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What if I went through all of this, showed myself as an essential witness, lied in court, all for the jury to realize I was just a big fraud?
Then Nathan White doesn’t go to prison.
He walks out of this courtroom as a free man.
And I’m a dead woman.
“Please, pass me the form.” Judge Falton’s deep voice startles me as the foreperson gives him the form with the verdict.
Why is it so cold in here? I’ve got a headache from forcing myself to stare ahead of me. I’m scared Nate’s ocean eyes have the power to kill me on the spot if I even glance at them.
The judge takes forever to read the verdict. I just want to fucking know if I’m going to die or not. Is that so hard to ask?
There’s always been a war on the North Shore of Silver Falls. We’re a desolate town, abandoned by anyone who ever tried to make it a decent place. All that’s left there are abandoned developments, old streets that haven’t been redone in decades, broken houses we can’t afford to fix, a high school that only spits out delinquents.
And two gangs fighting for power.
Every few years, the balance tips. If my gang, the Kings, aren’t ruling, then it’s because the North Shore Crew—NSC—has stolen the town from us.
There are ways for us small gangs to gain more power. We work for bigger criminal organizations, sell their drugs, their arms. We kill people for them so it’s not linked back to them. In the case of my father, he also steals women off the streets if needed.
Nathan White is part of those bigger organizations. Sharks who come to our small, desperate town and make offers we can’t refuse. Nate works for the Cosa Nostra, the Bianco family, to be exact. Just under a year ago, he came to the North Shore and offered my father to work for him. In exchange, he would give the Kings protection from the law and from our enemies, NSC.
But my dad is a stupid fucking man. His pride doomed us all when he refused the offer. And Nate is cunning. He did the one thing that would make my father bite his nails. He took that exact same offer to NSC. Before we could blink, the town was theirs, and our crew, the people who relied on us, lost everything.
I did my best to fix the shit situation my dad put us in, but my best wasn’t enough. Nathan White is not a forgiving man. In fact, he is a complete psychopath. There was no forgiving my family for my father’s refusal.
Thankfully, the man is also a megalomaniac, and when Nate got greedy—and got rid of his boss, Mateo Bianco, to take his place—I had already made a deal of my own with the Cosa Nostra’s worst enemies.
The Bratva Wolves.
They were happy to offer me the exact same deal Nate had.
They just needed me to do one tiny little thing in exchange.
Get rid of him. They wanted the guy who kept trying to steal their territories.
It was part of our deal. And it took me a few months to figure out how.
Then Vladimir Volkov, the head of the Bratva Wolves, tried to kill Nate, and got himself killed instead. The news of Volkov dying spread fast, and I already had my contact in the Wolves. He knew Nate didn’t kill him, but that he was there that night. He wasn’t killed by Nate, unlike what I testified in a court of law yesterday, but the man was involved, and the chance is too big to pass up.
The Wolves want Nate out. Death, prison, it doesn’t matter. They’ve already started helping us take over the town. It’s my turn to hold my end of the deal.
All I have to do is get rid of him, and God knows I could never kill him.
I struggle to breathe when the judge finally speaks. My heart is ringing in my ears, my life flashing before my eyes.
Am I about to die, or strike the deal of my fucking life?
“In the case of the State of Maryland vs. Nathan White, charges for murder, possession of a weapon during a violent crime, and illegal possession of a firearm, the jury found the defendant”—I think my heart is going to explode—“guilty on all charges.”
I let out a sigh so loud, the people sitting in front of me turn around, a matching sympathetic look on their faces. They probably think I’m glad a murderer is being put away for life.
Nate is innocent of the crime he’s being accused of, but he is a murderer. He should be sentenced today on many other accounts. Arms trafficking, racketeering, drug trafficking, extortion, obstruction of justice, conspiracy to commit crimes, and everything else he used to do as part of the Cosa Nostra.
He might not have killed Vladimir Volkov, but his sister did. And I’m sure even a psycho like him would rather take the fall than snitch on his own blood. He’s stuck. Because I said I was there. I said he did it, and he won’t let his sister go to prison.
And that’s all that matters. He’s going away for life.
