is covered in Tig's blood, meaning I can't use it."

Chibs' eye's dropped to the floor, "I'm sorry, I've been meaning to tell you for weeks."

You huffed, "well it's too late, now please hand me the stapler."

Jax put his hand over his mouth, "I can't watch this."

You clenched your jaw, "then don't fucking watch." A hard clack filled the air and then you were done, "the CIA has deemed that the Club needs to become more independent. You're being given millions of dollars of training for free over the next month. I need to go to Anvil to create the programs, I'll be back in a few hours and I expect you all to be here so I can give you your assignments."

Jax looked at your wide eyed, "what? You're hurt, you should be at home resting."

You shrugged, "I need to get more lidocaine anyway, just be here when I get back."

****

"Hey honey, Sam called me and told me you'd be coming by and I just finished up with Mr Vance, you're all good to go. I set up the spare office for you and Derek's in there ready to help you out."

You smiled, "thanks Penelope."

She walked you to the office and opened the door, Derek giving you a hug and pulling up a chair, "I've already done, some shit, you've told me enough about then that some of the assignments were easy."

You sighed, "oh I love you." He handed you the sheet and you looked it over, he had already put Juice down for a whole bunch of computer stuff and Happy would be working with Aden in interrogation, they were all also in the mechanic and engineering class.

"Vance said you wanted it taken out of your cut but this is at least four months' worth, we've all talked and we don't need to charge you anything."

You shook your head, "I've already worked out that if I teach some of the classes, you'll only have to take two months' worth. Trust me, some of the classes wouldn't work unless I was the one doing it and the last thing I want to do is waste my money."

Derek made a face, "something is going to happen if you don't slow down, you should be planning your wedding and getting ready for the little one to get here."

You shrugged, "I'm planning ahead, if this gets them trained enough not to need me then I'm doing myself a favour in the long run."

He nodded, "alright, if sit down and start I'll go get us some coffee, you look like you're about to fall over."

He flopped on the chair and propped your leg up on the ottoman, Derek coming back a few minutes later with a cup for each of you, "how bad is it?"

"It's nothing, it doesn't even hurt anymore. I have no idea where I'm going to put half of these guys, Bobby can't put show up to put some bottles away, let alone do any of this."

Derek placed his hand on your shoulder, "you know I love you right?" You nodded, "great, then you know I say this from a good place. You've been too nice to these guys, I get that you love them but out of eleven of them, only half deserve it and one of them is your brother and the other is the man you're going to marry. Start treating them like you treated the guys in country or you're going to end up hating them."

Your shoulders fell, "you're right, if they don't do what they're told then it's their fault, I might still be the go between with the Club and the CIA but I don't need to do any more than keep them alive. Thank you."

Derek smiled, "I'm your friend, there's no need to thank me."

****

You hobbled into T-M with a thick file in your arms, and Jax greeted you outside, stopping you before you could walk into the Clubhouse where everyone was waiting, "Chibs feels terrible for what he did, he's learnt his lesson and it won't happen again."

The expression on his face was a mix of worry, anger and affection, "I'm sorry I snapped at your earlier, you're the last person that…"

Jax cut you off, "no, I deserved it. It's my job to keep them in line and I haven't been doing that." You blinked back tears, "go in and do what you need to do then I'm taking you home, we'll talk about what happens after when you've had some sleep."

You walked inside and everyone headed into the chapel, Jax went to get you a chair and you shook your head, "I'd rather stand." You handed the file to Jax, "pass them down please. These are your schedules for your training, you have two days to tell me about unchangeable appointments and responsibilities, after that it's tough shit."

"What happens if you don't show up?" Tig's tone told you he wasn't taking it seriously.

You resisted the urge to roll your eyes, "in order to make everything look legitimate and reflect well on the Club should law enforcement go looking, I have turned down CIA funding and instead have chosen to have the money for the training taken out of my Anvil cut. To do that, I have to either earn nothing from Anvil for four months or teach some of your classes and earn nothing from Anvil for two months."

They shared a look, "If you miss or fail a single class and don't do your reading, assignments or class work without a very good reason you will owe me for every single cent of your training, not just the class you've failed in, which totals just over a million dollars, should this become a trend, the Club will owe me for everything, which will end by being just under fifteen million dollars and by a trend I mean two people."

Jax's eyes went wide, "this is costing you fifteen million dollars?"

You shook your head, "no, all my Anvil money goes to charity, needy people are missing out on that money."

There was silence, "let me be very clear, this is the last chance for some of the men in this room. The men the CIA deemed expendable will become acceptable losses and my goal will change from keeping everyone alive to, first and foremost, keeping Jax and my brother alive and, second, ensuring the CIA's interests."

"You expect us to be able to perform at the same level as the other people taking these classes? We're not soldiers." Bobby didn't sound worried, he sounded pissed.

"I spent the last six hours personally assigning this training to you. The classes fit both your skills and your interests as well as the roles you already have in the Club. There are classes that everyone will take but those are necessary and have the sole purpose of either saving lives or making the Club look more legitimate. If you had bothered to read your schedule, you would have already known that."

Kozic raised his hand, "what?"

He looked at you sheepishly, "I don't really want to do area fortification."

You took a deep breath, "great, then you can do computers and Juice can learn to torture people. How does that sound?"

Juice blinked, "I don't want to do that."

You smiled nasty, "oh I know and I think doing that would be very bad for your mental and emotional health but Kozik doesn't want to do area fortification and the only person I can move is you. Unless Kozik realises that he's being selfish by not pulling his weight and changes his mind."

Kozik's eyes met the floor, "I didn't mean for it to be like that, I'll stick to what you've told me I'm doing."

You smiled, "great, is anyone else going to whine about getting shit for free? Keep in mind I wouldn't have put you in the class if I didn't think you'd enjoy it."

They were silent, "training starts in three days, if you aren't twenty minutes early you are twenty minutes late. Sam and Kip will only be participating in team building as their time in combat means they don't need this. If you had taken the time to look at what I had handed you instead of just getting me to explain everything, you would see that there is also training at night. In order to get this done in a reasonable amount of time, you will be on a twenty four hour roster, there will not be a time in the next month when one or more of you isn't busy. Any questions?"

Tig's voice had your blood pressure spiking, "yeah.."

You cut him off, "what? What the fuck do you need me to do for you know, say sorry for taking up your time, explain to you why you have to do this or baby you into thinking this is important?"

You have never spoken to any of them like this and their shock was showing, Tig was deflated but that didn't stop Bobby was speaking, "we're not soldiers, you can't expect us to learn this and be good at it."

That was the last straw for you, "no, you're not, that's obvious. Soldiers pull their own weight, follow orders and don't leave other people to do their dirty work. You can't even be here to spend half an hour packing some bottles away because you think it's beneath you, how I can expect you to walk across a mind field or blow or door that could be rigged and get your arms blown off. Oh, that's right, you have no concept of war or combat, you are at home, safe from the horrors of the world where your worst inconvenience is being asked to show up on time and do what you are told."

They looked at each other, Bobby seeming ashamed, "no you're not soldiers, because if you were you'd close your eyes and see your friends with their legs blown off or smell children being burnt alive. In the last few weeks, I have dealt with a horrible train crash, and now I'm dealing with children dying from a dirty drug. None of you has to wade through teenage body after teenage body, none of you has to tell parent after parent that their child is dead and you have no solutions."

Chibs went to speak and you glared at him, "not only do I have to do that but I need to raise a child, plan a wedding and get ready for the arrival of my niece or nephew. You know I have a day job, not that it matters, not that something that makes me feel useful is any more important to some of the people in this room than a hot wet shit."

You threw your hands up, there was no point in holding back now, "I mean, if this is what being an old lady means then I don't want to be one. Old ladies don't get respect, they don't get so much as an acknowledgment of everything they do. No, they are beaten, cheated, and drained dry until they have nothing left to give. No wonder Gemma is so fuck up, no wonder Lyla and Ima stay the hell away. I am Jax's partner, I am meant to be his equal and yet some of the people here, you know who you are, treat me like I'm his bitch."

You were so angry that the pain in your leg felt like nothing, "it's do this y/n, fix this y/n, get us out of our latest mess y/n. This isn't about people saying they are thankful, this is about people acting thankful. There were meant to be two people checking the first aid kit, did Chibs not assign someone or did that person just not care? I'm sick of it, I'm sick of the people in this room leaving the shit work to the prospect or the women. I'm sick of the fucking superiority complex that seems to come along the kutte. No matter how high I climbed, I still cleaned the shitter, no matter how many medals I got, I still got my hands dirty because I had a duty to my fellow soldier to do my part."

Your hands started to shake and you felt your chest get tight, "Bobby's right, you're not soldiers, you're all little boys play acting at being warriors without all the hell it takes be truly be one and I'm done, I'm fucking done. My priority is my child and I will not empty myself to fill anyone else."

The silence was so thick you could cut it, "you want to talk about the Grim Reaper? The enemy used to think I was one, men would piss themselves and start praying when I walked into a room because they thought I could steal their soul with a look. I walk into this building and I reduce myself to Sam's sister, Jax's whore and Abel's mother and I'm never doing that again. I'm done with this shit, I'm done being walked all over."

You took a deep breath and stealed yourself, "I have toppled empires with a smile and the shake of my hips, I have had men who are responsible for the deaths of millions beg for their lives at my feet. You are to fall in line and do what you are told for the good of your brothers first and the Club second like real warriors, or this Club will become nothing but a memory. Not because I don't love any of you or because I'm angry, but because I love my child more than anything on this earth and the Club is now getting in the way of my child's safety. If you don't think I would massacre every single person in this room for my child and I mean every single one of you, you are making a fatal mistake."

You didn't even look at them as you walked out, the hellish silence staying long after you were gone.

****

No one moved, said anything, or even dared to breathe. The people you were addressing in your speech knew it was about them, as did those who knew it wasn't about them.

"She's right, you know." Jax's head snapped toward Opie, "when Billy called me to talk about the bachelor/bachelorette party, we couldn't come up with any games because all of y/n's friends know everything about Jax but a lot of you know nothing about y/n. I wanted to do it anyway but Billy said it would ruin y/n night if anyone felt bad."

Sam was quiet, the same kind of angry quiet that often ended in bloodshed, "there are people in this room who should be ashamed of themselves." Sam hated to bring this up but it needed to happen, and he turned to Tig with hate in his eyes, "do you have any idea how much what she did for you and Clay with Donna hurt her? She spent all the time that Opie was in the dark beating herself up about how what she was doing went against everything she stood for, how protecting you and that monster made her feel?"

Tig's gaze fell, "she hated you from the moment she met you, you rape dead bodies for fucks sake. She spends her time making sure the dead get their stories told and the moment something goes wrong in your life you desecrate them. But instead of sticking to that, she did everything in her power to find the good parts of you so she could like you, not just for your sake but for everyone's. I never heard you say thank you to her for keeping your secret but then I guess you didn't even think about it."

He turned to Chibs, "and you, all the effort she put into making sure you could stand on your own two feet and keep everyone alive and you still get her to help. The offer had always been there to do more training but no, the second it's beyond your scope, you call y/n and get her to do the patching up. Has it occurred to you that maybe every time you don't know how to do something, you should go and learn how to do it? No, I'm guessing it hasn't because y/n will do it anyway."

Bobby was the next target, "you know what she said to me after you didn't show up to pack those bottles away, 'I miss Afghanistan because at least in Afghanistan I could trust my guys to have my back.' She was so hurt by what you did but she never said anything because what was the point."

Sam rubbed his face, "you know she's turned down the job she's dreamed of since she was five, four times since she moved here. Each time she was happy to do it, like the suggestion that leaving Charming was downright offensive. All she wanted was to be the head of anthropology at the Smithsonian, she even had a poster of the front doors that went with her everywhere. When she landed here, she set it alight and told me that she had different dreams now. They called her two weeks ago and she didn't say no, she said that sacrifices had to be made."

Sam stood up and sighed, "fix this shit or I'm turning in my patch and dragging her and Abel Washington so she can be happy, Jax can follow her or he can stay behind but I'm not watching her do this to herself anymore, my sister deserves to be happy and if that happiness comes at cost of the people in this room, I'm ok with that."

****

Jax came home ready to face the music, after your rant and Sam's calm dressing down they had decided it was time to change. No one had complained about their assignments and Jax had sent everyone home to think about how they had treated you. He had gone over and over again what he was going to say to you, how he was going to beg on his knees for your forgiveness but when he got in the door Sam waved him into the library.

"She's on the phone with the FDA and the DEA, they got the test results back from that drug and it's bad. She didn't have much time to explain it before the calls started rolling in."

Jax made his way into the library to be and was greeted by you sitting at the desk with your head in your hands, "hey darlin."

You looked up, "hey, is this the part where you ask for the ring back?"

Jax sat down and took your hand, running his thumb over the back of your hand, "no, I'm not going to ask for the ring back, I'm going to say I'm sorry and tell you that we all talked and that there will be change, the people that don't will lose their patch. We'll be at Anvil in three days for training. I am so sorry you've turned down your dream over and over again for so little return and I will spend my whole life making this up to you if that's what you want. I will do anything to make this right, I...."

You placed a hand on his cheek, "it's not you Jackson, you have been amazing. I'm just burnt out and sick of some of the guys being selfish assholes, had it been any other time I would have been able to deal with it."

Jax shook his head, "no, none of that. It had to happen, we all know who you were talking to and those people are taking a good long look at themselves. I told everyone that if they want to say sorry they can do it when things with your work calm down, until then you're not doing anything else for the Club."

You couldn't stop the tears from falling anymore, the last few weeks catching up with you in a rush and Jax pulled you into his arms, "hey, you're alright, everything is going to be ok." You sobbed into his chest while his hand stroked your back until you couldn't cry anymore.

You pulled away with a sniff and Jax lifted his hand to your cheek, wiping your tears away with his thumb, "you know I love you right?"

You nodded, "that's the second time I've heard that today and it was followed up by me getting all mad at everyone. Yes Jackson, I know you love me."

He smiled, "then you need to stop bottling shit up, it's my job as your partner to look after you and be there when you need someone to talk to." You went to speak but he shook his head softly, "you don't get to decide if something is too much for me. I know you signed up for the Club coming first but you are my world and I am never going to let it hurt you again."

You leaned in close and dropped your forehead to his, "I love you so much, I am so sorry that I..."

Jax kissed you in an effort to quiet you, "there's no need to say sorry. Now I'm going to run you a bath and you're going to spend the next three days focusing on your job."

You smiled, "you are wonderful."

Jax went to say something but your phone rang, "this won't take long, it's the CDC, I think you're going to do a press conference and they want my statement."

You answer the phone with a sigh, "yeah, you want my statement?"

The person on the other end was in a rush, "we only need a few sentences."

Jax had his hand on your leg, his hand running back and forth, "this drug is deadly, it won't give you a better high because people are dying, it will kill you. There is no safe dose, the makeup of the drug means that the longer the pills sit, the more dangerous they become, If you take these pills now you do not have a chance. Please do the right thing and drop them at a hospital or pharmacy so they can't hurt anyone else."

You could hear the person typing, "thank you, that's fabulous. Can we call you if we want you to appear in person?"

"Sure, just let me know in a reasonably time so I don't look like I've been up for four days."

"Of course, thank you for your help Dr l/n."

You hung up and Jax smiled, taking you phone from your hands, "you're done for the night, I'm going to run you that bath and spend the rest of the night making sure you know how much I....."

BANG BANG BANG

A quick glance at the security camera showed a woman, maybe in her late teens or early twenties standing at your door, terrified, by her clothing she must have come from a frat house party next door. You and Jax raced to see what was wrong, Sam opened the door just as you got there, "what's wrong miss."

She looked around frantically, "my friends, they took something. I think they might be dying."

You and Jax shared a look, "alright, we're going to need all hands on deck for this. Jax go get the med kit, the big one, Sam call an ambo and Ima, bring as many cold packs as you can carry."

You were out the door in seconds, "do you know what they took?"

Her eyes were wide, "the pill was pink, it had a flower on it. I'm training to be a nurse and my teacher told me about this new drug that's killing people, I told them not to take it but they wouldn't listen. They just started dropping."

"Alright, run ahead and tell them help is coming and that they need to be ready for the ambulance to arrive, please tell them that no one is in trouble."

Her ran off as fast as her feet could carry her and Jax caught the worry in your eyes, "this is Poppy isn't it?"

You nodded, "I think it is and I only have enough drugs for one person, two at a push."

You walked through the front door and Jax eyes went wide, "what about six people?"

The scene was carnage, Sam came up behind you, the phone still in his hand as he relayed the information to the dispatcher, "they're sending six ambos now, St Thomas is ready for them."

You rubbed your face and turned to Ima, "you and Sam go around and put those cold packs on as many of them as possible, call me over if something goes wrong."

The frat boys were standing there in their T-shirts, with shock on their faces, "I need to know what they took or I can't help."

They looked at each other and their faces became hard, "you're friends are going to die and if you don't help me I will tell the cops you refused to help."

Still nothing, "please, your friends are dying I just need to know what they're on so I can keep them alive."

The youngest one of the group looked at his brother then back at you, "they took Poppy, we didn't think it would hurt them, we've been taking it for weeks and we've been fine."

"Ahhh, y/n, I think this guy is having a seizure." You over and waved to Jax, "go in the bag and look for a drug called Midazolam, it's got Versed written under it, then take a fourteen gauge needle, the orange one and draw up half of it."

Jax did as you asked, handing you the syringe with a worried look. "Hold his arm down so I can give it to him." Jax did as you asked and you watched the boy's face as you injected the drug.

"It's not working."

You shook your head and handed the syringe back to him, "the other half please." He didn't stop shaking as you gave him the last of the vial.

"I'm out of drugs, there's no more I can do." You looked for around for Sam who was holding another shaking victim, everyone else dropping one after the other, "Sammy, what's the ETA on those ambos?"

Sam voice was tight, "three minutes."

The girl who came and got you was standing there numb, "can we do anything to help?"

You nodded, "get them as cold as you can, all we can do is preserve brain function until help gets here, what's your name sweetie."

She blinked, "Misty, my name is Misty."

You smiled, "alright Misty, you've done amazing so far but I need to cool them down. Have you learnt how to do that yet?" She nodded, "ok, well I'm y/n, this is Jax, the tall guy over there is Sam and the pretty blonde next to him is Ima and we're here to help. Get as many people as you to help you get these people cold so we can get them to the ER alive."

She ran off, by now everyone was listening. You only relaxed when the red and blue lights came through the windows and the sound of sirens filled the air.

"They're all seizing already?"

You nodded, "the drugs aren't working, I'm trying to keep them cool but.."

Shay waved her hand, "we know, we've been going to these calls all week. Go help with the cooling we'll do what we can." The other paramedics went to help and then they were loading people into their vehicles, "David will be here soon, I'll get you a ticket for your meds so you can replace them."

You nodded, "none of them are going to live, are they?" Shay shook her head, "the one the medicated might. I'll let you know how it goes."

"Thank you."

Jax put his hand on your back as Sam walked Ima home,"if that's what you've been dealing with the last few weeks I am so sorry. Let's get you home, Hale and talk to you there."

You sighed, "thank God Wendy had Abel tonight."

Jax chuckled, "she's been great."

Misty walked over to you with her face pale, "can I help? I was speaking to my friend Jenny before she started getting sick."

"Do you know where they got the drugs?"

Misty looked around, "yeah, Oakland."

You and Jax shared a look and you pointed to a piece of paper, "this is the number for a detective Mason tell him everything you know, please."

She took the number from your hands, "I'm going to go see him right now, thank you."

You smiled, "thank you for doing the right thing."

****

"There's two Oakland detectives at the door for you."

You pressed the intercom, "send them in, thank you T."

They walked in looking worried, "I'm guessing you saw Misty last night?"

One of them nodded, "I'm detective Goodman, this is detective Mason."

"I'm sorry we had to meet like this, did you get anywhere?"

Goodman nodded, "we're not here to question you, we're dealing with that now. We're here to ask about some other bodies that arrived last night."

You nodded, "the ones from Oakland, of course."

Mason smiled, "the woman in her early twenties, yes."

They looked at each other, "Damon's daughter was there when it happened, she was the one that did CPR."

You knew what they were asking, "six of the bodies in the fridge happened in the house next door, I saw this drug in action. There is nothing she could have done to help her friend. I can't ease her mind, what I can do is say for sure that she did everything she could and there's is no way she could have helped. I had the antidote drug with me and that wasn't enough."

They nodded and Goodman spoke, "thank you, we'll pass that on to her." They shared a look, "this will be the last round of bodies, we just came to let you know that it's being dealt with and we could use your help to make sure this doesn't keep hurting our community."

You got the message loud and clear, "do you best to leave no evidence and make it look like a rival gang and I'll take care of the rest."

"We'll be in touch, thank you Dr l/n."

****

"I spoke to Pope, Veronica is doing ok since you spoke to the detectives. He assured me that the drugs won't be an issue for much longer."

You took a deep breath, "I don't want to know, the less I know the easier it will be to get me to cover it up. How's your reading going?"

Jax smiled, "it's going great, I am learning a lot. I cannot wait for it to start."

You sighed and threw your arms onto his shoulders, "you are going to have a lot of fun and you'll learn so much."

Jax bent his head and kissed you, "I can wait for you to teach me, it's going to fulfil every teacher and student fantasy I've ever had."

You giggled, "you might not think that when it starts, I've been told on the odd times when I teach at Anvil I can be kinda mean."

"I can't wait, I like it when you're mean."

The connotation was clear, "I can be mean to you if you want me to, all you need to do is ask."

Jax smirked, "on second thought, I like you when you're nice too."

You shook your head, "you are insufferable."

Jax took your face in his hands and kissed your hard, walking you back towards the couch, "how's your leg?"

You moved his kiss his neck, your hands popping the buttons of his flannel, "fine. I missed you."

Jax's hand slid down your body to cup your centre, "it's only been three days."

You nipped his skin, "three long painful days."

Just as Jax's fingers went to untie your scrubs, your phone rang.

"Yeah." It was detective Goodman.

"There are bodies, it looks like something you'd handle considering what we found."

You sighed, "I'll be there soon."

You hung up and Jax's face fell, "more shit?"

You nodded, "so much."

****

"What the hell am I looking at?"

Goodman looked at you, "I was hoping you'd tell us, it looks like these are the guys who were selling Poppy."

You walked over to the bodies, two of them staged, they were being strung up their arms and had roach carved into their stomachs. You turned to your team, "Jess, help me get this guy down, Jack and Zack can do the other one."

Jess looked closer as you walked up to the dead man, "has something been stuffed inside their abdominal cavity?"

"It looks like it. In all likelihood, it's the drugs they've been..... Oh my God, did it just move?"

She nodded and you took a deep breath, "alright, for everyone's safety, we got to open them here." You and Jessica got the body and and placed it on the ground, the press showing up just as you got the scalpel out of your bag, "hey Mason, can you wave them off please?" He gave you a nod and went to push them behind the police line as you placed the blade at the chest, it was clear this close that the letters cut deep in the skin were there to hide the fact that they had been cut open.

You pressed down and the skin split open, you and Jessica jumping up and taking large steps back as the body opened and the source of the movement became clear, the bodies had been filled with cockroaches.

"Oh no, I do not like this, I do not like this one bit. We are going to get these bodies back to the lab and let Jack deal with this shit."

Jess sighed, "I miss it when we only worked with bones."

You chuckled, "me too."

****

"Y/n is on the TV, so is your old lady." Juice came in from his kitchen, having invited Happy over so they could study.

"What do you think's going on there?"

Happy shrugged, "I'm sure we'll find out. Holy fuck, are those what I think they are?"

Happy pointed to the Tv and Juice turned away, "I'm going to go take Jess a change of clothes, help yourself to dinner."

****

"I saw the news, are you alright?"

You climbed into Jax's lap and buried your head in his chest, "it was so gross but the good news is that I think the issues with the drugs are over. The two men they found were the main sellers and some info on the bodies led the cops to where they were bringing them in. It's being dealt with now."

Jax ran his hand up and down your back, "Pope?"

"Yep."

You lifted your head off his chest and pressed your lips to his, "shall we pick up where we left off?"

Jax smirked, "fuck yeah."

Part 59

[farfromsugafanfic]

Innocence

Genre: Mafia AU, Angst, Fluff

Pairing: Namjoon/Reader

Warnings: violence, guns/gun violence, cursing, violence against women, home invasion

Synopsis: When you end up getting caught in the crossfire, you’re brought to the local mafia leader who promises to rehabilitate you. Although, falling in love you certainly wasn’t part of the plan.

﹥━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━﹤

"Shit, she's bleeding out," someone said from a few feet away.

"What? Who?"

"I don't know some random lady."

You moaned in pain as a pair of boots approached you and eventually, you could make out the fuzzy face of someone crouching over you. You couldn't tell where the pain was coming from, only that you felt it rippling through your body

"Fuck, Namjoon doesn't like when innocent people get hurt. We've gotta take her back with us."

"What? Isn't that just part of it? Innocent people get caught up in this shit all the time."

"Not the way Namjoon does it, come on, come grab her legs."

As one of the men looped his arms underneath your armpits, you felt one final jolt of pain that felt like it was ripping your body apart before everything went black.

﹥━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━﹤

"Is she going to live?" one of the men who'd brought you back asked.

"Yes, barely," Namjoon said, his face firm and his voice steadier than normal. "You're sure it wasn't one of your bullets?"

"All of our bullets were accounted for, sir."

Namjoon nodded. "If I find out either of you are lying, you know the consequences?"

Both men nodded in understanding.

The doctor emerged from the room where you were. "She's waking up, sir. I'll leave the rest to you. Call me if she starts showing any concerning signs."

Namjoon nodded and waved the doctor off and entered your room.

If it weren't for the drab gray appearance of the room, it would've looked like you were in a normal hospital room. An IV in your arm and white sheets pulled up to your chin. Your eyes were still closed, but your heart monitor was beginning to slowly pick up from it's near flat line when you'd arrived.

He pulled a stool from the corner of the room and sat next to your watching as your chest moved slowly up and down. The doctor had extracted the bullet and cleaned the blood from your skin and clothes. Your bloody jeans and sweatshirt had been washed and were folded on a table in the corner of the room. Your hair was still dirty, but the blood washed from its tips.

You looked younger than when he'd first seen you and it only made his chest ache. He had no idea who you were or what you had been doing in that part of town, but you certainly didn't deserve the bullet in your shoulder. It had nearly missed your collarbone and the important blood vessels, but you'd still lost enough blood to be anemic.

Your eyelids began to flutter and Namjoon sat still as he met them.

﹥━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━﹤

You opened your eyes and were immediately met with a pair of unfamiliar brown ones.

"Hello," the man said. He sat with his elbows on his thighs and his hands clasped together.

Other than the fact that you had no idea who the man was, the more concerning thing was that you had no idea where you were and you were seemingly alone with him. If you had to take a guess, the room almost seemed like a storage room of some sort; a cement floor and shelves lining all but two of the walls. They were mostly empty except for vague medical supplies.

"Where am I?" you asked, the beep of your heart monitor beginning to quicken.

"You're safe." The man sat up straighter, but his eyes never left you. "I'm Kim Namjoon. What's your name?"

You eyed him suspiciously. "Y/N."

"Just Y/N," he asked, his eyebrow arching.

"For now."

He chuckled before getting up and heading for a sink in the corner of the room. He filled a glass and walked back over to you with a pill in his hand.

"Take this," he said, placing the pill in your palm and holding the glass above you for when you were ready. You stared at him for a moment before glancing down at the pill. It looked normal and based upon the fact that this man was most likely the one responsible for saving your life, he would have no reason to kill you now, right? "It's an iron supplement. Cause you lost so much blood. You'll have to take them every day for a couple months."

You nodded and placed the pill in your mouth and swallowed it down. There was a feeling in the pit of your stomach that you could trust Namjoon, at least that he wouldn't kill you.

"Now, I need you to tell me everything you remember from the night you were shot."

﹥━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━﹤

You were on your way home after work. You'd just graduated and started in an entry-level position at your dream company, but it left you exhausted and overworked. It was already nearly 11 and you knew you should've allowed your co-worker to drive you home, but you didn't know him well enough yet to trust him with where you lived.

You normally felt fairly safe walking through the city by yourself. You'd grown up there and you knew the areas to avoid, but you were tired and decided to take a short cut through a rougher neighborhood.

You took out your headphones and increased your pace so that you were walking faster than your normal pace, but wouldn't look too scared or suspicious.

For the first ten minutes, everything was normal, but as you neared the end of the neighborhood and the beginning of yours, you heard yelling. You looked around and couldn't find a source, so you kept walking and as you crossed an alleyway, a man ran into you, knocking off your feet.

You sat up, your vision a little blurry and your head still coming off its daze. As your vision came back, you stood up and braced yourself against the wall. That's when you looked up and the shot came. You couldn't see who shot you, if they meant to, or if it was just an accident. Heck, you couldn't even tell which direction the bullet came from.

You fell to your knees and eventually on your back. At first, the pain was unbearable, you felt the blood pouring out of your shoulder, although couldn't tell if it was from the back or front. But, eventually, the pain ceased and your eyelids began to feel heavy. It was soon after the man lifted you that a final burst of pain caused everything to go black.

﹥━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━﹤

"You don't know who shot you?" he asked. The darkness in his eyes as he asked the question caused the pain in your shoulder to flare.

You shook your head. "It happened too fast."

He nodded, before getting up and leaving the room without another word. You then only saw strangers as they came to give you meals or check your wound which still had a long way to heal.

﹥━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━﹤

"Morning," Namjoon said, in the exact same cadence he said it every morning. He laid a tray over your lap which had a spinach and cheese omelet, toast, and a rotating menu of meats. Today was two slices of bacon. And, of course, on the side was a pair of iron supplements.

"Think you can eat it all today?" he asked. While you needed the nutrients, you had basically no appetite most of the time, but today, the toast was spread with a red jam it usually wasn't, which made you bite into it immediately. Raspberries. Your favorite. "Why don't you tell me about your job today?"

He pulled a chair to your bed and flipped it around and sat on it backward, allowing his arms to dangle off the top. The two of you had promised to tell each other something about each other each day. You knew it was a way to get information out of you and monitor your well being, but you didn't really mind. It started to become one of your favorite parts of the day.

"I'll tell you about mine if you tell me about yours."

He stiffened at that. You had your suspicions that Namjoon's job was less than legal considering how you ended up meeting him. You just weren't sure exactly what it was he did. Was he some sort of drug lord? A gang member? A pimp? Your stomach turned at the possibilities.

"Okay," he said. "You just have to promise that you won't be scared of me."

"O-okay."

He nodded, although you knew he caught the shaking in your voice. "You first."

"I—uh—I work for a non-profit that benefits women who have been victims of violence," you said. "I help process all the donations and make sure all the finances match up. I was an accounting major in college, but I didn't really feel like doing other people's taxes for the rest of my life. I want to feel like I'm making some sort of difference. Even though I don't make as much money, I feel like it's worth it."

"You are," he said. "You are making a difference."

Silence filled the room for a few moments, but it wasn't awkward or tense, it was simply you and Namjoon in your own thoughts. His eyes locked on you and your eyes unconsciously noticed the dimples on his cheeks that appeared and disappeared as he talked.

"All right, you promised," you said. "Your turn."

Namjoon's posture straightened and he cleared his throat. "Oh, well, I'm sort of the leader of the local mafia. I mean, it's not quite as nefarious as it seems. It's mostly just money laundering and stuff like that."

"But, you still kill people?"

"I never have. My men do only when necessary."

You gulped and pulled your eyes away from him. "Then, why did you save me?"

"Because I don't like innocent people getting hurt."

"How did this happen? How did you become the leader? You--you just don't seem like the type."

"My family," he said. "They kind of started this whole thing. I went to college and everything, but ultimately, I didn't know how to be anything else."

"You know you could always leave it behind. You're the leader. You could end all of this."

"It's not that easy. If I end it, I immediately become a target or someone would start it back up. And, let's just say, you don't want this kind of operation falling into the wrong hands. Many wouldn't have batted an eye at you getting shot."

"Don't think you're the hero here. Whether or not it was your men who shot me, whether or not you chose to save me, I still got shot because of you."

Namjoon's jaw stiffened and he crossed his arms over his chest. "You're right, I'm sorry," he said. "Although, it's not quite as easy to just leave."

"What did you study in college?"

"Huh?" He paused. "Literature and Writing."

You smiled. "Why don't you read to me?" you asked. "I never really got to take any literature classes in college and I missed them. I still have longer to recover. You could read to me whenever you wanted to."

"I'd like that," Namjoon said, his dimples appearing and lighting up his face.

﹥━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━﹤

You laid back with your head and neck pressing back against the pillow as you closed your eyes as Namjoon's voiced lulled you asleep. You knew it wasn't just his voice and the way his voice took on a smooth rhythm as he read or the way his voice grew hoarse eventually. The doctor had slowly been weaning you off of the painkillers, while the pain wasn't as intense as before, it still exhausted you.

He was reading from Jane Eyre a book you certainly hadn't expected Namjoon to choose. The gothic element was enough to send shivers down your spine, but not keep you from falling asleep.

You were halfway through the book now and you knew you would never finish. Your condition was improving and you barely needed pain medication anymore. The doctor came once a day and today he had told you that he thought you'd be able to go back to your own apartment and life the next day.

Namjoon stopped reading and it jolted you out of your half-slumber.

"Why'd you stop?"

"I thought you were asleep."

You opened your eyes and shook your head, although your eyelids were only half open crescent moons and the way you were forcing them open made Namjoon chuckle.

"You're tired, anyway," he said. He closed the book and stood up from his chair. "Goodnight. Sleep well."

You watched as Namjoon walked towards the door and felt something in your chest. "Wait," you said. "This is the last night and we haven't finished the story."

"Y/N, we still have half the book left. There's no way--"

"Just stay with me tonight," you said. "I'll have to go back to being in my apartment all alone tomorrow and I don't know. I've enjoyed having you around."

"Y/N--" Namjoon said. "You're just--this isn't right--"

Namjoon's eyes met yours for a second before he ripped them away and walked out of the room with the book still in hand.

﹥━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━﹤

"She--she asked me to stay with her," Namjoon said. He sat in his desk chair with his feet resting up on the desk, something he only did when he was thinking deeply.

"Is that a bad thing?" his right-hand man, Yoongi asked. "You like her, right?"

"Yes, but Yoongi, she hasn't been out of that room for weeks. She's only seen me and the doctor with only a couple of exceptions. It's just Stockholm Syndrome."

"We didn't kidnap her though. She could've left if she wanted."

"Yes, Yoongi, but why would she? She would've had to pay for medical care elsewhere. Even if we didn't mean to, we trapped her here. She's hardly seen anyone but me. Of course, she'll become attached."

"It's not like you were torturing her, Joon. You were helping her and I see the way you look at her too. Everyone does."

"If I wanted to, I can't give her the life she deserves. She's doing good things, Yoongi. She's innocent and I want her to stay that way." Yoongi nodded in his head in understanding, but there lingered a small glint of hesitation in his eyes. "And, even if I could, keeping her around her is dangerous. If our rivals found out about her, she'd become a target."

Namjoon sighed and stood up from his desk and shuffled through his papers. "Make sure she gets home safely tomorrow. Keep a couple of men in the area for the next week or so just in case it was a targeted attack."

﹥━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━﹤

"He's not coming?" you asked the man who introduced himself as Yoongi.

He shook his head and gave you a sympathetic look. "But, he did want me to give you this."

Yoongi reached into his bag and pulled out the copy of Jane Eyre Namjoon had read to you. It was an old copy--at least fifty years old--and he had a bookmark stuck halfway through. You opened to the marked page and found his handwriting on the bookmark. He wrote in black ink. It was neat, although smudged around the edges because he'd closed the book on it when the ink was still wet.

It's your turn to read now Namjoon x

Your eyes focused down on the 'x'. It certainly didn't mean anything, it was just his way of signing off, but it left you satisfied as you walked out of the door escorted by Yoongi and a few other men.

﹥━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━﹤

3 months later

"Y/N!" one of your coworkers said, rushing into your office. "You're never going to believe this."

"What?" you asked looking up from your work.

"Some guy just came in here. He was so handsome and wearing a fancy suit and he wrote us a thirty thousand dollar check." She held up the check so you could see it.

"No way," you said, grabbing the check from her hands. You held it up to the light and placed it under the black light you had to verify authentic donations. You had a weird feeling in your gut and you glanced down at the signature on the check. You couldn't make out a particular name, but a shiver ran down your spine. "What was his name?"

"Oh, well, I don't think he told us his real name. But, you know the rich types, always wanting to protect their identities."

"Y/C/N, what. was. his. name?"

"Mr. Rochester."

6 months later

"We're a bit short his month, Y/N," your boss said. "You know I hate to deduct from wages. It wasn't much this month."

You nodded. It was the reality of working for a non-profit. Sometimes you got paid and sometimes you didn't, but you knew the money was going to people more deserving of yourself. You waited until you were on your way home to open the envelope and see just how much you were getting that month. When your eyes met the total, you slowly looked down before continuing onto your apartment.

You pushed the key into the lock wondering just how you were going to scrounge up enough money for next month's rent. You could always sell something or do some odd jobs on the weekends. You opened your door and stepped inside feeling your foot slip forward, causing you to nearly trip, your only savior is your right hand was still holding on to the doorknob.

You got your footing and bent down to find a small envelope that was slid under your door. Your name was printed neatly on it. Normally, this would freak you out, but you noticed the same black ink from the bookmark in the copy of Jane Eyre.

I know money has been tight. Here's rent for the next couple months. Keep doing what's important x Mr. Rochester

Tears came to your eyes and your bit your index finger as you read the note over and over again. He was absolutely insufferable and part of you wanted to rip up the check, but instead, you slipped it out of the envelope and into your purse.

9 months later

It was a quiet Saturday night when you heard the knock at your door. It was nearly 11 pm and you weren't expecting anyone. You were already in your pajamas and you had picked up Jane Eyre for the first time in a few months. It wasn't that you found it particularly hard to read, but every time you picked it up, you were reminded of him. The man you had no idea why you still thought about. The man who occasionally came into your life and then left just as quickly.

The knock came again and louder this time. This time panic rushed down your spine and you froze. Was it best to approach the door and give away the fact you weren't asleep? Or was it best to just act like you'd already done to bed and hope they go away?

You stayed put, but clutched your cellphone close to you. Another knock never came, but instead the rustling of the doorknob and the clicking of the lock. It was when you heard it successfully unlock that you ran towards the kitchen. You grabbed your largest kitchen knife and crouched in the corner.

You were in the middle of dialing emergency services when you were yanked up by your hair and your cellphone went clattering to the floor.

"Ah, yes, you are her," the man said.

You didn't recognize the man in front of you. He was taller than you and held your hair in a tightening grip that caused you to whimper.

"You're plainer than I expected. He's head over heels for you, so I figured you must be beautiful. But, I guess, you must have better things to offer." He smirked, but unlike the smirks Namjoon sometimes let slip, this one terrified you.

"Who are you?" you asked.

"It doesn't matter to you baby girl," he said. "All you need to know is that you're going to die."

﹥━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━﹤

"Namjoon!" Yoongi said, running into the room, breathless. His face was red and his eyes were creased, almost in fear. It was uncommon for Yoongi to get so worked up, let alone run. He spoke when he finally caught his breath, "Min-sung," he said. "Min-sung was seen near her apartment."

Min-sung had once been a trusted man, but he began getting greedy. Wanting to take all the jobs. Skimming money off the top. He felt betrayed when Namjoon finally let him go. You'd think he'd be grateful, most other bosses would've had him killed for how much money he stole, but no. Min-sung's mind was only focused on the drugs he took and the money he needed to buy them.

Namjoon's eyes widened. He pulled open his desk drawer, nearly pulling the entire drawer out of it's setting. He pulled out a handgun and fed in the clip. It had not once been fired. Namjoon had never had the urge nor the need to kill, until that very moment.

﹥━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━﹤

"I'm going to play with you," he said. "To let him know you suffered. His precious little secret on the south side of the city."

"Please, I don't know who you're talking about. The walls are thin. I'm sure the neighbors are worried by now." Both were lies, but you hoped it came off convincing enough. He'd let go of your hair, but now he straddled you.

"Tell me, how do you want to die?"

"I don't want to die."

He laughed. "Of course not, sweetheart. But, you're going to. I'm being generous and giving you a choice. I could take that knife you had when I came in and stab you or I could kill you with my hands on your throat. Or, I could hold your head down in the bathtub and watch as you writhe around--"

Tears pushed out of your eyes and you felt blood sprout from your bottom lip as you dug into it. You squirmed underneath the man trying to wriggle yourself free or one of your limbs free.

"You know, I haven't really given much thought to dying," you said. You slowly slipped your foot upwards until you had enough leverage to bring your knee into his crotch.

He doubled over in enough pain for you to free yourself. You ran back towards the kitchen to grab the knife from earlier. You wrapped your palm around the hilt, but he was behind you before you could turn around. With all your might, you forced the knife backward, but it was at an awkward angle. Yet, you still heard him wince.

The knife dropped from your hand and the man turned you around, forcing your back against the counter. You noticed a long cut on his arm and felt a small sense of pride. At least if he was going to kill you, he would have a scar.

His hands wrapped around your neck and his thumbs sat right on top of your windpipe. You made eye contact with him as he pushed down and you made a small croaking sound as your eyes grew wider and your toes pointed in reaction to the lack of air.

"Stop...please...help...Namjoon..."

You managed only a few words before you ran out of air to manage any sounds. Your vision was beginning to blur and you knew in a few seconds you'd black out and it'd be the end.

The last few moments were so loud you couldn't make out what happened. Yelling, shuffling, a slam of a door, a loud pop. Then, it was all over.

﹥━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━﹤

"Y/N, Y/N, please come back to me."

You opened your eyes to see Namjoon crouched over you. Blood stained his shirt and even parts of his skin, but his hand was clean as it caressed your cheek softly.

"Thank God," he said. "I thought I was too late. The doctor is on his way and so are my men to clean up everything. We'll pay off the neighbors to keep things quiet if we have to. You don't need to worry."

"I'm not worried, Namjoon." Your voice was hoarse and still not all the way there. You felt the bruises forming on your neck and your entire body ached. You turned you head to see your attacker laying in a pool of blood a few feet away.

"Hey, hey, don't look at that. Come on."

"I'm not a child."

"That doesn't mean you need to see a dead guy on your kitchen floor."

He lifted you up and carried you into your bedroom. After setting you down, he went back out to the living area and grabbed the copy of Jane Eyre.

"You didn't get very far."

"I've been busy."

﹥━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━﹤

1 year later

Namjoon is almost done setting up everything in his new office when he hears a soft knock at the door. A delivery person carrying a large bouquet of flowers strides in and sets the vase on his desk and left without a word.

Curious, Namjoon walked from the corner of the room where he had been shelving books and to the center of the room. He plucked the card from among the flower heads.

I finally found time to finish the book. Congrats on the new job. Let's meet soon. Love, Jane

[merrysithmas]

hi! what are your predictions for boris and theo’s future after the end of the novel? are they going to move together and where - new york or antwerp? is boris going to get clean? is theo going to find out boris lied about his wife and kids? please share your thoughts I’m really curious!

I don’t have any predictions bc I know that Donna will just ruin their lives - Lmao. But my FANTASY is that Theo becomes some kind of tenured art professor that travels back and forth from NYC to London with his grants from the high-brow University he works for — he’s head of Art History and looks up to the Dean of his school as a mentor and mother-figure (can’t get away from that one, can ya Theo).

Boris works in his underground Odessa mafia crime syndicate - stationed in Antwerp but often traveling to NYC, Tel Aviv, Miami, Budapest, London, Amsterdam, and various other places — Theo kind of on the DL works as his stony-faced accountant being a bit knowledgable on the laundering and financial fraud end of things himself (he used to dabble in millions in art fraud himself) and fine arts consultant, and everyone knows they are these inseparable partners of unknown dynamic. Boris, flippant and personable and wily, Theo quiet and elitist and aloof - always at each other’s sides.

So Theo’s become a bit of a “we have to find lost and stolen relics and return them to the places where they truly belong, or the very least to a museum!” and uses his grant money from his University to investigate such matters and has been successful in several returns (cue proud newspaper articles that Hobie framed and puts up on the mantle) and has brought some amount of prestige to the University.

However Theo’s philanthropic fixation often clashes with Boris’ “holy fuck this is worth 300 million dollars” attitude and there are hijinx, usually with Boris always caving and/or Theo making it worth his while by appealing to his Boris-ly interests (i.e. “Please I need your resources to go to Syria” “Are you fucking kidding me? For what a plank of wood?” “It’s a sacred Persian relic and it’s in the hands of people like Martin!” “Listen to my words, Potter. It is. plank. of fucking. wood.” “Fuck you, Boris. There will be gold.” “... Gold? How much gold exactly?”).

So as Theo dabbles in Boris’ life, Boris also pops up in Theo’s, unexpectedly interrupting Theo’s lectures in the halls of European museums, waving to the kids, pulling Theo away for “just a moment” as he explains someone in the museum in trying to kill him insisting they “switch coats” and Theo has to hide him in the archives. Or he plops down while Theo is eating outside in a café in Strasbourg, casually sitting down across from him while Theo grades papers and smiles to himself at the familiar shadow falling on his gradebook (they eventually get into a fight and Theo calls him a “walking contraceptive” before he blusters off and Boris is left to eat the rest of Theo’s brunch in the company of a bunch of diners who are side-eying him, taking to reading a paper Theo left behind while finishing his Gerwurztraminer).

Or Boris is exhuasted, burning the midnight oil, black rings under his eyes, thinner than usual, wiry and punkish, under the gun, dead asleep on Theo’s couch in his office at his London library University headquarters, and Theo carefully tucks a heavy woolen blanket around his shoulders as he sleeps like the dead, deep tired breaths, safe, at home, as the rain pours down like a flood outside and Theo smokes quietly in the dark working on another grant proposal.

Or Theo turns up at Boris’ door in Antwerp, late nightcap after a surprise flight for a conference and seminar that he hasn’t told Boris about, and he sees Boris has barely eaten for weeks, holed up after trying to figure he and his gang’s way out of some absolute fuckery they got themselves into and losing one of his longtime members in the process — grieving and he can’t show anyone else and it hurts. And Theo runs his hand through Boris’ hair, and Boris closes tired, red eyes. And Theo is cooking him a meal at 3am, putting on some boiling hot tea, insisting he “come home” for a while. To New York.

New York City in the winter — operas and symphonies — snow falling like feathers and covering Central Park, winter holidays from school and Theo doesn’t have work, gallery events at museums that Boris can complain about - the Old Rich Hierarchal stuffiness - the insulting of which always makes him feel a bit better. Old movies and (bad, hard) drugs and stealing shit for old times sake from Duane Reade even though Boris has enough money for the two of them to span three lifetimes. Hot showers after getting in from the freezing cold and Theo’s apartment is meticulous and Boris disturbs it like a tornado. And they sleep in and for some brief moments, sometimes, tipped over vodka bottles, creaking floorboards in the night, city sounds and Vegas-bright Christmas lights, it’s like they’re kids again.

Meanwhile on the other end Boris’ gang is like a second family to Theo — Myriam, Gyuri, Cherry, Anatoly, Shirley T, Dima (and all their girlfriends, wives, boyfriends - sometimes all three): one is constantly showing up in rotation somehow in Theo’s life. Either randomly in London pulling him off the street “casually” SWEARING he’s not the subject of an assassination plot, or turning up sheepishly and/or desperately at his doorstep for some Boris un-sanctioned advice that Theo feels he is not exactly equipped to give (advice on girlfriends or spurned wives or cheating or kids or haircuts or boobjobs or what’s “in fashion in New York”) but they keep showing up like he’s the crew psychologist so he just pulls out the dining chair at this point. Myriam, now a close friend forged by their mutual taste for the High End of life, keeps an eye on Boris for Theo when Theo is across the ocean — she knows why, of course, they all do, an open secret. The whole gang has them, a criminal syndicate of misfits.

And one day Theo comes to Boris with a proposal to go to Siberia to retrieve an ancient sacred object called The Divine Source (an source of immortality) that was coveted and obscured by the Soviet Union and Boris is like fuck no Fuck no because if there is one place on Earth that Boris fears and sends a shiver up his spine and he doesn’t fuck with - it’s Mother Russia. Growing up in post-Soviet countries it’s an unspoken unanimous agreement among the gang, an overhanging government that has mostly wanted or had their eyes on them all since they were kids for various reasons - stealing or living on the street or used by street gangs - something you don’t want to get involved with or retamper.

And Theo’s a bit obtuse, still American for all his worldly ventures and education, having grown up in relative privilege from a sociological standpoint, and is super upset about Boris’ refusal to help (and thus, his gang’s refusal to help) - thinking they’re overreacting or being bombastic about their fears. The Dean is insisting on his help and Boris has long held suspicions about this lady and has kept it to himself because of Theo’s adulation of her (Boris knows Theo and mother figures are let’s say, a sensitive spot). Not wanting to disappoint the University (and moreover - her) Theo says fine he’ll just go alone to which Boris freaks the fuck out claiming its dangerous and he’s going to get himself killed and the Dean is an untrustworthy bitch who is manipulating him.

Cue an all-out end-of-times fight with Theo basically saying fuck him for all time, he’s done. And Theo leaves for Siberia by way of Syria, and Boris is fuming, left behind.

Long story short Theo gets betrayed by the Dean in a moment of gutwrenching horrifying realization - he was being used, Boris was right, now she has the relic and he’s going to die alone and freezing to fucking death, shot by some operative from the secret organization that Dean is in — he hears footsteps, sees the armored guard walking towards him with a gun, feels his stomach drop and braces himself and then Pow - the guy falls to the ground after a blow to the head revealing— Boris, behind him.

And Theo, overjoyed, alive, is asking how the fuck he got here, what he’s doing here— to which Boris replies incredulously Who do you think has been keeping you safe all this time?

Then Boris, who is very much on edge in this place, gets captured and tortured and Theo is forced to find and hand over the Divine Source in exchange for his life — which he does, terrified of the Source getting into their hands but more terrified of losing Boris. The Source is then greedily opened and eats all of their souls (because of moral impurity reasons but spares Theo and Boris for their self-sacrifcing devotion to each other) a la Raiders of the Lost Ark because of what Theo discovers, excitedly, was a mistranslation in Aramaic (thief of eternal life, not giver) and Boris is like — talk about what do you call it? false advertising.

So they return back to Antwerp with nothing but they’ve got each other and they snooze hard on each other on the plane ride back — several pounds of gold glinting away in Boris’ carry-on under the seat, alongside some old notes of other obscure and stolen relics, because he unknowingly picked up the Dean’s bag, not his, when escaping the sacred city.

So basically their life is a mix of Lara Croft video games (when I got the Divine Source storyline lmao but added a few things), Eastern Promises, The Odd Couple, The Da Vinci Code, and dark academia mixed with shitton of doping. With this mostly unspoken bi-continental devotion to each other over-arching it all.

[melodizes]

~ Devil May Care ~ @maildt

Some memories are forgotten.

“Александр, ты можешь держать ребенка?” (Alexander, can you hold the baby?)

Some fade over time.

“6 DEAD AND 4 HOSPITALIZED DUE TO ACCIDENTAL RADIATION EXPOSURE IN RUSSIA.”

But some are remembered vividly.

“He’s dead?! But—But how?!”

 It really just depends on what you concern yourself with, or at least that’s what we tell ourselves.

“But Mello!”

“Don’t waste your breath!”

Roger didn’t. No one did, not even as one of their own walked out the doors for the final time and disappeared into darkness. Um, hello? Child protective services much? Since when was fourteen years old an acceptable time to start “living my own life?”

Wammy’s House: the orphanage, the institution, the asylum. It cranked out little monsters, but perhaps if one of those monsters could escape early, he would be okay. Alternate tried. He wasn’t. But Mello wasn’t Alternate. Mello was, well, Mello.

So clearly, he wouldn’t be okay either.

The first month was the hardest. He had nothing. Not a home, nor family, nor money. The boy had never truly felt like an orphan until then. Countless times he found himself locked in public bathrooms in tears, wanting out. Eventually, the gaps between breakdowns grew wider and wider, and Mello found himself gradually building a wall, day by day, brick by brick. Each individual brick was made of pride, and the mortar used to hold them together was purpose. His construct would have been seamless, if he hadn’t built it in sand. Rage is not a stable foundation.

Still, his castle hadn’t fallen yet, and he was a king.

Blood, sweat, and tears were all it took to put himself at the front of the Mafia—well, those amongst other things. He wouldn’t admit it, but he was afraid the first time he held a gun. Afraid the first time he shot someone. Afraid the first time he was in a room with a bunch of men older and bigger than him. He was afraid the first time he had sex, and maybe a little afraid the next few times after that too. He tried some drugs and those scared him. He didn’t like to get drunk, and whenever he was the focus of a shootout, he felt a bit of a rush. That was a good thing.

Mello liked the rush. He loved it, really. It turned his fear into his strength. With a hit of adrenaline and coke, there was nothing he couldn’t do. Although the details of what lead up to his encounter with Rod Ross are insignificant, know that the boy-to-man-grown-up-too-fast had to accomplish a great deal of despicable deeds to earn the mountain of a man’s respect. As a certain God of Mischief would say, his ledger is gushing red.  

His passport says twenty-four, but little did anyone know that an eighteen year old was at the head of the Mafia. It was the natural choice. Other than the good guys (if you can really call L, Near, and his group of blind monkeys that), who else wanted Kira dead? Together with the bad guys, Mello had an army.

Did that make him the bad guy?

Duh.

He coughed. He has a bloody nose and sinus infection from all the dust in this place. “Damn,” his voice rasped, pulling a tissue out of his pocket to wipe up the blood and throw it on the ground like a world-class champion. The sooner they can get out of here, the better.

These days, it’s weapons deal after weapons deal, and it always ends with someone else’s blood dried up under his fingernails. Disgusting. Taking another wet tissue, our blond princess wiped his hands clean and gently shoved his gloves back on each perfectly-manicured hand, one by one. His ego was inflated now.

He looked up from behind his men and grinned as he observed his plan approaching fruition. Whatever gold mine of a trade agreement they had just struck with a subset of the Syrian Military Council was enough to get his men the power they wanted, in addition to the support of an old enemy. It was a ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ type of situation. Look at that, Kira. Criminals all over the world working together because they want you dead. How touching.

That goal, however, disguised his real reasons for coming here. Unfortunately and in case the following information is somehow unbeknownst to you, though it is albeit the most obvious information in possibility the entire universe, Mello is a little bitch.

Meaning that he is a liar, and the one thing he does not yet have is insurance. Though he may have his own army, pissing off people all over the world and some even in his own vicinity casts a bit of a death warrant on his head, and that isn’t even including the man, the myth, the legend: Kira. He couldn’t even begin to keep track of all the people that would love to have his sexy-ass head on a stick in their living room. Although, maybe those people should just stick to the normal ways of assassination and stop binge-watching Game of Thrones.

Nonetheless, he needs insurance. Mello talks a lot of shit about wanting to be the best and not letting anyone get in his way, but none of his Mafia associates are actually aware of what that entails. Surely, if they were to see how truly childish his desires were, and what’s more, the predicted outcome of what he is trying to achieve, his own army might even turn around and strike him down. Not to mention, he knows they will try to strike him down when Mello finally betrays every single one of them once he’s gotten everything he wanted. That is something that will not do, but let them try.

Mello makes perfect plans. They’re flawless, and he won’t account for things spinning out of turn, which is a problem. No good detective needs a back-up plan, do they? Near certainly doesn’t have one. L didn’t, but that is why Mello and Near were dragged into this situation in the first place. L was supposed to find Kira and execute him, but he got killed, and L didn’t prepare for that. The one fucking job that so-called genius detective had was to pick a successor and he couldn’t even fucking do that. Just how competent was he then? That institution had kids literally killing themselves over the push to be the next L. Mello might as well have done the same fucking thing. God, it infuriated him just thinking about it, but he couldn’t have that, because it shook his castle.

So then, L, is this enough? Have I proved myself yet? By seeking help and having a backup plan in case things go wrong, am I capable yet?!

Mello grit his teeth, staring out the darkened window of the car that was taking his team to their hotel. He noticed that one of the other guys was staring at him before quickly looking away when Mello met eye contact. Damn, he needed to swallow down his anger. 

When the car stopped and everyone departed, Mello collected himself and retired to his room. It wasn’t until late that night that he made a run for it, fully disguised in a completely inconspicuous (cue the eyeroll) feathery black coat in the heat of Syrian summer. He was sweating. It was hot as balls. But he needs someone to trust. Someone who knows the depth of his will and will aid him in the fight, at least, to take down Kira. No one saw him though. He knew they wouldn’t because he knew these men all too well and what they would be doing right about now. Alcohol, drugs, and orgies. Fun, fun, fun in the Syrian sun!

His nose was starting to bleed again. He was high on coke, but hell, he needed the energy for what he was about to do. Swearing to himself, he took a rolled up cotton swab and stuck it in his nose like the little kid in Wammy’s school that always has a nose bleed. Super attractive male right there. Wet with sweat and what looks like a tampon hanging out of his nose. And he probably smells great too.

But he supposed Matt was that kid. He used to get nosebleeds a lot from what Mello could remember. The two were never very close but Mello considered him tolerable. Maybe Matt felt stronger about him though, because Mello was a pretty self-centered child. He didn’t tell anyone other than Roger and Near that he was leaving before he vanished. He supposed that Matt was the closest thing he had to a friend back then, but then again, he didn’t really consider anyone to be his friend. Though perhaps he was just playing the role of the victim. The child arrived at Wammy’s when he was very young, and he was always a tantrum-y child, excelling at playing up the “poor me I’m second” card.

Good memories were sparse, but he did have some with Matt. The other made him laugh a few times. They shared a few classes, especially the high-level ones, because Matt was supposed to be a successor too. It was clear he didn’t want it though. Mello never understood how Matt could be so carefree in that environment. The kid would rant about the government and anarchy, and Mello thought it was all bullshit. How could the world run peacefully without government?  Impossible, he thought, but Mello was all black and white. It was like Matt was

Grey.

There was always a part of Mello that was wary of Matt. He was thankful the other never applied himself as much as Mello did, but he knew that if he had, then there was a good chance that Mello wouldn’t have been in the running to be L in the first place. But then again, maybe not. How smart could he really be if he believed all the shit he would spew in their political science classes? To Mello, he seemed backwards.

That was alright though. If he was still the same person as he remembered, then the Mafioso was sure that he would be down to pursue Kira—or in other words, be his backup plan. And even if he wasn’t, Mello was ready to persuade him by any means necessary. Surely the boy could live with a missing finger or toe. Who knows! Whatever it may be, he surely wouldn’t take “no” for an answer. Also, he didn’t really have any other choices.

As disgusting as ever, the pile of sweat and clogged nostrils carried on through the night. He managed hail down a taxi that would take him to his hopefully-correct destination, his Arabic wasn’t perfect though so it was a bit of a hassle. If his sources were correct, and they always were, then Matt was exactly where he always said he’d be. Now, it was just a matter of tracking him down and getting him alone to reveal his grand-ole plan like a stereotypical villain in a superhero movie. Would that make Matt the hero?

After about a two hour ride, the car slowed down as it pulled up to a nightclub. It was hidden, behind what appeared to be a store selling ceramics and other craft-work. Mello had conned someone earlier that week into giving him the proper knock and password so that when he was questioned, he could spit some Kurdish sentence out with ease. It was quite funny actually. He sold off one of his own men’s oxycodone for the intelligence, and then accused the same man of deceitful drug trade in exchange for the exact same information. Both men involved are dead.

The best way to tie your loose ends is to just cut them off.  

Blue and pink lights welcomed him, but the bass is what really sent him on edge. Damn, he forgot how well a good buzz mixed with music. He did his best to keep his toothy grin down and moved further into the room, making note of all that was around. Taking the tissue out of his nose and tossing it to the ground (2 for 2), he pulled his hood up more. The real threat here was that someone other than Matt would recognize him. Fortunately, he hadn’t been to this part of the country yet, and so the threat was not as intense. As always, he remained cautious, sinking into the shadows. Now, the real game can begin. 

[marshmallow-phd]

Sins of the Father

Genre: Mafia Au

Pairing: Junmyeon x Reader

Summary: Soon after your second birthday, your parents were killed and you were adopted by your father’s best friend, taken away to their home country where you lived your life in peaceful ignorance. As far a as you knew, your parents simply left you large fortune to be released to you once you reached your twenty-third birthday. At least, that’s all you thought you were inheriting. When a famously ruthless mafia boss discovers your existence, you are left at his mercy. While under his roof, you learn more about your father than you ever wished you had, including the part of your inheritance that made you the most valuable person in the underworld. Hidden in a bank in New York City were files that held the darkest secrets of the mafia families and everyone in their pocket. With another terrifying leader’s eyes trained on you, you’ll learn to watch your back… and guard your heart, before your father’s past becomes your doom.

Part: 1 I 2 I 3 I 4 I 5 I 6 I 7 I 8 I 9 I 10 I 11 I 12 I 13 I 14 I 15 I 16 I Final

**

You woke up confused. The last memory you had of the previous night was definitely falling asleep on the couch, but now you were warm and tucked in your bed. After a quick mental run through, the only conclusion besides sleepwalking - which you had never done before - that seemed reasonable was that Junmyeon had brought you to bed, as all the other boys were long gone. The thought of him carrying you through the halls towards your bedroom didn’t disgust you like you would have expected, but you were still confused as to why he would even bother.

Stumbling to the bathroom, you washed your face, hoping that would wake you up more. You got dressed in simple jeans and a tank top before shuffling back towards the bed.

On top of the album that was currently resting on the nightstand was a thin white box. Taking the lid off, you found black cloth folded neatly inside. Too curious to just leave it alone, you picked the clothing up and groaned.

It was a dress, a clothing item you hadn’t worn since high school. On further inspection of the piece, you were becoming livid. The dress was short, barely coming mid-thigh. It had a high neck which didn’t really compensate for the fact that there was no back to it.

Junmyeon didn’t seem like the type to just randomly give you gifts. Even if he was, this gift rang loud and clear as to just how little he actually knew about you.

Preparing to throw the thing into Junmyeon’s office for him to find later tonight, you stormed out of the room and down the hall. But you didn’t make it too far before you spotted your target.

Sitting at the island, drinking coffee and reading over the newspaper was Junmyeon in a white t-shirt and sweatpants. You’d suspected from the way his suits were cut that he took care of himself, but from the way the cotton fabric clung to his torso, you’d say he put a little more effort into it than your average Joe.

Stop it. You will not ogle at him!

He hadn’t noticed you standing there at the edge of the kitchen so you cleared your throat to get his attention. Putting the newspaper down, Junmyeon met your eye.

“Good morning,” he greet, a crooked smile on his lips.

The friendly demeanor threw you off, letting you do little more than blink. Mentally slapping yourself back on track, you held out the dress. “What is this?”

“I believe it’s called a dress,” he answered sarcastically. “However, I’ve never worn one myself.”

“Ha ha,” you clapped back. “What exactly do you expect me to do with it?”

Junmyeon finished his coffee and walked over to the sink to rinse the mug out before answering me. “I expect you to wear it tonight. We have an event that requires all of us to be there. Since no one can stay behind to watch you, you’ll have to come with us. There’s an expectation on attire at these events. You can’t just wear jeans and sneakers. From what the guys told me, you don’t own a single dress, so I had one picked up for you.”

You balled the dress up in your hands, tempted to put a rip in it. “Or you could have saved yourself some money and just let me stay here. You can trust me, you know. I’m not going anywhere.”

It was the truth, as much as you hated to admit it. While you were still struggling to forgive your adoptive parents for signing your basic human rights away, you still loved them and would uphold the bargain for them. You haven’t broken any of Junmyeon’s rules so far. Wasn’t that proof enough?

A little bit of hope grew when Junmyeon turned to look at you. He seemed to taking in what you were saying and actually considering it. And then the hopes were dashed.

“No,” he stated. “I need you there.”

“I told you, I am not a trophy,” you reminded him through clenched teeth. You felt like a Barbie doll for him to dress up and put on display for his other mafia buddies.

“I’m not taking you to show you off,” he said sternly. “I just need you there.”

“Whatever,” you mumbled, tossing the dress onto one of the stools. Sulking over to the fridge, you took out ingredients for breakfast. You glanced over at Junmyeon, who’d sat back down at the island and picked the newspaper up once again. “Have you eaten?”

His eyes snapped up at you, confused. “I’m sorry?”

“Breakfast,” you offered, holding up the carton of eggs. “Have you eaten that meal yet? They kind of say it’s the most important of the day.”

“Oh, um,” Junmyeon pressed his lips together. “No, I haven’t. I don’t usually eat breakfast.”

You turned the stove on and started whipping up the eggs. “Do you have anywhere to be?”

“No, not at the moment.”

“Okay, then,” you nodded. “I’ll make you some.”

The kitchen was silent, save for the occasional scraping of the pan and the toast popping up once it was finished. You didn’t bother asking Junmyeon how he liked any of his food. You didn’t want to seem like you were eager to please. It was simply a gesture in trying to be nice, but you weren’t a personal chef.

You weren’t even sure why you were being so nice. He’d just declared that you would be forced to go to whatever event he had scheduled tonight and that there was no way in hell you’d be allowed to stay behind. Really, you should have been making your own breakfast and devouring it in front of him spitefully. And yet, here you were, cooking for two.

Junmyeon never took his eyes off of you as you slaved over the stove, his eyebrows knit together in concentration. What was going through his head, you wondered. Perhaps your kindness was confusing him. Maybe that’s why you were doing it: to show him the opposite of what he was expecting.

With the food done, you made up two plates and set one down in front of your fiancé.

“Thank you,” he mumbled, picking up the fork you’d slid in his direction. You couldn’t exactly eat a western breakfast with chopsticks.

“Mhmm,” you hummed back.

“Do, um,” Junmyeon scratched the back of his neck nervously, “do you want any coffee? I can make another pot.”

You shook your head, “No, thank you. I don’t really drink coffee.”

A sound that was halfway between a laugh and a snort echoed off the walls. You could hardly believe that its source was Junmyeon.

“Minseok would be scandalized to hear you say that.”

You titled my head in confusion. Was there a tenth person you hadn’t met yet? “Who?”

“Xiumun,” he clarified. “That’s his real name. And he is… well, let’s just call him a coffee enthusiast.”

“Oh.” You chewed on your bottom lip, looking around the kitchen, “I would like some tea. I found some last night that was on the counter, but I don’t remember exactly where–”

Junmyeon jumped up and went over to the cabinet in the far corner. He opened the door to reveal two shelves filled with different assortments of tea. You may have just gone to heaven.

“What kind do you like?” Junmyeon asked, looking over his shoulder at me.

You blinked. Was he really going to make it for you himself? “Um, just green tea is fine.”

He took down an open box and plopped the little Keurig cup into the coffee maker. It seemed like a crime against tea to make it that way, but you decided to play nice. He was going out of his way to make it, which were you still in shock from. Placing the steaming mug in front of you, Junmyeon sat back down on his stool and continued eating.

“Thank you,” you said shyly. Considering you’d stormed into this kitchen in a raging fire, it was odd, the dynamic you were sitting in right now. It was almost… domestic.

Junmyeon finished off his plate first. You told him you would just clean the dishes when he stood up and he excused himself to his office, leaving you alone.

The kitchen felt suddenly empty. You kept hoping that one of the boys would come stomping in to break the loneliness, but that hope was never fulfilled. Usually at least someone had arrived at the penthouse by now. Was it because was still here that they stayed away?

It was strange, the way you looked forward to spending time with them. In the past you didn’t care for people, preferring to be the loner in the corner, left to your own devices and content. Maybe it was the fact that you were locked up here that made you accept their presence and rely on it to not lose your mind or become depressed.

Or maybe you just needed a specific type of person to make you comfortable and actually like to be around others. The type that wouldn’t judge or stare because of your “otherness”. You just hoped that specific type wasn’t their mafia association.

Finished with your own plate, you filled up the sink with soapy water and began to hand wash all the dishes.

As much as you hated other chores growing up, you never really minded doing the dishes. There was something relaxing about it. At home, you would put on music and bob to it while trying not to splash water everywhere. Here, you didn’t have access to your phone, so instead you just hummed whatever song popped into your head as you scrubbed at the dirty plates.

All done, you unplugged the stopper to drain the dirty water and gave all the dishes one last rinse with the hose before gently setting the drying rack the rest of the way down in the sink. You’d put them away later once they were free off all little water droplets.

“Are you done?”

You jumped, letting out a small yelp as you turned around. Junmyeon had suddenly reappeared, now wearing jeans instead of sweats. It was strange to see him in such… normal clothing. You figured he just wore a suit twenty-four seven and didn’t even know what the word “casual” meant.

“Uh, yeah, I am,” you answered, trying to get your heartbeat back down to a regulated rhythm. “Did you need something?”

“Let me see your hand,” Junmyoen directed, holding out his own, palm up. You placed your right hand into his hesitantly, but he dropped it straightaway. “No, your other hand.”

When you gave him your left hand, he slid a diamond ring onto that foreboding little finger. It was small, nothing too grand or over-the-top like you would have guess. It was just a single, medium-sized diamond set on a woven silver band.

“What is this?” you asked dumbly. It was obvious what the ring represented, you just never thought he would go this far.

“It’s a ring,” he deadpanned. “People tend to wear them when they get engaged.”

You crossed your arms, looking pointedly at his empty finger. “Where’s yours?”

“I don’t wear jewelry.”

You huffed, yanking the ring off your finger. You didn’t care how pretty it was; it was just another symbol of your enslavement. Shoving the ring into his chest, you didn’t bother to make sure he caught it as you stomped back to your room.

Curled up on your bed, you stayed there for hours, finishing up the book you’d bought just before your freedom vanished.

The main character of the book kept reciting the phrase “the sins of the father will be visited upon the children”. If you weren’t so invested in the story, you would have thrown the book across the room for mocking you with that statement. It was all too real in your world.

But what would have happened if your parents had never died? Would you have just always been a part of this world, circling the edge until the tide finally sucked you in? Taegun had said that you were supposed to marry another mafia leader’s son. You wondered if your father would have agreed to that, if he would have allowed that to happen to you, his only daughter.

You liked who you were now and didn’t want to image being like Michelle Pfieffer in Scarface. Okay, you doubted it would have been that extreme. Maybe more like Diane Keaton in The Godfather, tricked into a world that you didn’t quite understand but had no choice other than to stay.

A knock on your door brought you out of those ridiculous imaginations and back to your current predicament.

“Who is it?” you called out as you sat up.

“It’s Chen.”

Lazily getting off the bed, you went to open the door. Chen was standing in the hallway, dressed in a very expensive tuxedo that was cut just for him. His hair was slicked to the side and his bright smile was absent, only an apologetic look on his face. In his hand was the stupid black dress.

“We have to leave in an hour,” he informed you. “Junmyeon told me to have you get ready now.”

You had to bite down painfully on your tongue. It wasn’t Chen’s fault and only repeating that in your head kept the sarcastic remarks at bay.

Sighing, you took the dress back. If only you’d thrown it out the window instead. “I don’t have shoes to go with this.”

Guiltily, Chen brought out his hand that was hiding behind his back, holding out a pair of black pumps. You were probably weren’t lucky enough for them to be the wrong size. Junmyeon was too thorough for that.

You stared open mouthed at the height of the heels. “You’re trying to kill me, aren’t you?”

That actually got a laugh out of him. “You’ll be fine. Get ready.” He handed you the shoes and then fished something out of his breast pocket. “Before I forget.” Opening up his palm, he revealed in his hand the engagement ring.

Just when he was creeping up your list of favorites. You rolled your eyes, walking away from the door.

“He picked it out himself,” Chen added, as if that would make it any better. “Xiumun and Baekhyun tried to get him to go with something flashier since he could afford it, but he said you would like the simpler one. Just so you know.” He set the ring down on the vanity that sat across from your bed and left.

Closing the door, you threw down the shoes and tossed the dress on the bed. As quick as you could, you jumped in and out of the shower and hurried to dry every inch of you before putting on makeup. You weren’t an extraordinaire in the art of applying cosmetics, but you knew the basics well enough to be presentable.

For about five minutes you debated on what to do with your hair before settling on just leaving it as is. No need to go the extra mile for this crowd.  

The dress fit perfectly, to your dismay. There had been a tiny sliver of hope that maybe it would be too small or too big and then you’d be free to stay behind with nothing to else wear, but, sadly, that was not the case. You slipped on the shoes and walked much better in them than you thought you would as you trekked down the hall. With barely five minutes until the hour deadline was up, you strolled into the living room where all nine men were dressed to perfection.

Your eyes met Yixing first, who beamed with his irresistible dimple at you. Chen let out a low whistle while Kai smirked, making you just the tiniest bit smug. So this was why Minah dressed up so much.

Junmyeon had his back to you, checking the expensive watch that adorned his wrist. At the noise his men were making, he glanced over his shoulder and then froze when your eyes met. He took in your appearance from top to bottom. Feeling sorry about your earlier behavior, you’d put the ring back on, which didn’t go unnoticed by the mafia leader. His gaze lingered on the ring a little longer than necessary as if he was relishing in its presence.

“All right, boys,” he called out, his eyes drifting back up to your face. “Head to the garage. We’ll meet you down there shortly.”

Without a word of complaint, they all filed into the elevator, their eyes flicking back and forth between the two of you who remained.

Once the doors had closed and the light indicated they were headed down, Junmyeon pulled a long black velvet case out of his inside pocket. He closed the distance between you and opened the box for you to see the sparkling diamond bracelet inside.

If he was expecting a gasp or a smile, he was vastly mistaken.

You simply raised an eyebrow at the gesture. “You know, I don’t have any experience in that area, but this is the second piece of jewelry you’ve given me today and according to the movies, that means you’re apologizing for something.”

Junmyeon actually looked taken aback by your brazen statement.

“I’m just trying to be nice,” he argued, snatching the bracelet out of the box and clasping it around your wrist.

“Did you get all your girlfriends jewelry?” It was poking a sleeping bear, but, admittedly, you were having a little too much fun watching his expressions change so quickly.

“They never lasted long enough,” he smirked, a mischievous glint in his eyes. As if portraying the bad boy would make you swoon or put you on edge.

“Wow,” you feigned surprise. “You couldn’t get them stick around for any longer than two weeks? That’s so sad.”

That wiped the grin of off his face. “All right, enough. Let’s get going.”

The boys were already sitting in two black SUVs in the parking garage, the engines running by the time you reached the garage. Chen stood next to the same Cadillac you were picked up in before, holding the back door open. Junmyeon helped you into the back seat of the car, surprising you with his chivalry.

It was a quiet ride as Chen drove the way to wherever the hell it was you were forced to go to for the night. Junmyeon kept his attention on the tablet in his hand as if he were completely alone in the back seat. Chen sometimes made eye contact with you in the rearview mirror, causing both of you to crack a smile in the weird silence.

The final destination turned out to be a dingy, one-story brick building in a rundown warehouse district. There was no one outside or even other cars to indicate that this was a gathering place of any kind. Confused, you hadn’t notice Chen get out of the car and open your door.

He snapped his fingers in front of your face. “(y/n).”

Embarrassed, you took his outstretched hand. “Sorry.”

Junmyeon stepped out on the other side, glancing around.

“Usual parking spot?” Chen asked. Junmyeon nodded and Chen hopped back behind the wheel, heading down an alley on the far side of the building as the two SUV’s followed him.

The air was chillier than you thought it would be and you regretted not bringing a jacket or even a scarf to keep you somewhat protected from the breeze. Junmyeon pulled you in close, placing your hand on the inside of his upper arm. You weren’t sure if it was because he noticed you were cold or to show that you belonged to him. At least your fingers were warm.

Inside, the building wasn’t much cleaner than its outer appearance and it seemed smaller than you would have guessed from the dimensions of the exterior walls. At the far end, there were two men flanking either side of a plain wooden door, pistols resting comfortably on their hips for the world to see.

You pushed down your curiosity that was itching to ask questions as Junmyeon led you towards the men, too afraid to make a sound beyond your heels clicking against the concrete. They nodded at Junmyeon silently and opened the door.

From all appearances, it should have led to either a back street or a very narrow room. Instead, a staircase was revealed. Music and chatter attacked your ears as you headed down the creaky, spiraling steps. Big, heavy, red velvet curtains cut the staircase off from whatever was waiting for you on the other side.

Pushed aside, they revealed a large, underground casino. Dozens of table were set up for people with too much money to place bets on craps, play blackjack or poker, or just be swindled out of everything in their wallet in any way imaginable. Some of the tables were on even elevated platforms like a spectacle. From the amount of chips in front of those players, you assumed those were reserved for high paying clients.

By instinct, you clung closer to Junmyeon. You hated large crowds, especially when you didn’t know a vast majority of them or their intentions. The entire situation was sending your system into overdrive and you had to concentrate on your breathing just to keep it from getting too shallow and causing you to hyperventilate. Sensing your nervousness, Junmyeon pulled you away from the floor, not stopping until you reached a bar set up on the far side.

With soft hands, he pushed you down onto a stool to rest. To the bartender, he said, “I’ll have whiskey on the rocks and a glass of red wine for her.”

“I don’t really drink,” you mumbled.

Junmyeon let out a short laugh. “Is there anything you drink besides tea? Just sip on the wine, it’ll help with your nerves.” He leaned in close to you, his breath on your ear and neck. From an outsider’s perspective, it might have looked seductive or even romantic. “If you’re nervous, then you’ll make the others here nervous and that doesn’t end pretty. Just stay here until I come get you, okay?”

At the mention of him leaving you alone in this place, your hand snatched up and clutched onto his jacket sleeve. Your heart was pounding in your chest to the point that you thought it might give out. You knew this particular feeling all too well.

“Please, don’t leave me,” you pleaded back in his ear. “I… I have bad anxiety in crowds. This is why I wanted to stay home. I can already feel the panic attack starting.”

Pulling back just a bit, you were met with guilty eyes. Junmyeon nodded sympathetically before pressing a warm kiss to your forehead. Your eyes widened in surprise, but you didn’t protest or push him away.

“I have to speak with these clients and they wouldn’t like a new face around no matter how pretty, but I’ll find Chen or Baekhyun to come stay with you until I need you again, okay?”

You were still in shock from the little sign of affection that all you could do was nod. He smiled down at you, caressing your cheek before disappearing into the crowd.

You tried to just sip on the wine, but your nerves were still too on edge waiting for one of the boys to come to your rescue that the glass was empty in just a few gulps. The bartender refilled your glass instantly and you didn’t really protest. Massaging your temples, you tried to block out the voices milling about and pretend that you were in an empty bar in a nice neighborhood that never saw any trouble and you were in no danger whatsoever.

“Well, I didn’t think it was possible, but you grew up to be even more beautiful than I’d imagined.”

A man you were sure you had never seen before sat on the empty stool beside you as if he name was written on it. He was tall and lithe, his knees barely able to fit underneath the bar. Underneath thick eyebrows were a pair of roguish eyes that gleamed with excitement. His lips were naturally puckered and his brown hair was of a longer length and slicked back by hair gel to reveal an undercut. The styling made him stick out in this crowd who went for a much more classic look. Something about the way he looked at you made you forget all about the packed room and not in a good way.

“I-I’m sorry,” you stammered, trying to stay polite. “I think you have me confused with someone else.” Starting to stand, you decided that you would go look for one of the boys even though Junmyeon would probably be pissed that you didn’t stay put, just to be away from this stranger.

Before you could get all the way up, the man grabbed your wrist. “Don’t be like that, (y/n).”

In utter shock, you collapsed back down onto your seat. “How do you know my name?”

He smirked. “Our fathers were friends, (y/n). You don’t remember your favorite Koko?”

A vague memory of you as a toddler calling out for someone named Koko flashed in your mind, but beyond that you were clueless. You couldn’t even be sure if that memory was real.

“No, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” You tried to remove your wrist from his grasp, but he held on, tightening his grip so you couldn’t flee.

“I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised,” he shrugged, not acknowledging your struggle. “You were only two the last time we saw each other face to face. My father took me to America to meet with your father. You would follow me everywhere, although as a seven-year-old I didn’t find it cute at the time. Turns out I came to miss it.”

The realization of who this man was hit you just then as the pieces fell into place. “Junko?”

His grin widened as he released his hold on your arm. “So, you do remember me?”

“Barely.” You figured that it was better to play along rather than just saying you’d learned his name from Junmyeon. “As a toddler, you don’t form too many memories.”

“But I left some sort of impression.” Reaching out behind you, Junko glided his fingers down your exposed back, causing you to shiver.

You kept your focus on the wine, not letting him know he was getting to you when what you really wanted to do was run away screaming for one of the boys. “What do you want, Junko?”

He shrugged as his knuckles continued to caress your skin. “To catch up. And you can still call me Koko, you know.”

“I’m not a child anymore.”

“No, I can see that,” he hummed in a predatory tone.

“Lee Junko!”

Like a miracle, Junmyeon marched up to the bar, swatting Junko’s hand away and pulling you to your feet.

“Aw, Suho,” Junko clapped his hands, standing up. The name that he called Junmyeon caught you off guard, but if Xiumun had a different name, you shouldn’t be so surprised that the leader did too. “Long time no see. As much as I would like to catch up with you, I was already in the middle of something.”

“And now it’s over,” Junmyeon growled.

The grin was completely gone from Junko’s face. “And what right do you have to end it?”

Junmyeon wrapped a possessive arm around your waist. “She’s my fiancé.”

“What?” The sound came out of Junko’s throat like a whip. His eyes turned animalistic as they flashed between Junmyeon and you before settling on the ring on your finger. In a second, he had a fist full of Junmyeon’s collar. “She was promised to me!”

Junmyeon didn’t even flinch. “According to my sources, that was only ever a verbal agreement between your fathers, both who are now deceased. I, on the other hand, have a written document binding (y/n) to me signed by her legal guardians.”

A snarl appeared on Junko’s lips, but then he smiled. “A document that would be void by their sudden deaths before the wedding, I presume?”

Fear swept over every inch of your body. Images of him shooting down Taegun and Hyunmin were forming in your mind.

“Don’t you dare touch them!” you screeched. You lunged at Junko, hoping to claw his eyes out for even thinking about hurting them, but Junmyeon wrapped his other arm around your waist, holding you in place. Junko just found it amusing.

“I’ll leave them alone,” he promised, his eyes trained on you, “if you come with me.”

Your chest heaved up and down. Junmyeon’s vice tightened around you, letting you exactly what his answer already was without giving you a choice.

“She’s not going anywhere with you.”

Junko lifted his shoulders then let them drop lazily. “Suit yourself.” Shifting his dagger-like gaze to you, he leaned in close, practically bending in half to level his face with yours. “You’ll come to me eventually, (y/n). You were made for me. Make the right choice.”

Throwing one last smirk to Junmyeon, he turned around and melted into the crowd.

Once he was gone, the fight in you dissipated, too, and your knees buckled under you. Junmyeon’s grip was the only thing that kept you upright. Tears started falling down your cheeks, blurring your vision. Junmyeon helped you straighten back up, cradling your head against his chest.

“Shh. (y/n), don’t worry,” he whispered into your ear. You clung to him, unable to stop sobbing. “I promise you, he won’t get near them. I already have people watching them. I’ll double it. I’ll keep them safe.”

That gave you just a small sense of relief. You believed him that he would keep them safe, even if it was to protect his own interest. While the tears kept coming, you were able to breathe again enough to say, “Thank you.”

“(y/n)!”

Chen pushed through the outer layer of people, huffing to catch his breath. Junmyeon carefully removed your fingers from his jacket, a fire in his eyes.

“Where the hell were you!” he yelled, making Chen flinched.

“I’m sorry, I was on my way over here, but I caught Ho Nam talking about the west shore and I couldn’t–” Chen finally glanced at you, noticing your red eyes. “Shit, what happened?”

“Junko happened, that’s what,” Junmyeon snapped. “You were supposed to come straight to (y/n) so she wouldn’t be alone. Instead, Junko found her and threatened her family.”

Chen cursed. “(y/n), I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” you whispered, looking down at the tile flooring.

“No, it’s not okay,” Junmyeon countered.

Yixing joined you just then, scanning the group. “I could hear you yelling over all these people. Is everything okay?”

“We’re fine now,” Junmyeon told him through clenched teeth. He stared at Yixing like he was debating a decision before sighing. “Yixing, can you watch over her? I don’t want Junko coming near her again.”

Yixing nodded before holding his hand out for you to take. You looked up Junmyeon, who wiped a tear from your cheek and then nudged you over to his private doctor. Once your hand was in his, Yixing guided you away from the others and through the tables and players until you reached a dance floor.

The music that you hadn’t noticed before was slow and melodic. There weren’t many couples in the sectioned off area, but that didn’t stop Yixing from twirling you into his arms and leading you around the dance floor expertly.

“I’m sorry you had to meet that monster,” Yixing said, breaking the silence.

“Technically, I’ve met him before,” you corrected. After getting a confused look, you explained, “I was really young. It was before my parents died so I don’t really remember him, however, I do vaguely remember someone named Koko. Apparently, that was him.”

“I know you’re worried, but we’ll take care of you,” Yixing promised. “You mean more than just a business deal to us now and I think I can speak for the others when I say we’ll fight for you ‘til death.”

You shook your head. “I don’t want anyone to die. Especially for me. I’m not that special. I know the simplest answer would be to just hand me over Junko, but Junmyeon won’t let that happen. Junko said he would go after my family–” you couldn’t finish that sentence as the tears were starting up again.

“Hey,” Yixing chuckled as he wiped away the trails on your cheek with the back of his fingers. “Don’t get upset. He won’t touch them.”

Sighing, you rested your head against Yixing’s chest, just letting him rock you back and forth. His chin rested on the top of your head in a way that was meant to be comforting. But his presences wasn’t having the same effect on you as it did in the beginning. Sure, his smile still made you grin, but the butterflies no longer fluttered in your stomach.

A few minutes went by before Chen stepped in and interrupted the moment.

“(y/n), Junmyeon said I could take you home.” He threw a strange look to Yixing before smiling back at me.

Saying goodbye to Yixing, you let Chen walk you out of the illegal casino and into the back alleyway, relieved to be going to the penthouse that really was becoming home.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

EVERY FOUNDER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT CONTRACTORS

In big companies software is often designed, implemented, and sold by three separate types of people. Tcl is the scripting language of Unix, and so its size is proportionate to its complexity, and a funnel for peers. By this point everyone knows you should release fast and iterate. Programming languages are for. They don't even know about the stuff they've invested in. But I think there's more going on than this. If you run out of money, you could say either was the cause. Nearly all programmers would rather spend their time writing code and have someone else handle the messy business of extracting money from it. Every programmer must have seen code that some clever person has made marginally shorter by using dubious programming tricks. In one place I worked, we had a big board of dials showing what was happening to our web servers.1 Every designer's ears perk up at the office writes Tenisha Mercer of The Detroit News. There are borderline cases is-5 two elements or one?

I decided to ask the founders of the startups in the e-commerce business back in the 90s, will destroy you if you choose them. It's due to the shape of the problem here is social. In the arts it's obvious how: blow your own glass, edit your own films, stage your own plays. Only in the preceding couple years had the dramatic fall in the cost of customer acquisition. The organic growth guys, sitting in their garage, feel poor and unloved. So the first question to ask about a field is how honest its tests are, because this startup seems the most successful companies. A good deal of that spirit is, fortunately, preserved in macros. The second way to compete with focus is to see what you're making.

But more important, in a hits-driven business, is that source code will look unthreatening. In DC the message seems to be the new way of delivering applications. White. I'm going to risk making one. But looking through windows at dusk in Paris you can see that from the rush of work that's always involved in releasing anything, no matter how much skill and determination you have, the more you stay pointed in the same business. PR coup was a two-part one. It's conversational resourcefulness. We're more confident. That certainly accords with what I see out in the world.2 Treating indentation as significant would eliminate this common source of bugs as well as making programs shorter. Once you take several million dollars of my money, the investors get a great deal of control.

The dream language is beautiful, clean, and terse. It works.3 It could mean an operating system, or a framework built on top of a programming language as the throwaway programs people wrote in it grew larger. I'm not saying it's correct, incidentally, but it seems like a decent hypothesis. The most important kinds of learning happen one project at a time. Instead of starting from companies and working back to the 1960s and 1970s, when it was the scripting language of a popular system.4 Blogger got down to one person, and they have a board majority, they're literally your bosses.5 Unconsciously, everyone expects a startup to fix upon a specific number.6 But as long as you seem to be advancing rapidly, most investors will leave you alone.7 What readability-per-line does mean, to the user encountering the language for others even to hear about it. Users have worried about that since the site was a few months old.8 If it's a subset, you'll have to write it anyway, so in the worst case you won't be wasting your time, but didn't.9

It's exacerbated by the fast pace of startups, which makes it seem like time slows down: I think you've left out just how fun it was: I think the main reason we take the trouble to develop high-level languages is to get leverage, so that we can say and more importantly, think in 10 lines of a high-level language what would require 1000 lines of machine language. Well, that may be fine advice for a bunch of declarations. Trying to make masterpieces in this medium must have seemed to Durer's contemporaries that way that, say, making masterpieces in comics might seem to the average person today. I kept searching for the Cambridge of New York, I was very excited at first. Which was dictated largely by the hardware available in the late 1950s. This comforting illusion may have prevented us from seeing the real problem with Lisp, or at least Common Lisp, some delimiters are reserved for the language, suggesting that at least some of the least excited about it, including even its syntax, and anything you write has, as much as shoes have to be prepared to see the better idea when it arrives. And I was a Reddit user when the opposite happened there, and sitting in a cafe feels different from working. The Detroit News.10

Most founders of failed startups don't quit their day job, is probably an order of magnitude larger than the number who do make it. But the clearest message is that you should be smarter. But hear all the cutting-edge tech and startup news, and run into useful people constantly.11 You won't get to, unless you fail. Running a startup is fun the way a survivalist training course would be fun, and a funnel for peers. It's since grown to around 22,000.12 You may save him from referring to variables in another package, but you need time to get any message through to people that it didn't have to be more readable than a line of Lisp. A rant with a rallying cry as the title takes zero, because people vote it up without even reading it. I'm just stupid, or have worked on some limited subset of applications. This is supposed to be a lot simpler. Whatever a committee decides tends to stay that way, even if it is harder to get from zero to twenty than from twenty to a thousand.13

With two such random linkages in the path between startups and money, it shouldn't be surprising that luck is a big factor in deals. Most of the groups that apply to Y Combinator suffer from a common problem: choosing a small, obscure niche in the hope of unloading them before they tank. A programming language does need a good implementation, of course. Look at how much any popular language has changed during its life. With a startup, I had bought the hype of the startup world, startup founders get no respect. A real hacker's language will always have a slightly raffish character.14 The eminent feel like everyone wants to take a long detour to get where you wanted to go. But there is a trick you could use the two ideas interchangeably. Their reporters do go out and get users, though. A throwaway program is brevity. I do that the main purpose of a language is readability, not succinctness.15 You can't build things users like without understanding them.

At the moment I'd almost say that a language isn't judged on its own and b something that can be considered a complete application and ship it. They're so desperate for content that some will print your press releases almost verbatim, if you preferred, write code that was isomorphic to Pascal. When I moved to New York, I was very excited at first. To avoid wasting his time, he waits till the third or fourth time he's asked to do something; by then, whoever's asking him may be fairly annoyed, but at the same time the veteran's skepticism. There are several local maxima.16 Defense contractors? When, if ever, is a watered-down Lisp with infix syntax and no macros. Hackers share the surgeon's secret pleasure in poking about in gross innards, the teenager's secret pleasure in poking about in gross innards, the teenager's secret pleasure in popping zits.

Notes

What happens in practice signalling hasn't been much of a long time in the 1920s to financing growth with retained earnings till the 1920s. Even Samuel Johnson seems to be a good idea to make money.

A related problem that they decided to skip raising an A round VCs put two partners on your own mind. That should probably question anything you believed as a cause as it might take an angel investment from a company's culture.

If you don't think they'll be able to formalize a small company that could be made. There was no more unlikely than it was putting local grocery stores out of business you should be.

If Congress passes the founder visa in a time machine, how can anything regressive be good employees either.

If big companies to acquire the startups, the light bulb, the initial investors' point of a great deal of competition for mediocre ideas, but I think what they campaign for. When governments decide how to distinguish 1956 from 1957 Studebakers. How did individuals accumulate large fortunes in an absolute sense, if we think your idea is that parties shouldn't be that the Internet was as late as Newton's time it takes forever.

Galbraith was clearly puzzled that corporate executives would work to have this second self keep a journal. While the audience already has to be more at home at the start, e.

Some will say that it also worked for spam. The closest we got to the Internet worm of its identity. Icio.

Rice and Beans for 2n olive oil or butter n yellow onions other fresh vegetables; experiment 3n cloves garlic n 12-oz cans white, kidney, or black beans n cubes Knorr beef or vegetable bouillon n teaspoons freshly ground black pepper 3n teaspoons ground cumin n cups dry rice, preferably brown Robert Morris says that a startup in the US, it would do it is genuine. Com in order to attract workers.

But the early adopters you evolve the idea that could start this way, except in the back of your last round of funding rounds are at some of these limits could be ignored. Comments at the mafia end of the latter without also slowing the former, and also really good at generating your own time in the computer world, write a new SEC rule issued in 1982 rule 415 that made steam engines dramatically more efficient: the attempt to discover the most promising opportunities, it is very vulnerable to gaming, because there's no center to walk to.

Though it looks like stuff they've seen in the first year or two make the kind that has become part of a large chunk of time, default to some abstract notion of fairness or randomly, in one where life was tougher, the television, the more subtle ways in which those considered more elegant consistently came out shorter perhaps after being macroexpanded or compiled. For these companies unless your last funding round usually reflects some other contribution by the high-minded Edwardian child-heroes of Edith Nesbit's The Wouldbegoods.

Mozilla is open-source browser. They may not be led by a big factor in high school kids arrive at college with a truly feudal economy, at least should make what they claim was the recipe: someone guessed that there are before the name implies, you don't, but that we didn't do. They overshot the available RAM somewhat, causing much inconvenient disk swapping, but they hate hypertension. Living on instant ramen, which are a hundred years ago.

I don't think you should probably question anything you believed as a rule, if you're measuring usage you need, you don't have one. Don't be fooled. So managers are constrained too; instead of admitting frankly that it's a seller's market. This is one subtle danger you have a group of people who are both genuinely formidable, and would probably also encourage companies to say how justified this worry is.

One of the biggest winners, which is where product companies go to grad school, because you can work out. It's conceivable that a their applicants come from meditating in an equity round.

So where do we draw the line?

In 1995, but he got there by another path. If you treat your classes as a company if the potential magnitude of the 2003 season was 2. An investor who invested earlier had been trained that anything hung on a desert island, hunting and gathering fruit. Confucius claimed proudly that he had more fun in this essay, I can imagine what it would have started there.

I'm satisfied if I could pick them, and they succeeded. Consulting is where your existing investors help you even working on Viaweb. If they were taken back in July 1997 was 1. But the change is a scarce resource.

[carmenlire]

Meet Cute

Part 3 of my Mafia AU!

read on ao3

Alec walks around the furniture store, eyeing everything critically.

He’s not exactly sure what he’s looking for-- he just figures that he’ll know it when he sees it. The remodel on the gym is going well and it’s time to buy furniture. While he’d been making do, it was time to finally install statement pieces that spoke to his authority and position in the New York Underworld.

He’s spent the past few months browsing through furniture catalogs and stores around the city. To Jace’s eternal amusement, he’d even visited a local flea market, tackling an old, scarred table that he’d turned into a fine end table for his apartment over one sunny weekend earlier this summer.

Still, now that he’s looking for his office furniture, it’s different. Alec wants to make a statement. Something that says he’s ushering in the new without giving way to the old. He wants something that he’s comfortable with-- which probably means lots of dark leather and wood.

In Izzy’s words, an elegant caveman.

Leaving the daily operations to Jace for the day, Alec’s enjoying a rare opportunity away from everything. The past year has been hectic and so stressful that Alec regularly marvels that he hasn’t had a heart attack yet.

He’s learned more about himself-- and the city-- than he’d ever dreamed possible. Since that night at the Judge’s townhouse, everything seems like it’s been moving in fast forward, whirling by so quickly that Alec’s just managed to gain his footing as the rug’s being pulled out from under him again.

He’s done things that were unthinkable a year ago.

He’s enjoyed a lot of those things a little too much.

As he sweeps an absent hand over a brocade sofa in a repulsive shade of red, Alec thinks about his schedule for the upcoming week. There’s a deal in Hell’s Kitchen that he needs to facilitate and one of his girls had come to him a few days ago and told about a strange man who’s been lurking around her area.

He’ll check that out tonight and deal with whatever he finds swiftly.

If he’s learned anything in the past fourteen months, it’s how to make a statement without opening his mouth.

There’s also that other matter that he hasn’t told anyone about, not even Jace. With a wry grimace, Alec reflects that it’d be a little hard to tell his brother about the lead he’d been given on who had killed Robert without divulging his source. And, try as he might, Alec hasn’t found it in him to kill the messenger.

Not yet, at least.

Strolling down a path between dozens of couches, Alec raises a brow as he sees something that might work. It’s a cozy looking couch in a dark, dark brown leather. It’s inviting as hell and Alec sinks into the seat with a sigh.

He loses track of time as he enjoys the innocuous pleasure of a comfortable seat and a day of no responsibilities. He feels anonymous here, in the middle of a furniture store in Brooklyn. No one knows him here and he’s just another customer looking for something innocent enough. It’s nice not to feel sharp looks in his direction as his men wonder what he’s thinking, what his next step is.

It’s nice to fade into the background once in a while.

Alec’s startled, then, when a low voice speaks right next to his ear. “You look dead on your feet, darling. Trouble sleeping?”

Whipping his head around, Alec glares as Magnus settles on the other end of the couch. It’s infuriating, the way he sits so gracefully, crossing one leg over the other while watching Alec with an amused glint in his eye.

“What the hell are you doing here,” Alec asks and debates the pros and cons of killing Magnus under the stark fluorescent lights.

“Isn’t it obvious? I’m furniture shopping, Alexander.”

“Don’t call me that,” Alec snaps and he has to bite his tongue from immediately reneging the words.

Magnus’s voice is sly as he teases, “But darling’s okay?”

Alec doesn’t say anything, resolutely keeping his mouth shut.

Sighing, Magnus relaxes a little further into the couch and studies Alec with a patient gaze that’s a little too warm under the bright lights of the show room.

“What do you want, Magnus?”

Alec watches Magnus’s gaze turns sharp as he asks, “What if I said that I just wanted to see you?”

“I’d call you a liar,” Alec replies dryly and tries to ignore the warmth that sweeps up the back of his neck at those implications.

Laughing softly, Magnus just shrugs. “Suit yourself,” he says easily before tilting his head in curiosity. “Have you followed that lead I gave you yet?”

Alec scowls. “That’s none of your business.”

Tsking, Magnus pushes. “Afraid of what you might find if you go digging? I assure you that my information was accurate. He might be a valiant opponent but I think I’d still put my money on you if it came down to it. Christ knows why,” he muses.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Alec starts, looking away. “But you should go.”

“Why?”

He’s surprised at the sharp retort, the way Magnus studies him with calculating eyes.

“What do you mean why,” he manages to get out. “We’re enemies, business rivals.”

“And why is that? Because our fathers were?”

“It’s just the way things have always been,” Alec replies, though he can hear the doubt lurking under the words.

That just makes him scowl with a little more heat. He can’t believe he’s letting Magnus Bane, of all people, get to him.

Magnus just sends an arch look his way and asks, “And traditions can’t change? We could be allies, you know. Maybe even partners one day. I like what I’ve seen so far. You’re a formidable adversary, even if you are so green.”

Alec can’t help but scoff. “You’re what? A year older than me? You’re hardly an old hand at this sort of thing.”

Magnus’s gaze hardens as he considers Alec carefully. Alec’s uncomfortable under the scrutiny for a brief moment before something shifts in Magnus’s face and his eyes turn warm and a little bemused.

“I’m a few years older than you, I’d say. It’s been a long time since I was as green as you, though, darling. More’s the pity.”

With a sigh, Magnus straightens before standing. Alec has to tilt his head up to meet his eyes and it makes something twist in his gut.

He doesn’t know whether it’s the vulnerability this position displays or the ease with which he remains sitting, giving the man in front of him the advantage.

“I told you about Valentine and gave you the evidence I had. I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to, of course, but I would think that you’d have pursued that lead a bit more than you have. If you ever need help-- with anything-- don’t hesitate to call me.”

With that, Magnus reaches into his pocket. Alec tenses and knows by the way Magnus’s lips quirk that he sees it. Still, he merely pulls out a card and holds it out to him.

Alec lets the hand stay outstretched for a moment, carefully studying the offer. Magnus’s hands are strong and look capable of all sorts of things even if at the same time, they’re too elegant, pristine. Alec has a hard time imagining them doing the kinds of things that need doing in their line of work. His nails are painted black with the faintest hint of glitter lurking in the ebony. There are a few rings adorning the slender fingers and Alec has a moment to think that the rings with his initials are a little pretentious.

He’s annoyed that he also finds it charming and that it undeniably works for Magnus.

Magnus endures the scrutiny with a smile. Somehow, it feels like he knows Alec’s intentions even before he does. Reaching out, Alec plucks the card from where Magnus had been holding it between two fingers, the offering a challenge of sorts, possibly even a test.

Alec knows by Magnus’s smile that he’s passed with flying colors as he shoves the business card into his pocket.

“I’m not going to use this,” Alec adds, wanting to wipe that smirk off his face.

If anything, Magnus just looks more facetious. “We’ll see about that, I suppose.”

“Why do you want to help me, anyway? Why should I trust you?”

Magnus doesn’t answer immediately, instead taking his time to reply. Alec gives him points for the seriousness of his tone when he does.

“There’s just something about you, I suppose,” Magnus finally says. “It might be foolish of me but I can’t help but want to get to know you better.”

“What if you don’t like what you find? Not everyone can be who you want them to be.”

Magnus laughs, tickled. “Oh, Alexander, you don’t have to tell me that. Yours isn’t the first pretty face I’ve seen but it is the first time I’ve felt compelled to each out. You didn’t kill me when you had the chance last month and that made me wonder. I guess we’ll both just have to see what happens next, hm?”

Alec’s overwhelmingly aware of the card in his pocket, at the way its sharp edge pinches his skin. His eyes trace crisp lipstick and perfect eyeliner, the clean lines of Magnus’s outfit.

He’s intrigued. He shouldn’t be-- the very idea is ludicrous-- but he is.

Magnus’s gaze breaks from his for a brief moment before he’s looking back with an arch look and tilting his head towards something. “That would look nice in your office, don’t you think?”

Following his gaze, Alec sees metal and wood a dark stained drink cart. It’s nothing overtly fancy. It doesn’t stand out. It’s almost black, the wood ever so slightly distressed, the iron aged. It’s utilitarian and looks just big enough to hold a half dozen bottles of liquor with the accompanying glasses.

It’s would be mostly unobtrusive and fits his style perfectly. Alec’s a little wary of just how well Magnus had pegged him.

“What makes you think I need a drink cart,” he asks sardonically.

Shrugging, Magnus merely offers, “Every great leader should have a drink cart, Alexander. It’s useful in so many ways-- wooing potential business partners, a nice pick me up after a dreadful day. Don’t tell me that you keep your whiskey in your bottom desk drawer?”

Before he can school his expression, Alec’s brows are flying up incredulously. How the hell did Magnus know that?

Magnus just laughs quietly and nods a little to himself. “That’s what I thought,” he says. “It’s a small thing but it can really make the difference. You won’t even realize it’s there until you need it.”

“Whatever,” Alec mutters as he rolls his eyes.

He misses the fond, speculative look Magnus throws his way.

“Well, I should get going. While this was a lovely distraction, I do have work to finish before nightfall.”

Magnus has turned and taken just a few steps when Alec finds himself calling out, almost without meaning to.

“Magnus.”

Pausing, Magnus looks over his shoulder. His gaze is inscrutable.

Alec has the briefest moment to reconsider but finds he doesn’t want to. “Rumor has it one of your men has been stealing from the till.”

Before his eyes, Alec watches as Magnus changes. It’s imperceptible but chills him down to the bone nonetheless. It’s as though Magnus closes himself off from everything else, become colder and sharp enough to slice to ribbons.

His voice is steel as he asks, “Where did you hear that?”

Alec shrugs. “He was bragging to one of my men who came back and told me about it. I guess he was in the mood to boast about how he was pulling one over on the boss man.”

Magnus smiles and it send a shiver up his spine. “Do you have a name?”

Squinting a little, Alec thinks back and offers a tentative, “Elias?”

Magnus nods once as his gaze warms a few scant degrees. “Thank you, Alexander. I appreciate the heads up.”

“Maybe our fathers were enemies,” Alec says slowly, feeling each word as it leaves his mouth. “But you were kind to me and have never been anything but a gentleman. I wanted to repay that, even if the gesture was small.”

“No gesture is too small, darling.” Magnus’s mouth twitches up before he adds, “It was nice running into you. I’ll see you around, Alec.”

“Magnus.”

This time when Alec calls out, Magnus doesn’t turn around, doesn’t look over his shoulder. He merely stills and the silence is expectant.

“Who told you that I’d be here?”

Magnus is still facing straight ahead and his voice is expressionless as he replies, “Raj.”

He doesn’t wait for Alec to say anything else, merely continues on his way and Alec watches him until he exits through the front door.

The store is surprisingly empty as Alec sits and thinks over the past half hour. It was only a conversation but it feels like things have shifted irrevocably.

He’s not quite sure how he feels about it.

A few minutes later, though, a salesman comes over and Alec orders a few things that have caught his eye.

It’s a few days later when he pours Raj, one of his newer recruits, a drink in his office. He carefully places the stopper in the decanter of whiskey before setting it down on his brand new drink cart that had been installed yesterday morning. Then, Alec's turning towards the man who’d betrayed him without a second thought.

It was an unwritten rule that one never told anyone about the boss’s whereabouts-- let alone his supposed number one rival.

Alec feels no remorse as he takes care of business. It’s another day of the same old shit and he tries to pretend that he’s not exhausted of it all, already.

He thinks about Magnus and wonders when they’ll next meet.

He thinks about the fine line he’s walking and how this will probably blow up in his face when he least expects it.

Still. There’s just something about Magnus that pulls Alec in and he’s helpless to do anything but sit back and see how it all plays out.

In the meantime, he starts researching Valentine and his operations. Piece by piece, the puzzle starts to come together and finally, it’s time for Alec to make his move. He needs to avenge his father and solidify his place at the table. It's taken nearly two years but Alec's ready.

It’s just his luck that Valentine saw him coming from a mile away.

[ask-the-infiltrators]

The real Main protagonist of Hazbin Hotel is Angel Dust...

Okay, hear me out. I do actually have a reason for saying something as crazy as this. While everyone introduced at the Hotel is a main character in their own right, a lot of the scenes that Angel Dust was in showed a lot of nuance that the other characters lacked. Aside from him, the only other really deep characters are the mysterious Alastor and the Princess of hell Charlie. We followed Charlie for most of the pilot, so we got to see most of her motivations and actions at face value. Alastor is mysterious for the sake of being mysterious and dangerous. But Angel Dust... Things about him are everywhere and a lot of the pilot happens because of his actions. Sure the Extermination wasn't his fault, but without him a lot of other things might not have happened!

Angel Dust didn't get involved with the turf war? The interview would have ended very differently as her first patron wouldn't have made her a complete joke in the eyes of the viewers. Cherry Bomb might have actually had serious issues taking Sir Pentious on alone, but that is yet to be seen really. She did manage to bring him to the ground the first time, but caught up with the gun Angel saved her from would have spelled disaster. Angel, Charlie, and Vaggie wouldn't have had a arguement in the limo. If a fight never broke out at the news station, Alastor may never have taken an interest in the Hotel and he wouldn't have came by. And lastly, Sir Pentious wouldn't have attacked the Hotel if he never had a beef with Angel Dust to begin with.

Below are a number of standout examples of Angel showing his character. But before I get to that, I would like to say first and foremost I am not going to be mentioning outside sources such as comics or live-streams or Q and A sessions unless absolutely necessary and allowing the Pilot to stand on its own.

During Charlie's first song at the very beginning a number of demons are shown to be falling. Some of them are known, such as Sir Pentious, I believe Cherry Bomb, and Angel Dust in the center of it all. What is strange about the framing of the scene is how everyone there is placed. Most of the characters there are unknown, nobodies at the present time, so why have a main character, a potentially recurring villain, and the main character's one friend be there? Either it is familiarity before meeting them, or some show of importance going on. Both are likely, but will be touched on later. Another brief note is this is all seen before Charlie herself or her representation of her in song appears.

Before the song ends or even meet Charlie herself, we see key things about Angel Dust here as well. When 'The Studio' is shown we see one character known as Valentino (a comic reference for the full name) on the phone texting Angel Dust. While it may be easy to miss, this is Angel Dust on the other end, being 'affectionately' called Angie. Cherry bomb also calls him this and he works in the industry, so it’s safe to assume it’s him. Val questions Angel if he got the money from a guy named John and Angel says he is working on it and questions why this job is being done so soon after the extermination. Val shushes him and tells him to finish his job without any sass. Angel Dust begrudgingly agrees. His punctuation is rather clear on this. Rather than a simple, "Yes, Boss." Like one might expect, he instead says "Yes. Boss." The tone of that is drastically different. This blink and you will miss it scene adds context to what Angel is doing at the start of the pilot.

When the first song ends, we meet Angel Dust and John for the first time with Angel dismissing the affair as a quick cash grab, leaving the audience and John in the dark as to what he was really doing. Despite the rude remarks thrown at Angel, he does break the sass rule from before and sasses John so hard into the ground he is grumbling about it even as he drives off. Angel clearly has handled his type before and knows his way around the business long before we know his infamous celeb status.

When he is done with this job, rather than report back to Val with the money he spends it on drugs. Typical Addict move right? Wrong. If he were simply an addict, he likely would have had a breakdown when his drugs was destroyed moments later. Instead he has a moment of anger before moving on. Seems more like he does it for fun and recreation than anything else. Habit? Perhaps, but certainly nowhere near losing his mind over it. He then sees Ser Pentius' zeppelin destroying the city and rather than run, he later is shown to have stepped in to aid Cherry Bomb.

Later on, during the interview scene, Charlie notes that Angel Dust, the infamous adult star, has been clean for two weeks under her program, a fact supported when Angel Dust is explaining his situation to Cherry Bomb. Unlike the other sinners, he was honestly closer to rehabilitation than the others, at least for the time being... Because he is hardly clean afterward. In her mind, he was doing well.

During his explanation he actually states the name of his preferred drug. Not by its nicknames or anything, but by what it is, where it’s from, and how much he uses. This shows that he knows his drugs a lot more than any simple user.

His choice of weapon is also telling about him. He has a Tommy Gun, a weapon commonly associated with Mobsters. He doesn't just use it as well, he shows great skill with it as he dispatches Sir Pentious' egg minions. A Tommy gun is typically used as a spray and prey weapon but he has demonstrated he can fire accurately with it both as such and handle firing individual bullets from it. While anyone can pick up a gun and fire, the skill in which he uses it suggests he had great experience with it before. How would a simple adult star know how to use a gun like this and know his drugs? It would be easy if he was a mobster at some point.

I will admit, there is a counter argument to this here, as Homosexuality does not fit into the code of conduct for the American mafia so it is possible he did not join or was not allowed to join, but having a mob family does change the way one lives in one way or another... He does have the knowhow. But I digress here as this is about the pilot.

He is shown during the battle to make wisecracks and immature jokes a lot and enjoys doing them. He also relishes in the reactions he gets from others doing them, whether it be indifference or outright disgust. In the case of Sir Pentious, he make a ton of them and they seem to fall on deaf ears, at which point Angel breaks his joking persona briefly to say that he is missing the point of them and should watch what he says around him. This also stands as a joke in of itself with it being the punchline and all the jokes thus far were just build up.

During the battle he also takes the time to push Cherry Bomb out of harms way at his own detriment and has her back multiple times. This shows that he does care for her in some regard.

During the limo ride, he is shown fidgeting with the driver/passenger window thing until he is left little other option but to talk with Charlie and Vaggie about the incident. He tries to justify this as 'owing' a friend a favor, yet it’s obvious by the previous points he not only cared about Cherry and the battle, he was kind of itching for combat anyway. When pressed he said his reputation was on the line and it would be dangerous to his persona if people knew he wanted to go clean. What reputation? A thug? An Adult Star? How many people know him as a thug like he was in the turf war? People associate him with adult films far more than that. If it was just about his public persona, he would have just made another film or had some sort of scandal and be done with it.

He then proceeds to throw insults to those around him, both towards Vaggie, Charlie, and the general public with the latter being about appearances. He then shows his vanity by showing off one of his creepy fan letters which he strangely has on his person... nope! Skipping this one XD

Beyond that, he asks for something to drink, likely to distract himself from the situation and pleads indifference when there is none and towards the prospects of not having a free room anymore. Unlike his previous drug thing, he does seem far more antsy about something to drink.

When the arrive at the Hotel he tries to throw some more bad humor at Charlie regarding food, but when he sees how truly hurt she was regarding the incident at the news station and during the limo ride, Angel breaks from his persona for just a moment to reach out and comfort her, but before he could reach her however he stopped and walked away. Why bother comforting her if he is the cause of it all? Despite this however it does show one key thing. Charlie's rehabilitation was working as for a moment as Angel broke character and showed a genuine moment of remorse before slipping his facade back on.

When the Radio Demon arrived he showed his lack of knowledge in Demon politics by asking Vaggie whom he was. She questioned how he doesn't know the Radio demon, as Angel is a lot older in hell than Vaggie is. This is a guess, but considering his status as an adult film star and known devious streak, having him not know about the big scary demon that can tear him six days to Sunday is a good thing on Val's part... He then proceeded to do his usual thing and throw a joke out there. That’s the thing right there. Despite the danger, he is still willing to get close and throw out his usual humor. That would be a nightmare for Val for sure as Alastor is a known danger.

To Angel's credit, when Alastor is gauging the staff to see what is needed for the Hotel to run properly, he actually stopped throwing them at Alastor directly after the guy shut him down with a simple laugh and a no. Either he didn't have the time for another joke in the pilot, which isn't true as he threw out more later at Husker, or he knows it won't go anywhere with Alastor much like it did with Sir Pentious a bit ago. Unlike Sir Pentious, Alastor is a credible danger to his health...

When Nifty arrived and questioned why everyone were girls that Alastor was introducing her too, he refrained from correcting her and just let her do her thing.

When Husker arrived he stood up for the Bar being added to the front desk, once again referencing how much he wanted a drink.

He then proceeds to shamelessly flirt with Husker and enjoys the reaction he gets. Who needs to flirt with death when he has a guy at the counter that gets mad easily?

Angel seems to enjoy himself and his new duds during Alastor's reprisal of Charlie’s song he heard from the news report. He knows what he likes and approves of Alastor's style and choice of drinks.

When Sir Pentious comes around again, he isn't there for Alastor or Cherry Bomb. He is there for Angel Dust, why? While unclear, it would seem that until Alastor was noticed the snake clearly had it out for Angel in particular.

Am right about this? Who knows? Am I over analyzing this? Certainly. Honestly, I just wanted to put this out here because I have seen a lot of people hate Angel Dust for being a bland one dimensional character when that simply isn't true. I am willing to bet my 13+ years of writing experience and my novel in the works that there is far more to him than meets the eye. Everyone of the characters in Hazbin have stories they can tell, I just want it to be clear that even Angel has much more depth to him than he some would give him credit for and look forward to them all being explored some time in the future.

[golden-pickaxe]

City Lights (Part 2)

Fandom: Vikings

Paring: Ivar x Reader

Type: Modern AU

Wordcount: 3995

Warnings: none as of yet, smut in the future

[All Parts Here]

A/N: Part 2 here already, part 3 is like 1/4 done. And yes, it is a lot longer, but it is hard to find good spots for breaks in this story, hence why the first part is so short.

Summary: You are a grad student at university, and recently lost your job as a professor’s assistant due to funding cuts. Out of a whim you apply for a job at the Lothbrok Corporation as a personal assistant, not yet knowing who exactly you will be working for.

Your classes were Monday and Wednesday afternoon, and the whole of Thursday, leaving you with two free mornings and two whole days to work. Margarethe informed you that while sometimes Ivar might would need something on the weekends too, generally you were not expected to be readily available Saturdays and Sundays.

 It had been quite exhausting to set up the contracts and go through everything, from secrecy agreements to explanations where the canteen was, from getting the keys to discussing in detail what you would get payed.

 The whole process was certainly not made easier by Margarethe, who seemed to somehow dislike you for some reason, and who only answered your question on what it was now exactly that you were expected to be doing for Ivar with a sharp ‘whatever he asks of you’.

 That surly was not very reassuring, and you spent most of the following days half scared half annoyed.

 Nevertheless, the following Monday at 8 am sharp you were knocking at Ivar Lothbrok’s office at the top floor of the building, waiting for him to call you in, which he did a few seconds later.

 The office itself was truly gigantic. The glass front overlooked the whole city, a couch was on the left, and a big desk on the right, while the walls were either covered with pictures or tall bookshelves. Other than that, there was a lot of open space, modern and tasteful décor.

 Right upon entering you were a bit confused, as you spotted Ivar’s wheelchair right next to the door, while he was sitting on the sofa in quite a bit of distance, a file opened up on the table in front of him, apparently reading through some papers. He smiled as he looked up from his file, watching you like a hawk as you came in.

 “Good morning, Y/N. Sit down.” He patted the sofa next to him, before finally putting down the papers onto the coffee table in front of him.

 Closing the door behind you, you walked over to him, sitting down on the almost intimidatingly large sofa, a bit unsure of how to act or what to say. You had read up a bit on this man in the past days. Next to him being a quite successful businessman, there was quite a lot of rumour about him, his connection to the Finehair corporation, and his rivalry with the Inkstad company, which had split from the Lothbroks over twenty years ago, and also possible connections to the mafia and other crime rings. Some sources spoke of covered up incidents in his youth involving physical violence, which was something you could not quite imagine.

 “Hello, Mr. Lothbrok.” You said, pushing your thoughts aside, trying to smile as well. Despite him addressing you with your fist name, you did not find it appropriate to do the same to him.

 “Please, call me Ivar. Much easier that way. There are so many Mr. Lothbroks in this company.” He leaned back, mustering you for a second. You shifted a bit under his gaze, his piercing blue eyes feeling as if they managed to look right into your soul.

 “Fist of all, I have to say that I actually do not need, or want a personal assistant. My mother insisted on it, however, so we will make do.” He rolled his eyes. “On the other hand I though, maybe you could actually turn out to be quite useful.”

 You did not answer, as technically he did not ask you a question, and just watched him watching you. You really had no idea what he expected from you, and the nervousness in you grew with every passing second. Would it be similar to all the organisatory stuff you did at your last job? Or were you expected to do something else?

 “Don’t be scared, I won’t ask anything inhumane of you. Most of your duties will involve keeping my schedule, keeping track of my appointments, here and there accompanying me to meetings, even if they are abroad, as well as organising these business trips, grabbing me lunch or coffee if I am too busy to do it myself, and pulling me out of horribly boring conversations with, as you put it, stubborn and eccentric people if I ask you to.”

 Most of what he said was rather expected, but his last statement surprised you a bit.

“Come again?” you blurted out before thinking, instantly regretting your choice of words. But to your surprised Ivar just smirked.

 “I am, as you surly know, very important, and many people are simply not worth my time. If I give you a certain signal, a code, you will come to me and tell me about a very urgent thing I have to take care off immediately, simple as that.”

 You blinked at that, but finally nodded.

 “Well, then, Y/N, I think we will have a pretty good time.” Ivar grinned devilishly, causing you to shiver. His face had a way to go from innocent angle to demon in the span of a second, and you had no idea what to make out of that. Before you were able to respond, however, he had sat up again, pulling a large bag from under the coffee table, which you had not seen before.

 “In this bag is everything you are going to need. A company laptop, a work phone, diaries with my set appointments, and infomations about my contacts and acquaintances, and how things have been handled so far. I want you to know the name of everyone of my business partners, as well as the information I have collected for you in their respective files. The who-is-who is very important in my line of work, and if you are to join me in meetings it is vital you remember this information correctly. I will be patient in the first week, but if you mess up too much afterwards, I will fire you.” He added, the smile now gone, his eyes boring into you.

 “Of course Mr. Loth-.. Ivar.” You swallowed.

 “Good! Go home then, take the time to look through all of this, and I will see you tomorrow, 8 am.” The smile was there again, but it did not reach his eyes.

  Almost three months had passed at your new job as Ivar Lothbrok’s personal assistant, and you had to admit that the job itself was.. kind of nice.

Most of your time you spent either on the phone for him, or creating long lists or catalogues, while he was either working or in a meeting. The repetitive parts of his job, even though those were not many, he usually simply handed over to you, and after explaining the process to you once, you quickly got the hang of it, able to do it yourself.

You had also joined him for a few meetings, taking notes while he and his brothers, which you had also gotten to know by now, discussed business deals of a few million euros. It was a bit intimidating to say the least, but also rather exciting. As someone who had lived the better part of her adult life of off very little money, it was a bit alienating to hear them talking about such huge amounts of money as if they were merely peanuts in their eyes.

 When you were not on the phone making appointments with the personal assistants of equally important men, or on the computer doing some other kind of work, you got Ivar lunch or a coffee before you got into the office in your morning shifts, and sometimes had to bring or get some of his hand made designer suits from a local dry cleaning agency.

 It was certainly a lot more work than being a professor’s assistant, but not too different all in all, and you quickly had gotten the hang of it.

 Ivar himself was.. one kind of a man. He was a bit cold and very unpredictable, could snap at people if they annoyed him out of the blue, and sometimes was so focused on his work that he became almost non-verbal, only huffing at your questions. By now, you knew how to deal with that, which was by leaving him alone for an hour or two, writing up everything you’d might need of him, and then taking up as little of his time as possible.

His mood could change in a second, only a small comment or incident able to turn a smile into an angry glare, and especially during meetings with his brothers he could become so angry, that you were sure his wheelchair was the only thing holding him back from tearing out one of his sibling’s throats.

 On the other hand he was also funny, intelligent and witty, always having a quick remark ready or a new strategy to try out. He seemed to calculate every single one of his movements, every even unimportant detail part of a bigger plan. In general he seemed to be a lot more ambitious than his brothers, even if not as expansion happy as his oldest brother Bjorn, who was mostly working on their newly opened up branch in Canada.

 All of your friends had been quite surprised, but also very impressed when you told them about how you got the position in the first place, gossiping about how much of the rumours about the Lothbroks were actually too, but after listening to your stories, or the parts you could tell without breaking the secrecy agreement you had signed, they all seemed to agree that Ivar was just as impulsive as the news made him look to be.

 “Be careful, yes? I know this is a massive opportunity for you, and a great experience, but still, the Lothbroks are a big fish.” One of your friends told you, taking you aside when you were over at dinner at their place. They were a journalist, whom you met in your first year at university. “Word is that the fall of the Egbert Coorp over in England was not due to bad investment choices.”

 You knew what your friend implied, and nodded, promising to be careful. You knew why they were worried, as they knew a lot about the shady things going on in the business world, but you also knew they were worried, as even they could not find a reason why exactly you were hired for this position.

 Personally, you had no idea why Ivar had just chosen you as his assistant on, what seemed like a whim, but also did not really dare to simply ask the man. Maybe it was because you made him laugh, maybe he just wanted to annoy his mother by choosing someone so obviously unqualified, or maybe it was simply because he wanted the boring interviews to be over with already, expecting to fire you a few days later anyways.

 But the man had not fired you yet, on the other hand, even seemed to be happy with the work you did, happy how quickly you were to respond to his texts or calls, and how efficient you were working. It was not a lie when you told Aslaug how good you were at organisations due to the horrors of university bureaucracy.

You even, as weird as that might sounded, found yourself enjoying the work, enjoyed the thrill of being part of such a massive corporation, right at the head of the hydra, even if your boss was often very grumpy, loading you with different errands on some days, while just ignoring you or simply sending you home on others.

 He was very hard to read and even harder to predict, but all in all you found yourself liking him. He could be nice and funny, could be kind and forgiving, if he had a good day. You enjoyed working for him. Him being one of the most attractive people you had ever seen had obviously nothing to do with that.

 It was Saturday now, after a week of work and uni, and you were at home, enjoying the free day on your couch, after having taken a long bath, wearing your favourite and most comfortable pyjamas and reading.

Uni was rather stress-free at the moment, you had no important assignments due, and the exams were still a bit off, and so you had decided to reward yourself with a treat-yourself-day, already planning to go to the shops later, to pick up what you needed to cook your favourite meal for yourself in the evening.

 Suddenly though, your work phone rang, displaying Ivar’s name on the screen. A bit worried, you put your book aside, picking up the phone.

 “Yes, Ivar?” you answered carefully. Usually he texted you on weekends, and in general only called if it was really, really urgent, and he did not have the time to text.

 “Hey, ah.. hi.” He started, sounding a bit distracted, and you raised one of your eyebrows, confused by his tone of voice. He usually sounded firm and sure, not like.. this.

 “You alright?” you asked, sitting up slightly. You hoped nothing was wrong. What if those rumours were really true, and he had been kidnapped by the Inkstad coorp? Your mind was racing, even though you were sure that him being kidnapped was quite improbable.

 “Yes, ah. Listen. I’m in the old town right now, Hvitserk cancel on me, and I was wondering if you.. would like to have a coffee?”

 You had to blink a few times at that. First of all, as mentioned before, his tone of voice. Far too soft, he sounded shy and nervous and somehow vulnerable, something you were definitely not used from this man.

Second of all.. coffee? With you? Usually you where the one to get him one in a fancy, expensive, hipster coffee shop near the office, leaving him to drink it alone while he got on top of his most important emails. You had never.. joined him for one, let alone out of work, at the weekend.

You swallowed.

 “Y/N?” you heard his voice again, which made you snap out of your thoughts. Yes, this was him again, the Ivar you knew. Slightly annoyed and a bit snappy.

 “Ah, of course, ah, I’ll be there in say, an hour if that is okay with you?” you quickly got up while you spoke, already hurrying towards your bedroom to get dressed.

 “Yes, alright. Be quick.” With that, he simply hung up on you.

 You raised the other eyebrow now, and sighed.

Shaking your head, you quickly got ready, not to make your boss wait, picking up your bag and grabbing your work phone and keys, looking at said phone while you left your flat, noticing that Ivar had texted you his location at a, again very fancy, expensive hipster café in the old town. Apparently he had been too annoyed, forgetting to tell you where he was over the phone.

 Gladly you did not have a long way from where you lived to the old town, and only had to take a bus to get there. On your way you could not help but wonder why he wanted to meet you. His brother cancelling on him could not be the reason, he had enough friends, and certainly enough brothers, to make up for that, and could’ve just called someone else to spend his Saturday with. Maybe it was a work thing, and he needed to discuss something in person that was too delicate to talk over the phone. But why would he meet you in a public café then? Maybe he just needed someone to brainstorm to, it would not be the first time that happened.

 You finally arrived at the café Ivar had texted you, already spotting him at one of the tables outside. It was a nice day in spring, the temperature already quite warm, especially for Denmark. Ivar was sitting in his wheelchair at a table in the shade, a glass of water in front of him and a cigarette between his fingers, as he read something on his phone with furrowed brows.

 Before you approached him, you had to stop and muster him for a moment. Until now you had only seen him quite formal, in his expensive, well tailored suits and strict man bun, but now he was siting there in simple black jeans and sneakers, and a plain grey shirt, while his long hair was opened and casually brushed to the side, so one side of his undercut was exposed. You were a bit surprised how long his hair actually was.

 You straightened yourself up, glad that you had also chosen something more informal to wear compared to your work clothes, and approached the table the youngest Lothbrok was sitting at. He looked up from his phone as you pulled out the chair opposite of him, a smile on his face.

 “That was certainly far less than an hour, dove.” He said as you sat down, mustering you the same way you had just mustered him. Ah, yes, the nickname he had started you occasionally call you. You had no idea if it was appropriate or not, but you certainly did not dare to tell him to stop.

 Quickly Ivar put out the cigarette in his hands in the ashtray in front of him, in which a few buds were already resting, before simply putting it onto the empty table next to yours.

Even though he hid it quite well from his family, you obviously knew about this habit of his, which he tried to keep a secret mostly from his mother.

 “Yes, I thought I needed longer to get ready.” You admitted, shrugging slightly. Ivar laughed, You had noticed how much he enjoyed it when you spoke honestly and directly, not trying to find excuses to make yourself look better.

 “Well, you look good nevertheless.” He smiled, crossing his fingers in front of his face, his elbows resting on the table.

 You could not hold back and stare at him in a bit of a shock. This was a first, him complimenting you.

You swallowed.

“Thank you.” You finally answered, very happy that in that moment the two of you were approached by the waitress of the café, to take your orders.

 Ivar, as you were used from him, ordered a black coffee, filtered in a special method and made with a certain kind of peculiar roasted coffee beans, while you ordered your usual way of drinking it, before the waitress left you two again, making the man turn his attention to you once more.

 “So, what do I owe this to?” you asked, mustering his blue eyes. “Is there something we need to discuss? The upcoming trip to Norway? Something relating to the Finehair brothers?”

 Ivar chuckled at your words, running a hand through his long hair, leaning back in his chair.

 “Can’t I just invite my personal assistant out to have a simple cup of coffee with me?” he asked, shaking his head. Then he looked at you again. “No, nothing to do with Harald and Halfdan. I just realised how little I actually know about you, and thought we should change that. Hvitserk cancelling on me gave me a good time window, so here we are.”

 You squinted his eyes at him slightly, unsure if he was honest with you. Again, he was really hard to read, especially when he wore this angle like smile on his lips.

Finally you gave up, nodding with a shrug.

 “Fair enough. So, what do you want to know” you just asked, tilting your head slightly.

 That surprisingly seemed to throw Ivar off a bit. He had probably expected you to squirm in your seat, to stutter and be nervous, not wanting to give up any personal information to the powerful man in front of you, but your nonchalance and openness seemed to be not what he was prepared for. He seemed a bit nervous now.

 “Ah. Well.. what about your family? You know mine, obviously.” He quickly regained his composure, watching you intently.

 And so, you told him about your family, answered his questions about how you ended up where you were, what exactly it was that you were studying at university, how your last job ended and what you liked to do in your spare time.

Ivar, for some reason, seemed to honestly be interested in your life, asking more and more questions, even after both of you had finished your coffee.

 “What do you want to know next?” you asked, after you had told him about your last vacation. “My childhood pets? My primary school grades? Who my kindergarten crush was?” you joked.

 Looking away from Ivar for a moment you noticed that the sun was already starting to set in the west, cursing yourself a bit, as you knew that you had missed the chance to go and buy the groceries you needed for cooking, before the shops would be closed.

 You looked back at Ivar, who did not answer, seeing him clench his jaw slightly, now regretting your choice of words. In the past hours of talking and laughing with him, you had almost forgotten that this man was still your grumpy boss.

 “No need to make fun of me.” He stated, his tone more than a but threatening. You knew this tone very well. It was not a tone of voice you liked to have directed at you.

 “I wasn’t making fun of you, it just started to feel a bit like an interrogation.” You said, keeping your voice calm, tilting your head at him. It was true, though, while you told him all about your life, he gave away little of himself.

 Ivar sighed, leaning back, apparently relaxing at your words. Then suddenly, he laughed.

 “Yes, I think that could be what it could’ve come across like.” He admitted. “But speaking of childhood crushes, do you have a boyfriend?”

 You had to blink a few times at this very direct question. His blue eyes were boring into you, and you had to look down at your empty coffee cup, clearing your throat.

 “Ah, no.. I don’t “ you answered.

 “Why not?”

 That made you look up again, Ivar’s eyes still locked on you. Frankly you had no idea how to answer that. You also did not know what he expected you to say. That you had not found someone? That you were not interested? That you had sworn to the gods that you would only be with the man who knew no fear, only to be tricked into marrying someone who was not the one you had promised yourself to?

 You shook your head to snap out of your thoughts.

“I.. I don’t know?” you finally answered, causing the other one to laugh.

 “That was a mean question, I know.” He smirked. Then he seemed to notice the passing time too, as he quickly looked at the sky and then checked the time on his phone. “Say, dove, would you like to have dinner? Nothing fancy, obviously.” He gestured at his clothes, with a shrug.

 “Ahm..” you began, now that you thought about it, noticing that you were positively starving. “Yes. I actually wanted to cook today, but I did not have the time to go shopping.” You told him.

 “Because of me forcing you to grab a coffee with me, how mean of me again. But if you fancy something home cooked, I am a great cook.” He smiled.

 Now it was you who had to laugh.

“Well, if the great Ivar Lothbrok offers to cook for me, who am I to say no?” you grinned.

 “Good!”

With that he called the waitress over, paying the whole bill, despite you insisting to pay for yourself, before he pushed himself off of the table, pulling out his phone to call a taxi.

[dreamingofketchup]

ash & dust

Merry Christmas to the amazing @ghost-kaiju!! I’m your secret santa! I hope you’ll enjoy this fic and the rest of the holidays! (and hopefully this will be uploaded to ao3 soon if I actually figure out how that site works haha)

I picked your first prompt: Kakuzu and Hidan: tag team of hitmen/assassins in modern AU (art or fic)

The Organization gathered the best hitmen from all around the world, masters of deception and assassination; freaks and outcasts and terrifyingly strong. Their methods are not the cleanest – but they always get the job done.

Kakuzu was considered a veteran among the members. No one really knew where he came from; they wasn't even sure Kakuzu was his real name and not many could claim that they had ever seen his face. There were only two things they were sure about: he would do anything for the right amount of money and he never fails a mission.

And his latest partner (Kakuzu preferred not to talk about what happened to the ones before him), Hidan, was also a peculiar one. A runaway kid who started out from the drug business in one of the gangs in the other side of the country and who soon gained fame when he – all alone in a summer afternoon (almost a year ago by now), wielding only his knife and a gun - murdered the head of the rival gang. And survived. That was when the Boss took interest in him and offered Hidan a place in the Organization. He refused at first. Then he refused again. Only when he realized – almost too late – how many people were after him (after the disgustingly high bounty on his head) did he accept the offer of the Akatsuki. No one really understood why didn't the Boss just hand him over for the money.

Together they were unstoppable. Hidan might not have been the most discreet one around – but he sure as hell enjoyed his job. Too loudly usually, lord, he just wouldn't shut up for a moment - but he was not afraid to get his hands dirty. Kakuzu was sure he would successfully finish a mission even if he got both his arms blown off. That brat was a fucking mess.

Kakuzu had to admit that Hidan, despite being the insufferable little bitch he usually was, complemented him quite well. The way he killed was ruthless and painful, but he was honest; he never killed from behind. He always told his victims what he's there for; sometimes they fled, some tried and fought back. Every now and then Kakuzu would watch him fight through the scope of his rifle, the fire in Hidan's eyes (he never bothered to ask about the unnatural eye colour; that was the least weird thing about Hidan), his rapid movements full of pure strength and brutality. He was anything but majestic, a demon incarnate, ugly and loud and ecstatic. It was so different from Kakuzu's cold and habitual professionalism; Hidan was alive when he was playing with death.

And nowadays there was something else in the way Hidan fought. A month or two ago while digging through Kakuzu's book collection he found an old book (Kakuzu couldn't even remember seeing it; he hadn't the slightest idea how it got there.) about an ancient, long forgotten religion, built on violence, pain and human sacrifice. It was practiced thousands of years ago, but Hidan claimed there were still people who called themselves the followers of the vengeful and bloodthirsty Jashin. And he would pray before a mission, holding onto some ugly handmade rosary. It was weird and disturbing, his devotion to this newly-found deity – and the prayers had the tendency to get annoyingly long. Kakuzu in exchange complained a lot about it, even though he understood him way too well; in this profession, in this life one needs such a fixation to avoid going insane.

---------

A few days ago the Boss called both of them to assign them a new mission; not a top one but better than nothing. All they had to do was to get rid of an enforcer and his posse from a Northern City gang. It wasn't unusual for the Organization to get involved in gang or mafia issues; the Boss could always dispatch someone who had affiliations with someone around. And this time it was Hidan. The target was part of a gang named Coppers who originated in Yugakure, Hidan's hometown, operating somewhere in the western blocks of the city. Hidan still had his sources (and the stupidity to actually accept the mission and go back) and Kakuzu decided not to ask too much.

The day of the mission arrived and it was time for him to leave now. Half past five; Hidan should be here already.

And as he left his flat, he could already spot the man leaning against his car on the sidewalk, eyes closed, rosary brought upon his chapped lips. He didn't pay attention even as he approached him. Kakuzu stood next to him in silence for almost a minute. Hidan knew that he was there. Kakuzu knew that he knew. The usual.

- Hey.

No answer. He tried again. Hidan didn't even bother.

- Couldn't you have done this at home? We should get going, idiot.

- Fuck off, I'm in the middle of something. - Hidan hummed, eyes still closed. They were going to be late.

- Can you really say “fuck” in a prayer?

- I'm praying for a good kill and you scold me for swearing? Nice.

- That's not what I meant. But could you just finish it in the car? - He threw their bags in the trunk of the car. He was starting to lose his patience.

- Whatever. I'm going to have to start again anyways, because someone interrupted me.

At that point Kakuzu decided not to say anything. He got in and reluctantly though, but Hidan crawled on the passenger seat too. He started his prayer again, and Kakuzu began driving. If there was one thing he was grateful about in Hidan's fucked up religion is that at least the prayers were silent. Mostly. After about twenty minutes of silence Hidan opened his eyes. He leaned back, stretching his arms.

- Finally that we got a fucking mission. It's really been a while.

- Yeah. - Kakuzu nodded.

- The Boss hates me I tell ya. That's why I hardly ever get any missions.

- Kakuzu decided to bite back his initial reply for this, and right before his silence could have been classified as awkward he could change the topic.

- So you know those guys?

- More or less. The Coppers were our buddies. They are real big on smuggling and whores, at least they were back then. Knew a chick there, always got her meth from me.

- Doesn't it feel weird, going back to them with this contract? - Kakuzu glanced over to his partner.

- Listen, they would've gladly shot me for a dime if things turned that way. And in fact, things did fucking turn that way so I don't give a shit.

- Fair enough.

Hidan sighed and rested his head against the window. They were sitting in silence for minutes. The sky was dark; tiny yellow dots indicated the neighbouring towns on the horizon.

- I wonder how things go up there nowadays.

- You miss them?

- You could say. I dunno. These kinds of people were my family for so long. As close as it can get with such people I mean, we just didn't hate each other as much. Better than nothing.

- Crime brings people together. - Kakuzu nodded.

- Yeah. Hard times but I liked it there.

- Would you like to go back?

- I couldn't, even if I wanted to. - he started fiddling with his rosary, staring out of the window blankly - And I really don't get why they turned on me. I did what they wanted, damnit.

- Trust me, I know the feeling. - Kakuzu sighed. His markings would not let him forget that even if he wanted to. – But my bet's on the money.

- Yeah, of course, I know, money's the most important thing, it makes the world go round and it's the only thing that matters, yeah, yeah. - Hidan groaned, his words soaked in the purest sarcasm.

Kakuzu didn't respond to his obvious bait, being lost deep in his thoughts. Maybe they really weren't that different after all; no wonder Hidan chose to get pulled into this disturbing borderline fanatism he calls religion. He had to keep his thoughts occupied with something. Yes, he knew this too well.

- We're almost there. - Hidan's voice pulled him back from his thoughts.

They soon reached Yugakure. It was already dark, old street lamps and buzzing neons guiding them through the streets. They parked down a few streets further; as they got out Kakuzu pulled up his hood and adjusted his vest, looking around the street. To put it mildly, it was ugly and worn; so many of the buildings in ruins, and those that were intact were covered in graffiti and piss. Nobody cared to clean the trash from the street. Hidan started talking, as if he noticed the way Kakuzu stared.

- You know, for so long this hellhole had the reputation of being the nicest, cleanest place up in the North. Really. Then about, let's say, ten years ago... - he was visibly struggling to find the right words. He touched the rosary hanging on his neck - shit happened. Man, I was a snotty lil kid but I still remember the riots. Half the city was in flames. Everything went downhills since and nobody fucking cares.

- I remember hearing it in the news once, yes.

- So yeah, that's fucking it. Welcome to Yu' I guess.

- Great. - Kakuzu sighed - Let's get going.

The streets were empty. On one balcony Kakuzu saw two girls smoking, but that's all he could say about the life he saw in the city so far. Even the street of the bar was relatively empty, a few drunk people leaning by the walls, smoking god knows what and talking about matters he was sure he should be grateful he didn't hear. He was eyeing a taller building across the bar; that roof would be just good. He pulled up his scarf higher on his face.

- Let's get to it. Find a good place. And take care.

- Fine. - Hidan waved and turned around; he decided it was time for him to cover his face too.

Kakuzu picked up his bag and took his way to the rooftop. The old exit ladder was painfully creaky, threatening to fall apart with every step. Hidan was waiting in the alley a few meters away from the bar. Kakuzu could see his lanky figure clear from the rooftop, as the blinking neon painted him in a different color with every blink. There was that particular shade of red which suited him so well. But the green wasn't bad either.

The Target should be coming out soon. He put his rifle together and waited. Every now and then a group of drunk people would come out but none fitted the description and the photographs. He was sure Hidan was already at the end of his patience.

Not an hour passed when another group of men came out. Five of them; ragged clothes, greasy hair and already shitfaced enough that none of them could walk straight. He recognized the man from the photograph, walking behind the others. He had a bottle in hand but he really looked like he would simply pass out if he had one more sip. Kakuzu leaned closer to the edge of the rooftop and waited a few seconds. One of the men looked up. Too late.

- Get ready. - Kakuzu said into his headset. He pulled the trigger.

These long seconds never failed to send chills down his spine; the shock, the gasps, the despair – the body falling on the ground, confused shouting, the disguised fear in their eyes that they will be the next, that they should try and reach for their gun---

But they can only fail.

He saw Hidan walk towards the confused group, hands tucked in his pocket. That shit-eating grin on his face would have been a reason enough for those guys to pull a weapon on him.

- What- what the fuck is happening? - a surprisingly sober voice could be heard from the small group.

- Vulture's back bitch, that's what's happening. - Hidan grinned, gun already in his hand; he looked into his eyes as he pulled the trigger.

But that boy was fast, the bullet only grazed his scalp as he jumped away. He pulled out his gun – but he didn't have the chance to use it as a bullet came flying from the left, hitting the gun out of his hand. The next bullet went for the spine. The boy fell on the ground with a heavy thud, dust flying in the air around him.

- I could've dealt with him alone! - Hidan shouted angrily; Kakuzu just smiled and reloaded. He was sure of that.

But Hidan didn't have time to be angry as another guy rushed at him, flinging a knife around wildly. Hidan was laughing loudly. He could avoid the cuts easily; the combination of alcohol and adrenaline is good for bloodthirst but not for coordination. Hidan was still having his fun nevertheless; next thing Kakuzu heard was him shooting that drunk bastard on the knee before starting to beat him up.

The gunshots didn't seem to faze the citizens and neither did the wailing of that man; Kakuzu expected turmoil and police sirens, people to be barging out of the bar to see what's happening. But nothing. The silence, save for that drunkard's screams, was disturbing – what kind of people are these, what the hell's going on, is this a trap?-, but it only made their job easier. Hidan kept on punching the guy until his face was all dark and unrecognizable – when did he put on those brass knuckles – and he kept on rambling about how he will be a fine sacrifice, he has been chosen, Jashin will appreciate him. Kakuzu sighed and looked away and tried not to listen to the rest of this speech.

There were two people left when Hidan started fighting with this one but it seems they have run away; so there are still sensible people left in this city. He wondered if they would alert anyone and he could only hope Hidan would finish his fascinating brutality soon. He started packing his stuff.

Then the body fell on the ground lifeless. Kakuzu got his bag and climbed down the ladder, rifle in his hand. Just in case. He found Hidan standing by his building, kissing his rosary yet again. Lord, they'll be caught if he starts praying here. But he was lucky, Hidan opened his eyes right as he got off the ladder.

- Man, this was too quick. They were no match. - Hidan walked up to him, wiping his hands in his once-white shirt.

- Can anyone be?

Hidan laughed out loud; his voice echoed from the dirty walls. Somewhere in the distance a dog started barking.

- But Vulture? Really? That's the lamest name I've ever heard. - Kakuzu continued.

- Fuck off. Whose prison name was Stitches anyways?

- Wow, you actually remembered something I told you?

- I was just guessing.

The streets were empty as they left. Nobody followed them, they couldn't even hear any sirens, nothing. They got to the car in safety, which Kakuzu carefully checked before getting in. Nothing. Again.

- This place is fucking weird. - Kakuzu sighed as they got in the car.

- Told ya. - Hidan laughed.

- This wasn't exactly a subtle attack and no one cared. You were there and no one fucking cared. I prepared for a bounty hunter or two, and nothing, not even the police came. Not that I mind.

-Yeah. Well, everyone is so invested in their own bullshittery that they just don't give a fuck about others.

- So I guess you are only an urban legend now at best.

- Most likely. Fuckin' great.

- I see. You want one? - he asked as he pulled out a cigarette packet out of his pocket. Hidan held his hand out immediately.

- What kinda fucking question is that?

Hidan put the cigarette between his teeth and with a smirk he leaned closer to light it with the end of Kakuzu's.

- That's pretty much the least practical way to light a cigarette. - Kakuzu rolled his eyes, but his light grin betrayed him.

- Oh shut up, you know you find it hot. - Hidan laughed, blowing out the smoke.

- You are hopeless.

And they left the city. Mission accomplished.

[thetapedeck]

On Rap & Consumerism

I don’t know when it happened. My best guess is that it began sometime around 2016. The year previous had sort of set the ball rolling, but we didn’t get a clear picture of what was to come until 2016, so let’s keep it to that one.  

The “it” I’m referring to here is not easily quantifiable. I’m largely speaking about the mass commodification and subsequent exploitation of what we know as “rap music,” but I’m also speaking about something more intangible; a steadily more pervasive attitude, a shift in the way rap is positioned in the broader cultural landscape. It’s a hard notion to pin down, mostly because rap has been commodified and exploited since its inception. But what was different was the lack of success the exploitation had. The whoring out of rap used to be a joke. Something white executives cooked up in their boardrooms, chalked full of outdated language and overtly racist undertones. It still is, mind you, but this time it worked. The Vanilla Ices and MC Hammers are not only topping the charts but enjoying lasting success (or at least as much lasting success as one can reasonably expect).  

At one time – a time not too long ago – rap operated on an insular plane. The Grammys for Rap were not televised. The big magazines only wrote about the biggest stars. There was no place for a B-tier rapper in popular mainstream culture, and that was fine. Goodie Mob didn’t need to be represented at the Grammys. We had the BET Awards; we had the Source Awards. There was no real proclivity to insert this culture into a space where it was unwanted. The genre and the culture lived within their own bounds, largely unseen to anyone who wasn’t looking for it.  

But that didn’t last forever. As listeners of the genre grew up and slid themselves into the very boardrooms where terms like “hippity hop” were doled out incessantly, the world began to open its doors to rap. Eminem starred in a blockbuster film about rap battles, Three 6 Mafia won an Oscar. The mainstream was now open to more than just the most accessible players. There was a space for rap that explicitly encoded murder, violence, drugs, and sex within its terms. The sudden exposure shocked the frail of heart. Picket signs outside venues. Tipper Gore. You know the story, I don’t need to spell it out for you, we’ve all heard “Cleaning out my Closet.”  

And thus, hip hop as a commodity was born. Rappers were making big money, bigger than ever before. But still, rap could breathe. It was still beholden to the ideals it was founded upon. Ghostwriting was a deadly sin and biting someone’s style would get you pressed up at an industry event faster than you could get your South Pole jeans on. Hip hop was living and breathing within mainstream popular culture, but it was doing so on undeniably hip hop terms. The subsequent clash of cultures made for some of the genre’s most defining moments; Ol’ Dirty Bastard cashing his welfare check in a limo became the predominant positioning rap took against the very people consuming it. Crass indifference and getting-kicked-out-of-the-department-store energy.  

Something so potent was, of course, volatile. For the next 20 years, the genre would consistently be at risk of either falling back into the darkness or sliding too far the other way and becoming pop music.  

Of course, we all know which way the pendulum ended up swinging. Lil Pump and Smokepurrp were evidence enough that rap was about to skyrocket. There were no more reservations about the culture or its effect on kids. Soccer moms sang along to Lil Yachty’s Columbine bars only 13 years after Eminem was universally shamed for the same thing. The genre grew bigger and bigger before finally culminating in a guitar-strumming, face-tattoo wearing physical embodiment of cultural appropriation; a frat-boy with a candy-painted heart who stole from the Chief Keefs and gave to the Justin Biebers.  

So, what does this mean for rap? I’m not sure, honestly. Though I will say that there is no reason to worry. The phenomena hip hop is experiencing is certainly not a new one. Every grassroots genre eventually becomes fodder for the insatiable masses. Sooner or later they’ll devour it, leaving a mangled carcass where a stallion once stood. But that doesn’t mean it’s the end, in fact, it’s quite the opposite. As we saw with rock in the 80s and 90s, underground movements rise from the ashes of consumerist exploitation. Rap has always had a very strong underground, but it will only get stronger when the tide begins to turn on rap as society’s dominant musical flavour.  

In the meantime, try not to get too hung up on things. Ferociously debating with rap casuals will only lead to heartbreak and alienation. You don’t need to spam every Tyler, the Creator fan with your list of obscure Bandcamp mixtapes. Rap will fall out of public favour all on its own and will likely be replaced with whatever new thing label executives and Spotify playlist curators can get their hands on. Until then, just sit back and mindlessly bump the new Juice WRLD record. There’s not much else you can do anyway.  

[exo-freaks]

RUBY [PART 1] CHANYEOL MAFIA AU

DISCLAIMER No.1: This story will deal with DRUGS, PROSTITUTION and other graphic things that could upset people so if you are sensitive to these topics please do not read. 

DISCLAIMER No.2: Ruby is in no way Lisa from Blackpink I just liked the way she looked and I found the footage I found great for the Teaser. I really got a good vibe of her videos so I thought she would be the girl I use for my pictures. Hope that makes sense. haha

Also this story is in the same timeline/ universe as the ‘DONE FOR’ story and will just have side stories that align with the ‘Done for’ story so this will be a not so frequent upload (as if I would upload regularly anyways  haha but I’m trying to get better) because I don’t want to spoiler any other stories as I’m also working on 2 other side-stories as well and I need to be careful to not spoil shit. 

She didn't know how she found drugs, how she started them why she took them and how she even got the drugs. Maybe she never found them maybe they found her. However they seemed to be around you for a long time, she started with the light ones alcohol cigarettes weed but eventually she tried LSD, Heroin and other stuff. Depending on what she wanted to feel she took a different one: Heroin for feeling numb, Crack for feeling hyper and energetic and LSD to just feel colourful. Today she needed a little cheer up so her got up and started walking. She was on her way to her usual spot to meet Ed. He knew her and he knew she paid. She always had the money. Prostitution, robbery, begging whatever there was to get money fast she probably had done. She arrived at the alleyway and waited for Ed. A man leaning against the wall looked at her, she thought that he was probably also waiting for Ed to show up and give him his drugs too so she didn’t paid him much attention. She looked at her watch and started walking up and down the street. Why wasn't he there. What was she supposed to do when he wouldn't show up. The man that was watching her walked towards her.

'Hey you're waiting here for Ed?' He asked her with a sly  grin on his face. Ruby ignored him. "he can be a cop'' she thought to herself even though he looked a little bit too young to be a cop.

'I don't think he is coming today' he said this grin still on his face, his grin made her mad. It was a smug bright grin. This guy was way too happy for Ruby’s liking.

'So are you waiting for Ed' he asked again.

'So what if' she scoffed at him making his grin even wider.

'Then I would tell you that he is out of business and I'm sure he will not pick it up' he said way too happy but as soon as those words left the guys lips panic crashed over her. How was she supposed to get her drugs. Sure she knew other spots but that was not the very good things and you could never be quite sure what you've got when you buy their stuff. Ed always had the good stuff the stuff that you know was clean not something weird mixed into it.

'Fuck' she mumbled kicking a little pebble against the wall. The tall guy laughed. Ruby's head shot at him. 'How do you know that?' she asked quickly earning another chuckle from him.

'Because I was the one that got him out of business' he said gloatingly. "Fuck so he is a cop. Well they can't get you you have nothing on you. Ruby keep calm just go home. So even if he follows you he can't get you.'' She thought and turned on her heel. She took a few steps really pissed at the whole world at Ed that he let himself get caught at this guy that put him out of business at herself because she didn't knew any good alternative, she was angry at so many things.

'I'm not a cop' the guy said but she kept walking.

'Only a cop would say that' Ruby said dry and heard the man laugh again.

'Would a cop have this' Ruby had always been a curious girl and once again she hated herself for that but she turned around. The guy was holding up a small package with some powder in it.

'Or what do you want?' He said playing with the rim of the little plastic bag.

'How do I know it's good stuff?' She asked before she even really thought about it.

'You have to trust me' he said and again this grin. Oh how much she wanted he knock that grin out of his face. But then she was in desperate need of something.

'Why should I?'

'Where would you go. To the east of the city. Well if you want to have stuff mixed with the weirdest shit you can imagine and that wouldn't even get you really onto it. Have fun but I can assure you my stuff is even better than Ed's' Ruby wobbled from side to side hands in her pockets thinking.

'I don't have all day so do you want to buy or not?' He scoffed at her and Ruby cussed.

'How much?' She flinched at his price he was way more expensive than Ed but she was sure she wouldn't get it any cheaper anywhere else.

'So do you want to?' He asked wiggling her eyebrows. She looked into her pockets and fumbled out some money gave it to him and snatched the packet from his fingers. Without a word she turned around and left.

'Come again soon' he said and Ruby could hear his big grin reflecting in his speech. Ruby was pissed. Very pissed. This smug grin he had, she wanted to punch it out of his face. Ruby was pissed, full of rage, she would have had enough money for at least a few days if this asshole of man wouldn't have gotten Ed out of business. Ruby asked herself what happened to Ed. Was he dead? Probably. In prison? Also likely but would this man give Ed to the police and then take his place. The drug business was hard and Ruby didn't cared much if she was honest. Sure Ed was a nice guy and he had always good products but they were never really close. She didn't knew anything about him and he didn't know anything about her. So was she pissed that her best source of drugs was gone? Yes immensely pissed but did she care what happened to him? Not at all. The only thing that she knew right now that she needed more money and she needed it as fast as possible. She went home still extremely pissed at the new guy and the whole world but she was also looking forward to be home and get onto a trip and forget what she was pissed about.

so I hope you liked the story and if you are bored you can check out the masterlist. If you have a request for a Scenario or so or if you just want to talk and leave a comment you van do that here. I added Nct to the blog so you can also request for them if you want to. 

Also one shots that are currently in the making but I can’t tell yozu when they will be done are:

Renjun fluff

NCT Chinaline Pyjama party

[anavoliselenu]

Blood Chapter 1

Officer Jacob Black stood in the doorway and contemplated the huge pool of thick blood on the floor where Martin Langer was found. He turned and could see a similar pool where Tiffany Langer had lain. He pondered the extensive blood loss. It was a lot more than he was used to finding at shootings.

Jacob Black was twenty-seven, one of the youngest officers on the squad and had completed the Academy in little to no time due to his extensive determination and superior training. He was tall, dark skinned, muscular, menacing, skilled; the perfect candidate. His ranking had moved up quickly in a short amount of time, making him a favorite and a fully fledged detective at an early age.

Over the past six years in the Chicago Police Department, he had been a part of shootouts, bank robberies, drug busts and half a dozen high powered cases that had gained him glowing praise among the brass sitting in City Hall. He wasn't afraid of a fight and had honed his skills to the point of near perfection.

He could find anyone, defeat anyone and crack any case. It was child's play for him and he would surely be in the head position before he was forty. The top people were already talking about it.

The clicking of a crime scene camera caused him to focus harder on the case at hand. It was the Labor Day weekend; his girlfriend Leah and he had planned a nice trip out to Lake Michigan ... if he got off on time.

The blood was splattered on the furniture, on the carpet, on the white bed sheets, everywhere. The two pools had coagulated into a black and rusty-brown mass, which covered so much of the floor that the ambulance personnel had to walk through it, leaving tracks of footprints behind as they went around the house gathering evidence.

Black was wearing tennis shoes with pale blue booties over them. He let out a deep breath and the real crime scene investigation began.

There were only three people in the room, one was alive and two were dead.

The Langer's faces were blown off, making them unrecognizable and the whole room was a grave site, filled with a chilling air. Two technicians came into the bedroom, snapping photos and explaining scientific evidence like 'splatter distribution areas' and 'droplet velocity' but Black wasn't listening.

The facts would be compiled in a detailed report on where the killer had stood in relation to the victims, at what distance the shots were fired from, in which order the shots were fired, fingerprints that were left, anything that would help.

Black knelt near the thick pool of dark brown liquid that was dripping from the bed sheets onto the floor.

"The wife, what do we know about her?" Black asked one of his deputies named Seth Clearwater who was standing in the hallway.

"Nothing, she's clean. Not even a parking ticket." Clearwater replied.

"Uh huh." Black muttered. From personal experience, he knew that no one was clean, "What about the husband?"

"He's a very interesting character. French, studied abroad before he came here for business school. Forty-five, lots of money and two houses in the area. No kids..." Clearwater rattled off the important things.

"Any shady dealings?"

"Nothing much, but the surname Bieber appears in several of the documents about him. I have a team on them now."

"The Bieber's..." Black thought out loud.

"Yeah, you know them. Supposedly they're in organized crime, you know, mafia stuff, but nobody can ever pin things on them. It's like they're ghosts. Big Italian family that's so generous on the outside but all hell on the inside. They actually gave half a million in donations last year to the police department."

Of course Black knew the Bieber's.

They had attachments to over forty crime cases that were currently open but like Clearwater said, nothing could ever be held down in regards to evidence.

"Who heads the family up?" Black asked, just for clarification.

"Carlisle Bieber and he has three sons; Emmett, Jasper and Justin."

"A wife?"

"Esme, sir."

"We need to get in contact with the organized crime division. I want to know everything there is to know about them. I want to be in the know on this."

"But... why?"

"I think Martin Langer was their under-the-table accountant. That's what the signs point to at least and I haven't done any kind of serious investigating but I would bet that they had something to do with this."

Black stood up and began walking around the room, taking in the evidence around him. This was why he was the best. He could take the situation and turn it to find each hidden clue that had eluded previous detectives.

According to the evidence, Martin Langer and his wife Tiffany had been sharing a nice night at home. The white wine filled glasses were on the bedside table, the candles were flickering creating eerie shadows on the walls, and there was a thick smell of perfume in the air. The makings of a nice romantic night were everywhere. Unfortunately, the Langers never saw their night.

Anywhere from 8:00 p.m., when the neighbors heard the Langer's door close to midnight, the current time, someone had picked the outside lock, crept into the North Side Chicago apartment, and shot them. Point blank. No hesitation. No shaking hand. This was professional.

"I think we're looking in the wrong direction." Black rubbed the back of his neck, "We thought it was a burglary?"

"Yeah, a painting is gone from the hallway that was supposedly worth millions."

"And no one saw anything?"

"Nope."

Black knew he would re-canvas the area later and interview everyone again. No doubt about it.

"I don't like this." Clearwater walked behind Black, following his steps.

"There were only two bullet casings?"

"Well... there were no bullet casings found but only two shots that the ballistics staff have evidence for."

That made Black slightly mad. Was he working with amateurs? He took a deep breath to calm himself, "Two bullets, two bodies. Both dead on the first shot. This wasn't a robbery."

"But... the painting?" Clearwater pointed towards the hallway.

"It was a cover up. The perp could have given a fuck about the painting. This was a murder for a reason."

"This whole thing is a mess. Look at all this blood."

That did baffle Black. A trained assassin would have never left so much evidence around, meaning that this amount of blood was a message. It was taunting, saying 'Come and get me'.

This was Bieber work and Black vowed, this time, they weren't going to get away with it.

The blood on the walls, on the floor, on the carpet, on the mirror, it was all a sign that pointed right to the source but the only problem was, the Bieber's were smart.

Clearwater left the room on his phone and Black circled the crime scene one last time before heading to the door.

"There's a lot of blood on your hands Bieber." He sighed, "I'm coming for you all."

He closed the door on the worst shooting scene he had seen in his years on the force and straightened out his tie before walking back down the hall.

I tuned out the first verse of Franz Schubert's Ave Maria because to tell you the truth, I hated this fucking song. I had sung it every Sunday for twenty-five motherfucking years but a Bieber never missed church.

 I sat in the front pew of Holy Name Cathedral, formally the Cathedral of the Holy Name. It's the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, one of the largest Roman Catholic dioceses in the United States. It's also the parish church of the Archbishop of Chicago. I know that all sounds like religious mumbo jumbo but I was required to know it, being the "devout Catholic" that I was.

 Total bullshit, if you ask me.

 The whole church was a huge Gothic monstrosity, consisting of sparkling marble, strong granite, towering steeples and large stain glass windows. Among the sprawling high-rises of downtown Chicago, the church looked like a misplaced antique house, trying to compete against modernity.

 To my left, were my parents Carlisle and Esme. I studied their regal statures and how they seemed to radiate joy. My father was on the verge of fifty but could pass for my age easily. With his short, golden blonde hair and piecing blue eyes along with his structured face and the body of an athlete, he could model for almost any suit company, making millions. My mother, with her honey colored locks and dark green eyes was the picture of perfection. Together, they were the best looking couple in church and everyone envied them.

 Just by his outside appearance, you would never guess that my father was the hardest motherfucker on the planet.

 He was head of all Italian organized crime activity in Chicago and half of the country for that matter. Everyone was afraid of him. No matter who you were or what family you were from, the name 'Bieber' was synonymous with ruthlessness even though on the outside, we looked like the perfect blue-blooded American family.

 In order to fully understand the dynamic of our group, you had to go way back.

 According to the story, Great Grandpa Nicola Rossini stepped off of the boat in 1916. He was six and alone but he made it. I don't know how he got on that ship without the proper papers or documentation and he never told me the whole tale but I had a feeling that he had been doing illegal things all of his life. Stowing away on a boat heading for America was just another walk in the park for that badass. He was pushing one hundred now but still kicking, probably having the time of his life with some hot stewardess in France.

 The second he stepped off the boat at Ellis Island, it was a fucking blood bath.

 He had no money, no family, and no damn clue what he was doing, but he was smart. He lived the streets for about a year and from his stories, got whatever he wanted just by giving his "scary eye", which he had mastered before he was five. No one else could pull it off quite like him but once you got the look, you knew you were in for a world of hurt. I had only gotten it once and my ass still hurt from the butt kicking he gave me, but I digress.

 He was a motherfucking beast and still was.

 One day, when he was seven I think, he was caught stealing from the most ruthless street boss in Brooklyn, Justin Bieber, who I just happened to be named after. Justin Sr., as he was called, threatened to cut off Nicola's hand, as per mob rules but like I said, he was smart.

 They made a deal. A deal that started it all.

 Nicola would work for Justin Sr., learning throughout the years and training to become somebody in this country. Justin needed someone to run the streets for him and Nicola was the perfect solution. Little did Justin know, he just made the worst decision of his life.

 By the time Great Grandpa was eighteen; Nicola Rossini had become Nicola Bieber and he had taken over after Justin Sr. died in a "car accident". He later told me that he had planned the whole thing. That was the start of the Nicola Bieber reign and the beginning of our family's lucrative businesses.

 Long story short, he married, had a butt-load of kids and the line went down to my father, Carlisle.

 It was strange to think of Carlisle as the head of any crime family because of his gentle nature. That's not to say that he hasn't killed a motherfucker or two but he only likes using violence when it's necessary.

 I was more like Great Grandpa Bieber. Ruthless. Menacing. Violent.

 After Nicola conquered Brooklyn and half of New York, he packed up, moving to Chicago where he set up shop from there. This city was the place I thrived in. This was the place where my father was born, where I was born, where I learned everything I knew.

 My father married my mother Esme right out of college and they had been together ever since. After Nicola grew too old to run anything, he chose someone who could lead and someone who would do the family proud. Carlisle's father, my grandfather was that person but he was murdered quickly after taking over. Thus, Carlisle Bieber became the most feared man of the underworld with one wave of Great Grandpa's hand.

 "Justin pay attention." My mother leaned over and whispered to me, hitting my knee.

 "I am." I shrugged and she gave me a steely glare.

 "No you're not, I won't have you daydreaming in church."

 "Is it a sin?" I asked with an eye roll.

 "Yes as a matter of fact, it is." She snapped and leaned back in the pew.

 I sat up straighter but let my thoughts drift more and more from church.

 The OCD in me detected that something was off and I frantically searched for what it was. A small page from the Bible next to me was sticking out and I just couldn't have that. I quickly tucked it back in and re-straightened my tie.

 I wasn't clinically diagnosed with anything but my habits and mannerisms were classic OCD related. No one really cared enough to fix it and with the work I did, it actually helped me stay organized.

 I was the second biological son of my parents, but still the youngest after my bigger brother Emmett and adoptive brother Jasper.

 Being Sicilian Italian, family came very important to the Bieber's.

 As the second son of Carlisle and Esme, I would normally be in no position to take over but if you knew Emmett, you would know why I was the favorite to rule our kind in twenty, thirty years. Whenever our father decided I was ready.

 Emmett was a huge guy, the size of a professional linebacker but under all the muscle and bulk, was a boy who never took life too seriously. That was part of the reason why Carlisle was so willing to give second-in-command to me but don't let his teddy bear-like exterior fool you. Emmett was soft yet powerful. He could take down a roomful of Feds with a ballpoint pen and a paperclip. I admired him for his strength but his brains weren't too much to praise.

 My second brother, of sorts, was Jasper. He wasn't actually related but you would never have been able to tell because he looked almost exactly like Carlisle and he was just as much my brother as Emmett was. My parents adopted him at the age of two, before I was born and the story was pretty twisted but we made it work.

 Jasper was originally the son of a rival crime family who was all but wiped out by Carlisle's people. In any case, that left Jasper without parents and Esme refused to let him go into the foster care system so they adopted him on the spot. He wasn't given a chance to take over the reins since he wasn't technically family but he was happy to be a part of what we built.

 The Bieber's were known as the toughest pieces of shit this side of Sicily and no one messed with us. Of course before we got to be top dogs, we had to beat everyone else down. The Irish, the blacks, the Japanese, Chinese, Colombians, Russians, Spanish, Brazilians. Basically we owned the Eastern seaboard and it crept into the Mid-West.

 We had syndicates in London, New York, Miami, Tokyo, LA, Seattle, Hong Kong, Moscow and Puerto Rico but Chicago was home base.

 We dealt in everything from drugs to illegal exports but the Bieber specialty was guns. I knew my way around a Colt .45 by the time I was four and could handle the kickback myself at the age of five. Although all three sons went to school for business, Carlisle made sure we could handle any situation on the streets and taught us how to use a gun before we could walk.

 Diamonds, cocaine and money were always going through our mafia connections, but the one thing we never touched was humans. Carlisle wouldn't even entertain the idea of selling another person for money even though many of the other crime families dealt in it heavily.

 We had a heart when we wanted one!

 Under him, my father probably had about two thousand people working all over the world. It was hard to keep track of them all and some say a mob family should be a small family or it will never work but no one stayed around very long if they weren't doing their jobs.

 In the immediate family, there were about ten who made the decisions, starting with my father then moving to me, then Emmett, then Jasper.

 We were a tight knit group that valued loyalty and secrecy above all else. If you didn't comply by the rules, well... use your imagination. We Bieber men were known for being creative.

 "Justin, I mean it. Pay attention." My mother hit my knee again.

 "I am." I groaned but my thoughts couldn't have been further from the Lord.

 Emmett and Jasper snickered from beside me.

 "Pussies." I whispered under my breath.

 "Dipshit." Emmett shot back.

 "Boys, I will not have that language in church. We're all going to confessional before we leave." Esme interrupted our fighting.

 "Come on Ma, that priest is a fucking boy toucher. I can't even look at him." Jasper shuddered.

 "He doesn't do that kind of thing. Father O'Malley is well respected and you better be listening." She pointed at all three of us.

 Carlisle just shook his head with a smirk.

 It was funny, actually laughable to see the Bieber's in church but it wasn't an option not to be, Nicola made sure of that. He said that the less inconspicuous you were, the less the Feds were on your tail so that was why we did "normal shit", as I called it. The weekdays were for the mob and the weekends were for the family.

 Every Saturday, Esme hosted a huge dinner at the house and we all ate with the entire family, which included about forty people. Some of them were blood related and others not but they were all considered family by Esme. Sunday was church and then we would all get in the cars, headed towards the Rosehill Cemetery to change the flowers on Esme's father's grave, no matter what the weather. After that, it was usually relaxing until we were back to hard drugs, money, and guns on Monday.

 God, I love my life!

 Of course, just because we were leaders of the mafia didn't mean that we didn't have legitimate businesses. Emmett, Jasper and I all went to Harvard for undergrad and Dartmouth for our MBAs, which our father insisted we have if we planned on going into his line of work. He never pushed us to join the family but it was common knowledge that we were all going to follow him.

 In addition to our crime life, we all had a normal life as well.

 I was in real estate, not for anyone but myself. I owned three highrises in Chicago and numerous other ones around the country. My brothers lived with me in one of them and we basically tore the place apart with our frat boy antics. I owned the penthouse obviously but Emmett and Jasper lived in the floors below.

 Jasper owned three clubs and some restaurants around the city that had basically become places of worship for young tourists and socialites. Emmett and my father were the real businessmen. According to anyone not in the know, Carlisle was a hedge fund manager.

 Yeah right.

 "So congregation, I urge you to do something good for the week. Be nice to someone, do a good deed." Father ended his sermon, "In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen."

 "Amen." The collective voice of over six hundred spoke.

 "The Lord be with you."

 "And also with you." We finally concluded.

 What a bunch of losers.

 I had never missed a Sunday of church but that was only because of Esme. I would love to sleep in or go work out during the hour of eight o'clock mass but she wouldn't hear of it. Whatever my mother wanted, she got. She was the sweetest woman on this planet, living in a word ruled by men who dominated chaos. She was also the only woman I ever loved and probably the only woman I would ever love.

 I didn't do love. That was for pussy whipped suckers who had nothing better to do. I didn't do relationships either. Never did, never will. The only one who had someone steady was Emmett with his fuck hot girlfriend of a couple years, Rosalie Hale.

 She used to work as Carlisle's secretary and everyone knew that she and Emmett liked each other but they beat around the bush for awhile. That was the difference between Emmett and me. I took what I wanted, no matter what. If I wanted Rosalie, then I would have had her... and I did. Multiple times.

 Of course that was before her and Emmett got together and I didn't think he knew about all of that so we were going to keep it under wraps. It was just sex anyway, just like with every other girl I had met.

 "So, what's on the agenda for today?" Jasper stretched from his seat.

 "I wish you boys would take a day off." Esme said and hooked her arm around my father's.

 "No time, Ma. We have things to do." Emmett cracked his knuckles. Rosalie flicked her long, blonde hair behind her shoulder and I saw some of the teenagers in the pews behind us sneak a peek. They immediately straightened out once Emmett shot them a glare.

 "Well, we have to put some flowers on your Grandfather's grave and then you're all free." She said, "Just make sure you're at the house for dinner."

 Esme tried to get to my hair but I stopped her, "Ma, really? I'm a twenty-five year old man."

 "I was just trying to help you out with your hair. I know how you hate it when it's out of place."

 "Sorry, I was rushing this morning." I said as I ran my hands through it, making sure that everything was perfect. The family began walking through the crowds that were leaving. We slowly strolled through the church, towards the exit.

 "Yeah, he was out with me last night." Jasper hit my shoulder and I cringed from the touch. I didn't like people having their hands on me.

 If the people in this church knew what Jasper and I were doing last night, the whole place would burn down. I crossed myself for good measure, just in case and then did it again because odd numbers were a no go in my book.

 "I don't know why you boys can't just sit at home once and a while. Read or take a nice walk." Esme said sweetly.

 "Really, with the way they act?" Rose laughed as we stepped into the sunlight of early September. The blistering Chicago heat was oppressive but nothing that would keep us indoors. We all put on our sunglasses and looked like we stepped out of a fucking movie.

 "Feds, three o'clock." Jasper pointed to a black town car that was waiting down the street from the church. There were two fat ass cops, sitting, waiting, trying to be stealthy.

 "When are they going to give up?" Carlisle shook his head and helped Esme down the stone steps of the church, "It's really getting pathetic."

 "Well, if you were a legitimate businessman, they wouldn't be there." Esme whispered.

 My mother knew the horrible things her family was capable of and what we did but she tried to stay out of it. She never liked talking about industry stuff and rarely gave any input on situations that weren't legal.

 "I still don't understand why they don't go home. I'm sure they have families to go to." Rose actually waved to them sarcastically. She could be a bitch when she wanted to be and we were all kind of scared of her.

 "Let's go before you invite them to dinner." Emmett pulled her down State Street where our cars were waiting in a discrete parking lot.

 "Uh...son, I need to speak with you." Carlisle clapped my shoulder, "Why don't we take a walk." He suggested like it was an option.

 "Sure." I replied, "Let me put my coat up." I unbuttoned the coat of my navy blue pin-striped suit and shrugged out of it.

 I left them standing, talking while I ran over to my baby.

 My cherry red Saleen S7 was my pride and joy, bought right after I graduated from Dartmouth. I would literally kill for this car. I unlocked the driver's side, butterfly door and put my coat behind it, folding it neatly like a delicate flower.

 I didn't like creases and I didn't feel like dealing with the jacket later, tackling it with an iron.

 I rolled up the sleeves to my white button down and made sure my hair was straight in the window before going back over to Carlisle who was standing alone.

 My mother was going with Emmett and Rose while Jasper was going to do God knows what with the rest of his day. I hoped they didn't forget that we had work to do later.

 "What's this all about?" I asked and stuffed my hands in my pockets.

 "Just keep walking." He said from beside me as we moved down State Street and over to Madison.

 The heat was sweltering but I didn't sweat. I never sweat. I had trained myself to keep that under control.

 There were a whole lot of people walking around us and even though they didn't' know my father and I, they felt to stay away. We gave off that kind of vibe.

 Don't mess with us.

 Carlisle and I had a weird relationship that was strained due to work but when we were relaxed, I got the old Carlisle that I grew up with. He was loving and warm but there was little to no place for that in the crime world. When he was in business mode, you knew it.

 He and I moved casually yet with a purpose. I didn't really know where we were going but at this point, I didn't question him. We walked to an ice cream vendor who was serving a group of kids.

 "Two vanilla." Carlisle pulled out his wallet. I cringed because I really didn't want to eat anything messy right now but if my father wanted me to shove ice cream up my ass, then I would have shoved ice cream up my ass. That's how everyone was with him.

 "That will be five-fifty, sir." The man said with a thick accent that I detected was Polish.

 "Wow, pretty steep for ice cream." Carlisle chuckled heartily.

 "I know but got to feed the family." The vendor said shyly, handing us our frozen treats.

 "Keep the change." My father paid with a five hundred dollar bill.

 We left while the ice cream man was staring, stunned at the money in his hand.

 "That was nice." I said as I took a long lick of my cone, trying to get the moisture that was about to dribble onto my hand.

 "I'll find out who he is, pay for his rent or something." My father replied.

 "What's with all this? Am I in trouble?" I asked, slightly nervous but masking it well.

 "Just keep eating. There's a big man, Emmett's size, following us on the other side of the street. Don't look." My father snapped as I turned my head, "He's dark skinned, short black hair. You'll get a look once we sit up here on the bench."

 I kept eating, per my father's command and didn't lift my head. The only thing that was taking my mind off of the man behind us was the glances of some pretty hot chicks who were eyeing me up and down a couple yards ahead.

 I kept licking my ice cream, making sure they saw that I could use my tongue and was glad that they couldn't see my eyes behind my sunglasses because I would probably have been arrested for sexual harassment without even touching them.

 "Justin, pay attention." My father brought my mind back, "Sit." He pointed to a bench in front of us, in a small park. There was a windy breeze that was flowing in the trees above and I enjoyed looking at the hustle of Chicago during this time of day.

 This was my city.

 We both sat down and I noticed precisely who Carlisle was mentioning before.

 "Jacob Black?" I asked, knowing exactly who he was, an arch enemy of sorts.

 "Keep eating. They can't read our lips." Carlisle said, "He's a smart whippersnapper that's been on the force for a couple of years. He's been tracking us for a while but of course..."

 "We're too good." I gloated.

 "Don't get a big head, Justin. Being conceited never did anything positive for anyone."

 "Sorry, sir." I shut my mouth, "Continue."

 "He's going to be keeping a close eye on us for the next couple of months."

 "Why? What's different now?" I already knew the answer to that. The truth was, I needed a challenge and Black provided that for me.

 I knew something must have happened for us to be getting a more constant police detail though.

 "Who did the Langer job? I told you to keep it quiet and only the husband." He got angry under his breath, "Then I find out that his wife was killed too and the evidence was everywhere. There was too much blood..."

 "Uh...I handled that."

 "Justin, get yourself together." Carlisle said sternly, "We've been very lucky in the past but things won't be so easy if you keep messing up. I don't have time for mistakes."

 "Sorry sir."

 "How long?" He asked simply and to anyone else, they would have been so confused by our conversation but I knew his meaning well.

 "One second." I replied and hung my head.

 "It takes one second to say 'I'm sorry'." He repeated like he had since I was a child, "It takes that amount of time to cock a gun. You could be dead by the time you utter the words." He said calmly.

 Since my childhood, he had always taught us that 'I'm sorry' was a phrase only to be used in the most dire of circumstances because I could be dead before I had the chance to say the words.

 "Don't apologize to me." He crossed his right leg over his left, looking the picture perfect definition of calm.

 "I wasn't thinking."

 "It's no problem. I have everything under control but I just wanted to make you aware of our new tag-along." My father finished his ice cream.

 "I know. Did you clean the mess up?"

 "Yes, someone took the fall for a robbery. Apparently, a painting was stolen or something like that. The case is closed and was sealed off. Black is trying to get it back opened as a murder but the brass won't hear it. They're too busy trying to raise their arrest numbers to spend time working out a murder." He stalled, "The point of the matter is, I expected more from you. I can't keep cleaning up the mess you boys leave behind. I don't have time."

 "I'll do better."

 We stayed silent for a long minute as the breeze picked up. Just by smelling the air, I could predict a storm coming off of the Lakes and it would probably be here by nightfall.

 I looked across the street and saw Black reading a magazine at a kiosk, plain as day. I couldn't help the crocked grin that was plastered on my face. Black and I had played cat and mouse for the past three years and he had yet to catch up to me.

 The Langer's were just a small piece of the evil things that went down in the Bieber clan. By now, it wasn't an issue for me to walk into a roomful and just start unloading led into anyone who crossed me.

 Martin was my target. He used to be my father's accountant or one of them at least and when I went over the books last month like I did every month, I found some discrepancies. There was about two million missing from an offshore account in Jamaica that my father kept as part of his drug running in the Caribbean. The money just vanished and that was something I wasn't putting up with.

 I questioned Langer, he had nothing to say, and I let him go. Coincidentally, a very nice villa in Greece that cost two million dollars, sprung up in his name. I went over to punish him. I didn't get played, the money wasn't even a serious issue but no one made a fool of me.

 His wife was just a casualty. She wasn't supposed to be home but since she was, she had to bear the burden of her husband's cross. I wasn't leaving any witnesses.

 The blood was my own little touch.

 It was a message. I knew that Black would be handling the case but wouldn't get anywhere with it... just like it always was with these things. I actually painted that shit over the room like I was Jackson fucking Pollock, flinging it over the walls, on the bed sheets, on the carpet. It was actually fun and I didn't usually do fun.

 I was just trying to liven up the dry, boring affair that Black and I were having. He was so thick and stupid. He thought he was some hot shot over there at the Department but if he was really someone, he would have caught onto us years ago. No one ever did and no one ever would.

 "He won't be a problem." I leaned back matter-of-factually.

 "No. We're too smart for him."

 I laughed, "I thought that being conceded was a negative trait."

 "For you. I've earned it." My father grinned at me, "Let's get going. Esme would kill me if we were late to the cemetery."

 After an hour of driving and placing flowers on the grave of a grandfather I never met, I was free until I had to be home for dinner.

 I decided to take a drive and let my Saleen stretch her legs.

 I took Highway 61, past the University of Chicago and then the yuppies of Northwestern as I blasted out of the city. The tall trees surrounded me on all sides as I took the road at 150 mph. I had a proclivity for fast cars, hot women and dangerous situations.

 That was who I was. Justin Bieber. No muss, no fuss.

 Frankly, I was a monster, a vampire, a killer and I loved it. I was a torturer and a murderer, wrapped in two thousand dollar suits on top of five thousand dollar shoes. I lived off of cocaine and hard liquor although I wasn't addicted to any of the shit that I pumped through my body. I had limits when it came to drugs and mostly stuck to coke that came through our dealings but that wasn't to say I wasn't up for trying new things. I got pussy whenever I wanted and I didn't even try to act like I sought any kind of relationship with someone.

 I had a few good qualities but they were mostly outshined by the bad.

 I was possessive, jealousy ran through my veins, hatred lived behind my eyes, I had the temper of a bull and little patience for slow movers or people who didn't do what I told them. I had to be in control at all times and didn't take orders from anyone besides my mother or father.

 I didn't have time to cultivate relationships or friendships because that was beneath me. Who cared if I didn't have friends? It was better to be feared than loved and that was the motto I lived by.

 I wasn't even paying attention as I passed a fucking minivan on the highway and felt my phone vibrate in my pocket.

 "Bieber." I answered.

 "Yo, yo bro!" Emmett replied, "I just dropped Ma and Rosie off at the house. When are we going to finish this thing? I don't have time after dinner."

 I made a completely illegal and badass turn on the road, into the other lane, "I'm heading back into the city now. I'll meet you at the warehouse in half an hour?"

 "Sure thing. I'll get Jazz."

 I ended the call without any sentimental conclusion and picked up speed as I headed back to Chicago.

 I popped the bottom floor board of the Saleen in the passenger's seat and dug through until I found my second baby.

 I pulled out the sterling silver, ivory handled, Desert Eagle that fit perfectly in my hands and had nearly molded itself to my body. This was my special gun, the one I used when I wanted to finish a job while showing off a little. It didn't have a silencer and wasn't a stylish assassin type gun although I used those as well, but my Desert Eagle was my go-to weapon. I had an identical one that was gold platted at home but I rarely used that. That one required a special occasion.

 I set the gun in my lap and thumped my fingers on the steering wheel as I headed to the city and weaved through the early morning traffic.

 I arrived at the south end of the city in no time. The wharf was huge and the place where all the big barges came into the city. There were warehouses and loading docks everywhere but the noise provided a great shield for the business that we were in. Carlisle basically owned everything down here anyway so we could use this place to our advantage.

 I kept up a constant speed as I pulled next to Emmett's Mercedes SL65 that he and Jasper were leaning against.

 I stepped out of the car and my Italian loafers made a soft noise in the puddle at my feet.

 "Shit." I muttered and tried to shake the dirty water off. I twisted my neck as the uneasiness of dirt seeped into my skin. I breathed deeply and didn't let the feeling overtake me.

 OCD is a bitch!

 "Can you slow down? My car is too precious to get damaged." Emmett ran his hand along the slick, silver paint.

 "Yeah, yeah." I huffed, "Let's get this over with. It's about to storm like a beast." I looked up to the sky where dark swirling clouds were rumbling above.

 "What are we doing here again?" Jasper muttered as we side-stepped puddles, going into the furthest warehouse on the left side near the edge of the water.

 Emmett pulled out his phone and scrolled through some information, "I think Dad wants us to question this dude about the dealings in Miami."

 "He heads everything down there?" I opened the metal door.

 "No, he's just a low level guy but he's shady as shit. Dad doesn't trust him. He thinks he's a cop or something."

 "And what are we supposed to do?" Jasper shrugged, "Let him stay undercover for all I care."

 "We can't do that." Emmett sighed, "He would know too much. We have to finish this."

 Somewhere in the back of my mind, the alarms were going off. 'You can't kill a cop, Justin!', but I pushed those thoughts out. I had done it before. Killing was like second nature to me. I already knew I was going to hell, no need to mention it again.

 I shoved the Desert Eagle down my belt in the back after checking my bullet supply. I was good to go.

 We silently walked into the warehouse that was practically empty except for a couple of crates pushed up against the far walls, some kind of plywood that was stacked high to the ceiling, a chair in the middle of the vacant space and a trembling man of about thirty sitting in it. There were no windows and only the front door. A soft light was on but didn't provide much to see with.

 "Let's get dirty." I muttered and regretted my words but I knew I would be alright. Killing was the only thing I didn't mind getting dirty with. I loved blood as long as it was pouring from someone else.

 We all approached the man casually, fanning out so that we looked incredibly scary.

 Emmett and Jasper took off their jackets, flinging them over a crate before rolling up their sleeves.

 I circled my prey like a vulture and took him in, assessing the situation.

 He was a man with some meat on his bones who looked like he could be a challenge if I was someone weaker. His head was bowed and his hands were tied behind the chair in a thick rope. I saw the red marks on his wrists, signaling to me that he had tried on more than one occasion to get out of them. He was breathing heavily but I knew that was from his position in the chair, which was very painful.

 He was shorter than I was, I could already see that even with him being seated and had nothing on but a pair of boxers. He was wet with sweat and water. I guess my father had already sent someone over to soften him up.

 "What's your name?" I said from behind him, coolly and calmly.

 "Markos." His accent was strong.

 "Where are you from?" My tone was sharp and deadly.

 "Croatia."

 Jasper, Emmett and I silently looked at each other, our words went through our minds without leaving our mouths.

 He's not a Fed. He's Eastern European mob shit!

 "Who do you work for?"

 "No one."

 It happened so fast, I wouldn't have known anything was going on if Markos hadn't let out a yelp of pain that echoed off of the empty walls.

 Emmett slammed a piece of plywood across Markos' thighs, causing a loud sound to ricochet around us. The wood splintered down the middle from force but didn't crack completely.

 "Damn, I wanted to see if I could break his femur." Emmett pouted childishly, "I guess we need a stronger piece of wood." He went off to the stack near the door and spent a couple of seconds appraising the selection.

 "I'll ask you again, who do you work for?" I circled until I was an arm's length in front of him, creating more dramatic effect.

 That was all this job was about, drama. I could kill him right now if I wanted. No harm done.

 "No one." Markos' teeth were gritted.

 I swiftly removed the Eagle from behind me and blew a hole the size of a grapefruit in his left knee. With precision, the bullet ripped through the bone, causing blood and muscle matter to spray my shirt but I didn't flinch.

 I retracted my arm, letting it fall gingerly at my side with the gun still in full view.

 He let out a string of curse words and I could smell the salt from his tears as they left his eyes.

 Fucking pussy.

 "Okay, okay." Marcos squirmed and I could see the tears falling from his face. His entire left leg would have to be amputated if he lived through this, "His name is Sergio. He's Russian and sent me to infiltrate."

 I blew another hole through his left shin in two seconds. His screams were enough to almost deafen me but they were masked by the loud blow horns and sea birds outside. There was no need for a silencer. No one would hear us.

 "You gave up too easily." I wiped some blood from the barrel, "If I was your mob boss, you would have already been dead for revealing that information. You didn't even put up a fight."

 "I've been locked in here for a week. I haven't eaten and someone comes in every hour to beat the hell out of me until I talk. I don't have any fight left in me!"

 "Pity." Jasper said under his breath.

 "There's no winning with you guys is there?" Markos sobbed pathetically. I just rolled my eyes.

Jasper untied Markos from his bindings at my request and he fell to the ground in a pool of blood that was seeping from his leg.

 "I want to know everything you took from us." Jasper sat in the chair with his arms crossed.

 "Nothing, I swear. I've only been in for a couple of months."

 "You're stupid and lazy. You got caught because you were stealing the shipments out of Miami. Where were you sending them?" Emmett asked coldly, all pretenses were gone from his voice. A business Emmett could be very scary.

 "Russia. Sergio wants to take you down. Everyone does." The accent was making it hard to understand him and along with the heavy panting, I knew we weren't going to get much more out of our good friend Markos.

 "How much did you take?" I asked, already knowing the answer.

 "Just a couple kilos of coke..." He didn't have time to finish his sentence before I put a bullet straight through his forehead. His neck jerked back violently from the force of the led that was ripping through his brain and came out the other end.

 Blood flew like a gusher from the large wound out of the back and was now everywhere but somehow, Emmett and Jasper were clean.

 Lucky bastards.

 "I have to change now before dinner." I tsked myself, not caring that a man was just obliterated by my own hand.

 "You're always the messy one. It's embarrassing." Jasper slapped his knee, "Look at me, pristine as can be." He held up his arms.

 I flung some blood that was on my gun across his shirt, causing it to stain a deep red.

 Emmett was rolling with laughter so I got him too, which shut him up.

 "Goddamn it, Justin.Rosie can't get blood out of cotton and this was her favorite one on me."

 "You are such a little bitch." I snickered.He hit me in the shoulder with a piece of wood, not hard enough to hurt but just enough to leave a mark.

 "I guess we've got to deal with this piece of shit." Jasper sighed and pointed to Markos.

 "We'll have the new guys dump him in the river." Emmett patted his stomach, "Right now, I'm starving."

He grabbed his jacket before bounding out of the warehouse. Jasper followed and I was the last one out.

 I stuffed my gun back in my belt and shut the heavy metal door with a clang.

This was my life. Take it or leave it.

[tortuga-aak]

Nicolas Maduro is cracking down on rivals and Venezuela's oil industry could take a big hit

Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters

Venezuela has arrested former senior officials in what it has called a crackdown on corruption.

But other seen a politically motivated campaign against rivals behind the arrests.

Efforts by President Nicolas Maduro to consolidate power and eliminate rivals may end up harming the country's oil industry and economy as a whole.

Authorities in Venezuela arrested two former senior officials on Thursday in what has been called a crackdown on corruption in the country's state-run oil industry.

Many, though, see it as an effort by President Nicolas Maduro to shore up his political power base.

Venezuela's former oil minister, Eulogio del Pino, and Nestor Martinez, the former president of state oil company PDVSA, were arrested just four days after Maduro removed them from office during a reshuffle of his cabinet.

Both have been accused of embezzling state funds, conspiracy, and money laundering. Martinez was also accused of signing a contract to refinance the debt of PDVSA subsidiary Citgo, offering part ownership of the Houston-based company as collateral, without government approval.

Del Pino was accused of altering production data from a joint Russian-Venezuela oil venture in 2007, when he was chief of PDVSA's western operations, according to attorney general Tarek William Saab, who said the alleged scam cost the country $500 million in revenue between 2015 and 2017.

In a video made before his arrest and released afterward, Del Pino said he was a "victim" of an "unjustified attack."

Thomson Reuters

Their arrests, along with 15 other PDVSA managers and officials, bring the total arrested in relation to oil-industry corruption to 65.

"This shouldn't be seen as an isolated act," said Saab, who was appointed in August by Venezuela's constituent assembly, an legislative body viewed by many as illegitimate. "What we're doing will boost the people's morale."

'Fingers in the pie'

Corruption in Venezuela's oil industry — which taps the world's largest oil reserves — has been pervasive for some time, and there is suggestion some of it may have been ordered by the government. Punishment for the wrongdoing has been scant.

That impunity has raised public ire as many in the country struggle to afford food and other basics, but Maduro's crackdown has been seen as politically motivated — an effort to chill dissent within his own party and to find a scapegoat for Venezuela's myriad economic and political problems. Rhetoric about cracking down on corruption in state industries appears to be a continuation of Maduro's claims of an "economic war" being waged on Venezuela.

"My impression of the investigation is that it's part of a two-pronged strategy," said Geoff Ramsey, the assistant director for Venezuela at the Washington Office on Latin America.

"The government is making a show of cracking down on corruption that it hopes will give it a much-needed boost in popularity domestically, or at least play well with the base," Ramsey told Business Insider. "But it's also about ensuring that the government is retaining control over the people who have fingers in the pie."

Thomson Reuters

One of the most high-profile targets has been Rafael Ramirez, who Maduro reportedly ordered removed from his post as Venezuela's UN representative this week. Ramirez, who has also been oil minister and PDVSA chief, arrived at the UN in 2014 after fellow socialists revolted against his attempts at economic reform.

Ramirez is seen by some as a potential rival for Maduro in the upcoming presidential election. Del Pino and Martinez, who were both arrested Thursday, are proteges of Ramirez.

Reuters reported on Wednesday that Caracas had ordered Ramirez to return to Venezuela "in coming days," though a Ramirez aide told Bloomberg on Thursday that he was still at his post in New York.

Thomson Reuters

Many of the executives arrested are thought to be allies of Ramirez, who was close to late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Ramirez has spoken out against Maduro on several occasions, writing articles criticizing the management of PDVSA for letting oil production fall and taking the government to task for failing to improve the economy.

With the political opposition in disarray, the crackdown on government officials linked to Ramirez appears to be an effort by Maduro to isolate rivals within his own Socialist Party, as it gears up for presidential elections scheduled for next year.

"By arresting these figures, Maduro is sending a message to his patronage network: that their access to kickbacks and perks is in his hands, and contingent on loyalty," Ramsey told Business Insider.

"As he consolidates the military's hold on access to nearly every form of revenue, he'll need to make sure they stay in line. It's clearly not a true anti-corruption purge, otherwise we would see much more consistency in arrests."

'Those who are left should be worried'

Thomson Reuters

While swearing in Maj. Gen. Manuel Quevado as the new PDVSA chief and oil minister on Sunday, Maduro made pointed comments that many interpreted as a broadside against Ramirez.

"We've witnessed the rise of mafias that controlled important areas of our oil industry," he said. "They didn't just steal from the country ... they believed themselves to be owners of the oil industry."

Quevedo, who has no experience in the oil industry, railed against "saboteurs" and a "corrupt bureaucracy" during his inauguration. "We're going to clean up public finances so that those thieves in PDVSA will finally leave," he said, offering scant details on how he would address the company's debt and production problems. "The government's actions have captured many people who had infiltrated the industry. Those who are left should be worried."

Quevado is just one military official who holds a government post. Current or retired generals hold 11 of Venezuela's 23 state governorships and 11 of its 30 government ministries. Reuters reported this week that more military officers are expected to be receive senior management posts.

Thomson Reuters

While these maneuvers may be politically expedient for Maduro in the near term, the long-term prospects for the government and PDVSA are dour.

Oil-industry sources told Reuters that Quevedo's appointment could speed the exit of white-collar talent from PDSVA, exacerbating operational and management issues amid a 30-year low in oil production. (The massive migration of trained professionals out of Venezuela has sucked talent out of the country's workforce.)

Oil sales account for about 95% of Venezuela's export revenue — hard currency that the government uses to buy imports of food and medicine, among other things. The country's oil woes have only exacerbated rampant shortages of those products.

"This is not a move you make to calm the international markets that Pdvsa will need to reverse the collapse," Francisco Monaldi, a Venezuelan energy expert at Rice University, told The New York Times of Quevado's appointment. Monaldi also described the charges against Del Pino and Martinez as "largely a political vendetta."

"It's hard to see how PDVSA can keep limping along when it is being run by military figures with no experience in the industry," Ramsey told Business Insider.

"It's a conundrum for Maduro: He needs to give the military the keys to PDVSA to maintain their loyalty, but at the same time their risk of running it into the ground goes up," Ramsey added. "In the short term, it appears to be working. But we'll see whether this gamble plays out in the long term."

NOW WATCH: RBC commodity chief: The oil market has a lot riding on Venezuela

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[there-willbeblood]

Chapter 1: Prologue

Officer Derek Morgan stood in the doorway and contemplated the huge pool of thick blood on the floor where Martin Langer was found. He turned and could see a similar pool where Tiffany Langer had lain. He pondered the extensive blood loss. It was a lot more than he was used to finding at shootings.

Derek Morgan was twenty-seven, one of the youngest officers on the squad and had completed the Academy in little to no time due to his extensive determination and superior training. He was tall, dark skinned, muscular, menacing, skilled; the perfect candidate. His ranking had moved up quickly in a short amount of time, making him a favorite and a fully fledged detective at an early age.

Over the past six years in the Chicago Police Department, he had been a part of shootouts, bank robberies, drug busts and half a dozen high powered cases that had gained him glowing praise among the brass sitting in City Hall. He wasn't afraid of a fight and had honed his skills to the point of near perfection.

He could find anyone, defeat anyone and crack any case. It was child's play for him and he would surely be in the head position before he was forty. The top people were already talking about it.

The clicking of a crime scene camera caused him to focus harder on the case at hand. It was the Labor Day weekend; his girlfriend Leah and he had planned a nice trip out to Lake Michigan ... if he got off on time.

The blood was splattered on the furniture, on the carpet, on the white bed sheets, everywhere. The two pools had coagulated into a black and rusty-brown mass, which covered so much of the floor that the ambulance personnel had to walk through it, leaving tracks of footprints behind as they went around the house gathering evidence.

Morgan was wearing tennis shoes with pale blue booties over them. He let out a deep breath and the real crime scene investigation began.

There were only three people in the room, one was alive and two were dead.

The Langer's faces were blown off, making them unrecognizable and the whole room was a grave site, filled with a chilling air. Two technicians came into the bedroom, snapping photos and explaining scientific evidence like 'splatter distribution areas' and 'droplet velocity' but Morgan wasn't listening.

The facts would be compiled in a detailed report on where the killer had stood in relation to the victims, at what distance the shots were fired from, in which order the shots were fired, fingerprints that were left, anything that would help.

Morgan knelt near the thick pool of dark brown liquid that was dripping from the bed sheets onto the floor.

"The wife, what do we know about her?" Morgan asked one of his deputies, Seth Clearwater, who was standing in the hallway.

"Nothing, she's clean. Not even a parking ticket." Clearwater replied.

"Huh." Morgan muttered. From personal experience, he knew that no one was clean, "What about the husband?"

"He's a very interesting character. French, studied abroad before he came here for business school. Forty-five, lots of money and two houses in the area. No kids..." Clearwater rattled off the important things.

"Any shady dealings?"

"Nothing much, but the surname Rogers appears in several of the documents about him. I have a team on them now."

"The Rogers'..." Morgan thought out loud.

"Yeah, you know them. Supposedly they're in organized crime, you know, mafia stuff, but nobody can ever pin things on them. It's like they're ghosts. Big Italian family that's so generous on the outside but all hell on the inside. They actually gave half a million in donations last year to the police department."

Of course Morgan knew the Rogers'.

They had attachments to over forty crime cases that were currently open but like Clearwater said, nothing could ever be held down in regards to evidence.

"Who heads the family up?" Morgan asked, just for clarification.

"Joseph Rogers and he has three sons; Thor, James and Steve."

"A wife?"

"Sarah, sir."

"We need to get in contact with the organized crime division. I want to know everything there is to know about them. I want to be in the know on this."

"But... why?"

"I think Martin Langer was their under-the-table accountant. That's what the signs point to at least and I haven't done any kind of serious investigating but I would bet that they had something to do with this."

Morgan stood up and began walking around the room, taking in the evidence around him. This was why he was the best. He could take the situation and turn it to find each hidden clue that had eluded previous detectives.

According to the evidence, Martin Langer and his wife Tiffany had been sharing a nice night at home. The white wine filled glasses were on the bedside table, the candles were flickering creating eerie shadows on the walls, and there was a thick smell of perfume in the air. The makings of a nice romantic night were everywhere. Unfortunately, the Langers never saw their night.

Anywhere from 8:00 p.m., when the neighbors heard the Langer's door close to midnight, the current time, someone had picked the outside lock, crept into the North Side Chicago apartment, and shot them. Point blank. No hesitation. No shaking hand. This was professional.

"I think we're looking in the wrong direction." Morgan rubbed the back of his neck, "We thought it was a burglary?"

"Yeah, a painting is gone from the hallway that was supposedly worth millions."

"And no one saw anything?"

"Nope."

Morgan knew he would re-canvas the area later and interview everyone again. No doubt about it.

"I don't like this." Clearwater walked behind Morgan, following his steps.

"There were only two bullet casings?"

"Well... there were no bullet casings found but only two shots that the ballistics staff have evidence for."

That made Morgan slightly mad. Was he working with amateurs? He took a deep breath to calm himself, "Two bullets, two bodies. Both dead on the first shot. This wasn't a robbery."

"But... the painting?" Clearwater pointed towards the hallway.

"It was a cover up. The perp could have given a fuck about the painting. This was a murder for a reason."

"This whole thing's a mess. Look at all this blood."

That did baffle Morgan. A trained assassin would have never left so much evidence around, meaning that this amount of blood was a message. It was taunting, saying 'Come and get me'.

This was Rogers work and Morgan vowed, this time, they weren't going to get away with it.

The blood on the walls, on the floor, on the carpet, on the mirror, it was all a sign that pointed right to the source but the only problem was, the Rogers' were smart.

Clearwater left the room on his phone and Morgan circled the crime scene one last time before heading to the door.

"There's a lot of blood on your hands, Rogers." He sighed, "I'm coming for you all."

He closed the door on the worst shooting scene he had seen in his years on the force and straightened out his tie before walking back down the hall.