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DAMON
I’m being driventhrough New York City when I get the text message I’ve been waiting for all day.
It’s Jim.
The package has been dropped off. All safe and secure.
The packagehe is referring to is Ava Matson. She’s home. She’s safe and secure.
A sigh of relief wells up from deep within me, an unexpected and unfamiliar sensation. Receiving this message has brought about emotions I hadn’t anticipated.
I shake my head at my reaction to the message.
What the fuck is going on between you and this girl, Damon?
I look out of the window of my limousine, expecting to see the skyscrapers of downtown Manhattan, but instead, we are further from the bright lights and crowds than I would've thought: the outskirt suburbs of New York City, unaccustomed to me. I’m only out this far from Manhattan for a business meeting, otherwise I would be back in the main drag of the city or, better yet, at home in Crystal River.
We stop at a red light. At the corner of the street opposite, I spot a group of young men, all in their early twenties, standing around.Loitering. I would never ordinarily pay much attention to a sight like this, but what catches my eye is a child who approaches the group.
I see it all so clearly. One of the guys starts talking to the little boy, as if he’s familiar to him. He puts something in the boy’s hand. A bag of something.
I don’t need to be Sherlock fucking Holmes to deduce what’s happening here.
A street gang using a kid as a drug mule.
For fuck’s sake.
My driver has noticed it as well, but his eyes are firmly on the traffic lights. He’s turning his focus away from the horrific sights in front of him - making himself willfully blind to this shit out of fear or some other fucked reason.
But I am a man who doesn’t let something like this slide.
I am a man who doesn’t operate out of fear.
“Pull over,” I growl from the back seat.
The driver hesitates. “They’re just... petty criminals. Don’t waste your time on guys like them.”
Fuck this. This man is being paid to drive me. Not to give me advice.
“They’re using children,” I say slowly. “I won’t put up with that. Not inmycity. Pull the fuck over.”
The driver nods apprehensively but pulls over alongsidethe sidewalk anyway. He wouldn’t dare disobey an order from me.
Car parked, I straighten my tie and get out of the limousine.
And I approach the street corner.
I know I must look very strange; a man in an expensive black suit striding toward these low-level street thugs with the confidence of someone looking for trouble.
But Iamlooking for trouble.
And I wonder if they will bite.
One of the young men in the group notices me when I’m only a few yards away.
“Who the hell are you?” he asks.
His voice cuts across the street. Uneducated and cruel. A man with no depth to him. No value to society at all.
