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Chapter 19

Author: Joe Michael
last update Last Updated: 2025-08-13 01:20:17

The rain came down in heavy sheets that night, hammering the tin roof of Boss’s Spot until the sound drowned out the clatter of tools in the shop below. The wet asphalt and motor oil drifted up the stairwell, and Rico stood at the top, staring out the half-open window.

The city was blurred by the rain, all its corners softened. But even through the haze, he could see the streets he used to run, the alleys where he’d learned to disappear before anyone could catch him. The place he had sworn to never look back on — now pulling at him like an open wound.

He lit a cigarette, the smoke curling lazy, the way his memories never did. They came fast, without warning.

It wasn’t the first boss he’d worked under. And it wasn’t the first time he’d been told that loyalty was the only currency that mattered.

Six years ago…

He was twelve when Kross found him — a man with golden teeth, long fingers, and a laugh that could slice open a room. Kross didn’t run a shop; he ran a crew of boys who knew how t
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  • The Night Boss   Chapter 51

    Salvatore Marquez sat in his black Maserati, a cigar burning between his fingers, the smoke curling like ghosts in the confined space. His driver, Marco, glanced at him through the rearview mirror, hesitant to disturb the silence that weighed like a slab of marble. The car idled outside a decrepit warehouse on the south edge of the city, where his men were gathering with the usual urgency of dogs waiting for their master’s scraps.Rico’s absence gnawed at him. Days had passed, and still no sign. He had expected the boy to surface somewhere, at least a whisper on the streets, a rumor in the bars, a shadow on the corners. But nothing. Not a single breadcrumb. And that silence worried him more than an open confrontation.“Boss,” Marco finally muttered, “the men are inside. They’re waiting for you.”Salvatore crushed the cigar against the ashtray, his jaw tightening. “Good. Let’s not keep them waiting. Time is slipping through our fingers, and with every second we lose, someone else gain

  • The Night Boss   Chapter 50

    Kross’s MemoryThe night was carrying the weight of a thousand unanswered questions, but Kross’s mind wasn’t in the present. It was far behind, replaying that first time he laid eyes on Rico—the scrappy boy with anger in his jaw and fire in his eyes.He had just buried his mother, the street swallowed him after that, spit him out on corners where desperation stank, where survival meant teeth bared at the world. That’s where Kross noticed him: small but smart, like a blade hidden in a child’s palm.Rico had the kind of walk that told people to move, even when his stomach groaned from emptiness. He looked like every other stray the city produced, but there was something more, something Kross had learned to see in the hard ones—clarity. The boy was straight in his decisions, even when those decisions were rough. If he said he’d go, he went. If he said he wouldn’t, nothing would move him.Kross remembered approaching him.“You got anywhere to be?” he had asked.Rico had spat to the side,

  • The Night Boss   Chapter 49

    The city still humming with restless murmurs that would not let The Boss sleep. He sat in his office above the Shop, the blinds half-drawn, smoke from his cigar coiling towards the ceiling. The chair beneath him creaked with his rocking, but his mind was nowhere in this room. It kept circling back, like a moth to a flame, to the boy whose name had become a wound.Rico.Three Bosses now spoke his name, each for their own reasons. But for The Boss, it wasn’t strategy, or youth, or symbolism. It was something much messier, much more dangerous. Something that clawed deeper than loyalty, deeper than respect.He pressed his palm against the desk, remembering.Flashbacks:That first day.The door of the Shop had swung open on a hot afternoon. The heat outside was unbearable, the kind that made tempers short and patience nonexistent. The Boss had been at the counter, not because he needed to be, but because he liked to watch the world past his Shopfront. People came and went, debts exchanged,

  • The Night Boss   Chapter 48

    Rico crouched in the narrow crawlspace of an abandoned storage facility, his back pressed against the cold concrete wall. The air was thick with dust, heavy with the stench of mold and rusting iron. He had been hiding for days, surviving on scraps and food and water he has stole from Marquez's warehouse almost finished. His lips were cracked, his hands trembling with weakness, but his mind—his mind was sharper than ever. Fear had a way of carving edges into thoughts, and paranoia sharpened them into blades.The news had reached him in whispers, through the voices of men who came to dump things in the area and through rumors carried in the city’s underbelly. He was no longer running from one man, but he was running from three.The Boss.Kross.Salvatore Marquez.Three names, three powers. Three storms colliding over one boy.He bit the inside of his cheek, tasting blood, forcing himself to stay awake. The memory of the voices he had overheard only days ago burned fresh in his mind.> “

  • The Night Boss   Chapter 47

    The shop was no longer the fortress it used to be. For years, The Boss’s Shop had been the heart of stability in the underground: a place where negotiations were struck, debts were collected, and punishments handed out cleanly. But now, with Rico gone and The Boss consumed by his obsession with finding him, the structure had started to creak like an old ship bracing against a storm.It was in this weakened state that the Ravers—an ambitious and reckless faction from the northern blocks—sensed their chance.The Ravers had always been trouble. Their leader, Victor “Vic” Navarro, was notorious for his unrelenting hunger for expansion. Where most gangs valued balance and survival, Vic wanted chaos. He thrived in it. He used the Ravers’ youth and ruthlessness to destabilize older, more established organizations. His philosophy was simple: strike when your enemy is distracted, then feast on the ruins.And right now, The Boss was more distracted than he had ever been.Inside the shop, morale

  • The Night Boss   Chapter 46

    The Boss’s shop was no longer the same.Once, it had been the beating heart of their corner of the city—always alive, buzzing, full of swagger and smoke, boys laughing as they polished guns or shuffled cards, the smell of fresh bread from the bakery down the street mixing with the scent of oil and gasoline from the cars. The Boss had run it like a machine: efficient, relentless, and loyal. His voice had carried through the air like a church bell, sharp enough to bring silence, calm enough to soothe quarrels before they became fights.But now, the place had fallen into a strange silence.The Boss himself was the root of it, he no longer sat at his usual desk in the back office, cigar between his fingers, issuing orders like clockwork. He no longer gave his trademark smirk that told the men everything was under control, that every debt would be collected, every enemy handled, every job a success.Instead, he sat slumped most days, staring at a wall, a glass of whiskey sweating in his ha

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