KING(4)

The idea of growing up and being my own man, the kind of man people didn’t mess with, the kind of man who didn’t take shit from anyone, became more and more appealing as it rolled around in my brain and latched on, taking up residence where I was missing other things the guidance counselors said I was lacking, like a ‘firm sense of right and wrong’. But they were the ones who were wrong. It’s not that I didn’t know the difference.

It’s that I just didn’t care.

Because that’s what happens when you’ve never had anything to care about.

If I was going to take this kid seriously, I needed to know that he wasn’t going to bitch out on me if it all went south. I needed to know he was as serious about the plan as I was getting, so I had to ask, “What really happens if someone gets in our way? In the way of our business? In the way of our plan?”

Preppy held the end of a marker to the corner of his mouth where blood had begun to dry and crust over. For a moment, he stared over my head, deep in thought. Then, he shrugged and locked his eyes onto mine.

“We kill them.”





Chapter One




King


On the day I was released from prison I found myself tattooing a * on a *. The animal onto the female part.

A cat on a cunt.

Fucking ridiculous.

The walls of my makeshift tattoo shop pulsed with the heavy beat of the music coming from my homecoming party raging on the floor below. It shook the door as if someone were rhythmically trying to beat it down. Spray paint and posters covered the walls from floor to ceiling, casting a layer of false light over everything within.

The little dark haired bitch I worked on was moaning like she was getting off. I’m sure she was rollin’ because there was no way a tattoo directly above her clit could be anything other than f*cking painful.

Back in the day, I could zone out for hours while tattooing, finding that little corner of my life that didn’t involve all the bullshit I had to deal with on a daily basis.

In the past when I’d been locked up, albeit for much shorter periods of time, the first thing on my mind was * and a party. But this time the first thing I did when I walked through the door was pick up my tattoo gun, but it wasn’t the same. I couldn’t reach that place of temporary reprieve no matter how hard I tried. It didn’t help that the tattoos people requested were getting dumber and f*cking dumber.

Football team logos, quotes from books you know they’ve never read, and wannabe gangsters wanting tear drops on their faces. In prison, the teardrop tattoo represented taking a life. Some of the little bitches who wanted them looked like they couldn’t step on a roach without cowering in the corner and crying for their mamas.

But since the majority of time my clients paid in favors and consisted mostly of bikers, strippers, and the occasional rich kid who found himself on the wrong side of the causeway, I should’ve lowered the bar on my expectations.

But then again it was good to be home. Actually, it was good to be anywhere that didn’t smell like vomit and wasted lives.

My own life had been moving forward at nothing short of full f*cking speed ahead ever since the day I’d met Preppy. I’d loved living outside the law. I fed off the fear in the eyes of those who crossed me. The only thing I’d ever regretted was getting caught.

When I wasn’t locked up, I’d spent almost every single day of the twenty-seven years I’d been on the earth in Logan’s Beach, a little shit town on the gulf coast of Florida. A place where the residents on one side of the causeway lived solely to cater to the rich who lived on the other side, in high-rise beachfront condos and mansions. Trailer parks and run down houses less than a mile from the kind of wealth it takes more than one generation to accumulate.

On my eighteenth birthday, I bought a run-down stilt home hidden behind a wall of thick trees, on three acres of land that practically sat under the bridge. In cash. And along with my best friend Preppy, we moved on up to the rich side of town like the white trash version of the motherf*cking Jeffersons.

True to our words, we became our own men and answered to no one. We did what we wanted. I turned my drawing into tattooing.

Preppy got bitches.

I f*cked. I fought. I partied. I got wasted. I stole. I f*cked. I tattooed. I sold dope. I sold guns. I stole. I f*cked. I made f*cking money.

And I f*cked.

There wasn’t a party I didn’t like or that didn’t like me. There wasn’t a chick who didn’t give me the go-ahead move, lifting her hips so I could slide off her panties. I got that shit every single f*cking time.