Page 1 of Princes of Carnage

1

QUINN

Detroit is one of those cities that wears a hundred different faces. Some parts of it are fancy as hell, skyscrapers and designer boutiques and restaurants that cost more than someone’s weekly salary just for one meal. And then there are parts like this, that show how shitty and run down this city can be.

I get out of the car, glancing around at where we’ve ended up.

It’s broken-down as hell, out of the way and off the beaten path. I could probably count on two hands the number of people who come through this area a day, and it’s probably all sketchy fuckers and drug dealers.

The buildings around where the car is parked are abandoned for the most part, their windows either boarded over or broken and smashed in. Graffiti covers the walls, and the smell of exhaust and garbage sits heavily in the air like a low hanging cloud.

I wrinkle my nose and turn to the members of my gang as they pile out of the cars we came in.

“How should we handle this?” Emmett asks, shoving his hands into his pockets. He turns to look at me, his brown eyes serious.

It’s still a shock to me that I’m the one whose role it is to answer these kinds of questions, even though it’s been a year or so since I became leader of the Enigma gang.

My dad Jonah was the one who handled all of this shit before. For years, he was the person who Enigma members looked to for answers and leadership. But now that he’s dead, that falls on me. And I’ll be honest, it’s been a fucking lot. I spent my life watching my dad run things, so it’s not like I was starting from scratch, but I’ve learned the difficult lesson over and over again that there’s a big difference between running shit and watching shit be run.

“I’m working on that,” I say to Emmett, shaking myself out of my thoughts and focusing back on the matter at hand. “Give me the rundown of what happened again.”

Another member of my gang, Fallon, steps up. He’s a slightly lower rank than Emmett, who tends to be the one who helps me with higher level operational shit. But he’s scrappy and smart, and he’s proven his loyalty on more than one occasion.

“Paulie, the runner, was attacked out here,” he says, shoving his long dark hair back from his face. “Right around this area. He was on his way to do a cash drop, but he never made it to the drop point. Got the shit kicked out of him and practically had to crawl back home after they left him for dead.”

“Did you talk to him after?” I ask.

“Yeah, a little. He said it came out of nowhere. He stopped for a smoke and then suddenly he was sucker punched in the back of the head. Before he could recover from that, they all jumped him.”

“How many people?”

Fallon shrugs, scrubbing a hand over his tattooed neck. “He couldn’t say, exactly. Said there were too many of them to count, and it was too dark on top of that. At least three or four.”

I frown, my shoulders tensing as something twists low in my gut. One or two guys attacking our runner could have been a coincidence or a ‘wrong place, wrong time’ kind of thing. Gangs in Detroit are territorial as all hell, and even though this turf is ours by rights, that doesn’t mean everyone wants to respect that.

It could have even been random tweakers or something completely unrelated to our business, but that many attackers working together in a coordinated effort makes it seem like it was sure as fuck intentional.

“Did he ID any of them?” I want to know, even though I’m pretty sure I can guess the answer.

Fallon shakes his head, blowing out a breath as the other Enigma members I brought along fan out around us, scanning the area. “Nah. And even if he’d gotten a look at any of them, they knocked him around good. The fuckers probably pounded any usable memories right out of his head.”

I nod because yeah, that sounds about right. Paulie’s a good guy for the most part, reliable when I need him, even if he does have a habit of stopping for smokes where he shouldn’t. But this should have been safe enough. It shouldn’t have turned into a fight on our own goddamn turf.

“Boss.” An older Enigma member named Jasper calls out in a low voice from a few yards away. “Over here.”

Stepping away from Emmett and Fallon, I head over to where I’ve been summoned and see Jasper crouched down next to a dark stain on the ground.

It’s dried and dark, and there’s a lot of it. Blood, no question.

“Fuck,” I mutter.

“Yeah,” Jasper says with a low snort. “They got him good.”

“And ran off with the money,” I bite out, my jaw tight.

Standing beside Jasper, I spin in a slow circle, taking in the entire area around us. Now that I’m here, I can get a pretty good feel for what happened.

There are buildings on either side of this street, and it would have been easy for attackers to hide in the darkness of their shadows. Paulie would have been focused on his cigarette and his task, and it gave them the perfect opportunity to get the jump on him where they could easily box him in. One of them struck first, then all of them attacked him and left him for dead on the ground.

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