‘Out? Out?!’ Riggs roared, spit flying from his mouth. ‘You know how far we have come, Sean. We were out on the fucking street, watching these white motherfuckers get rich off of us selling drugs for them. They sat in leather seats, getting fat and paid while we were out there, dodging bullets and running from the fucking pigs. Then, after I got out, I told you we were gonna get something more for ourselves. We were gonna get a seat at the adult’s table. Look at us, Sean. We ain’t fighting for scraps from the table anymore. We are the motherfucking table. And this shit, is not something you can just walk away from.’
One of the barely dressed women handed a towel to Wiseman, who pressed it against his bloodied face as he slowly got to his feet.
‘And what if Sam Pope turns up here, huh?’ Wiseman yelled, his eyes watering from the pain. ‘What then? You gonna kill him?’
‘Kill him? Shit, I’m gonna shake his damn hand, bruv.’ Riggs beamed another grin. ‘He cleared the path to the throne.’
‘He didn’t clear a path. He cut down everything in his way,’ Wiseman said, shaking his head in anger. ‘He’ll do the same thing here.’
‘Then maybe it is best you leave. Seen as how you acting like a little bitch.’
A few sniggers came from the thugs sat on the sofa, both of them glaring at Wiseman as he shot them an angered glance. Suddenly, Sam Pope’s threat from the night before wasn’t so bad. Sure, he had been terrified and had a bullet blasted through his hand. But now, as he looked around at the lack of professionalism and care, he realised that if it wasn’t Sam Pope, it was going to be someone else. It was time to get out. Taking a deep breath, Wiseman forced himself to look at Riggs.
‘Fine, I’ll go.’
He turned, heading towards the door, when the largest member of the crew, imaginatively named ‘Tiny’, stepped in front of the door, his massive arms folded across his barrel chest like two pythons coiling each other.
Wiseman swallowed hard, before turning back to Riggs, who had a look of regret on his face. He was also holding a gold-plated Glock in his hand.
‘Sean, you motherfucker. Why you put me in this position, man?’
‘Look, El, you don’t have to do this…’ Wiseman began to beg, holding up his damaged hand. ‘Please, let me just go and I’ll never say anything to anyone. I swear,’
‘I can’t let that happen. You know too much about our set up, about our plans for expansion. In here, I can protect you. Out there, they gonna eat you alive. Sam Pope got you talking like that.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘And I’ll handle that when he makes himself known. But I don’t want any more wolves coming to the door, ya feel me?’
‘Then let me stay,’ Wiseman offered, his body shaking with fear. ‘I’ll stay and we can take this whole city like you wanted.’
Riggs gritted his teeth and shook his head, tossing a troubling thought around in his mind. The music had been turned off and now all eyes were on the two men and the mounting tension. Riggs had grown up with Wiseman, the two of them had been neighbours on the eighth floor of the same building in Neasden. The estate was riddled with gangs and before their tenth birthdays, they were already acting as look outs for some of the bigger boys. They eventually dropped out of school together at the age of thirteen, running their own corner and making more money than their parents ever had. Wiseman had never met his dad, but he knew that Riggs’s was a crack addict and violent and Riggs turned up to the corner on more than one occasion in a broken state. On Riggs’s sixteenth birthday, his father died from an overdose.
Wiseman knew that Riggs had done it and his friend had never denied it. But they trusted each other, with Riggs even removing the eye of a man who had attacked Wiseman with a baseball bat. That had gotten him seven years in Pentonville and when he was released, Wiseman was off the streets and working his way through an Open University course in business management.
Now, years later, the two of them were stood a few metres apart, with Riggs tossing up the idea of their loyalty to one another, to his place on throne ever since The Gent had been left bullet riddled by Sam Pope.
Their friendship.
Or his power.
With a deep sigh, Riggs lifted the pistol, the gun suddenly feeling very heavy in his hand, and he aimed it squarely at Wiseman, whose tear-stained face lost all its colour.
The same way everyone’s does when they realise they’re about to die.
A gunshot rang out.
Suddenly, the window collapsed into a million shards and a bullet ripped through the room, ripping through Tiny’s kneecap, shattering it instantly and splattering the entire door with blood. The large guard went down, screaming in agony as he held his wrecked leg, rolling side to side in an ever-increasing pool of blood. The cries for help were drowned out by the sheer panic of the rest of the room, with the women all screaming and racing for the other door, while the men all reached for their guns, all of them pointing them towards the shattered window and into the downpour of the night sky. The wind whipped through the opening, flicking rain droplets across one of the tables.
Riggs had dropped to the wooden floor, tipping over one of the tables and covering the floorboards in a plethora of drugs and money. Leaning against the wood, he held his pistol in his hand, yelling at his men to stay cool and to get down. As they obliged, he noticed Wiseman tending to Tiny, a sharp
