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I tried to rub my eyes, hoping to clear my vision, but the tightness around my wrists served as a stark reminder of my predicament. I blinked a couple of times against the harsh lights — or harsh to my unaccustomed eyes, at least — and the hazy image slowly began to come into focus.
Three men, around my age —much younger than I had expected them to be— were staring down at me.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out who they were.
“I’ve heard of you,” I rasped, my throat feeling scratchy and painful, as if I had previously swallowed down broken glass. “You have… quite the reputation.”
And I wasn’t saying it lightly.
If you were aware of the Don, then you’d most certainly know about them as well.
The triad.
The Don’s strongest cards in the deck.
The Ace, the King, and the Jack.
The attack dog, the enforcer, and the executioner.
No one knew their real names; their titles alone were sufficient enough of an identification. They sat on the highest rung of the hierarchy ladder. The top-ranking soldiers in the Don’s army.
The three of them were shrouded under a veil of mystery; nobody knew who they were or where they came from. One day, they had just suddenly appeared next to the Don and started conducting business, killing, and massacring the Don’s enemies— all of it under his name.
Some people believed that they were the Don’s bastard sons, being groomed and prepared to take over the throne after his death. Others thought that they were purchased from the black market as children in order to train them into becoming the ideal soldiers.
While the rumors ranged from somewhat believable to utterly ridiculous, there was one thing everyone could agree on —May God help you if were unfortunate enough to cross their path.
And now, all three of them standing in front of me.
Which one of these faces was going to be the last one I saw before I died?I wondered.
“You’ve made quite a stir.” The one crouching in front of me grinned, his white teeth glinting dangerously like a wolf’s.
“You almost managed to kill the Don. I’m impressed.” The other one nonchalantly continued with a mocking tilt to his mouth. “Well, I would be — if he wasn’t still alive, that is.”
I sucked in a sharp breath.
I tried to recall everything that had happened before I was so crudely woken up, but there were small gaps in my memory. It seemed that despite my fervent hopes that amidst all the chaos I’d somehow managed to get to the Don, luck was not on my side.
“But don’t worry. That just means that we’re going to have a lot of fun together now,” the last one delightedly declared, and I didn’t know if I only imagined the hint of finality in his voice or not.
Their blurry faces began to merge together once again —or maybe they were never separate, to begin with— and became one singular being. It was made of the bloodied grins they all wore, all identical in their meaning and the promise of what was going to lie ahead.
I shut my eyes and listened to the clock as it continued to tick away in the background.
* * *
Time ran past me as I drifted in and out of consciousness. It could have been only a few minutes that had passed since the last time I was awake, or maybe a couple of hours. There was no way I could tell. I was unsure if the three men had stayed by my side the entire time or if they left at some point.
All of my senses seemed to have merged into one another and created a disoriented whirl — the world around me becoming a blur of vague shapes and indistinct sounds — as I struggled to grasp onto anything concrete.
The prick of a needle jerked me awake —no, I was already awake; I was just floating— and I jolted in my bonds.
“What was that?” I wanted to ask, but it came out all intelligible, my tongue feeling heavy in my mouth. Someone still seemed to understand me, though.
“Nothing that you have to concern yourself with.”
The voice was a whisper in my ear and yet it resounded like an echo in a faraway distance. My half-lidded eyes struggled to focus on the blurry form that had suddenly materialized in front of me.
