2025-08-06 09:58:32The air inside The Garrison felt ten degrees warmer than it should. The pub was half-lit and half-silent, the kind of old London joint where conversations stuck to walls like cigarette smoke. It was the kind of place where men talked in murmurs, where every pint glass came with a secret, and the mirrors behind the bar watched more than they reflected.
Kabri sat across from Jamil in a back booth, their duffel bags tucked beneath the table. No one looked at them. No one dared. Wordless tension hung between them like a curtain. Jamil’s shoulder was freshly stitched, patched up in the back room of a Turkish clinic an hour earlier, his arm now bound in a sling made from a ripped scarf.
Fred hadn’t said where he’d be. He never did. He just said to meet here at midnight—“business finished, then family drinks.” That’s what Fred called it. Family. A word that had lost meaning long ago.
Kabri leaned back, eyes moving over the pub’s entrance like a hunting hawk. His face was still unreadable. Every time Jamil tried to speak, he stopped. Nothing felt right anymore. Not after that night.
"You still thinking about the trap?" Jamil finally asked.
Kabri didn’t answer.
Jamil tapped the table lightly. "I know what it looks like. But maybe it wasn’t him. Maybe someone else knew about the lift."
Kabri’s jaw tensed. “It was Fred’s job. Fred’s codes. Fred’s decoy blueprints.”
Jamil shrugged, though the pain flickered through his face. “Still. We walk in, walk out, and walk into bullets? Someone else might've tailed the info.”
Kabri didn’t believe in coincidences. Not in their line of work. Especially not when Fred had spent the last three years grooming them like attack dogs—training them, refining their skills, pushing them into harder and bloodier assignments across Europe. For what?
Fred liked to say he built men. But men built from pain and silence don’t last forever.
The pub door creaked open, breaking Kabri’s thoughts.
In stepped Fred.
He was older than most bosses you'd find running a crime empire—pushing fifty, with a taste for custom wool coats and a limp earned from some bar fight in Marseille years back. But his eyes still cut through glass and steel. Dark. Cunning. Always calculating.
Tonight, he wore a pinstriped suit under a heavy coat and walked with that same deliberate confidence—the kind that made weaker men shift in their seats. Behind him trailed Mason, one of his enforcers, a brick of a man with no eyebrows and an ever-present toothpick.
Fred reached the booth with a slow grin and slid into the seat opposite Kabri. Jamil gave a short nod. Fred responded with a mock salute.
“Bloody hell,” Fred muttered, flicking his lighter. “You two look like you crawled out of a war zone.”
Jamil smirked, though he winced as he did. “Just your usual Saturday night in the city.”
Fred lit his cigarette and exhaled slowly, watching the smoke curl toward the ceiling like it had something to say.
“And yet…” Fred reached beneath the table, pulled the duffel bags into his lap, unzipped one. His eyes gleamed at the sight of the silver cases inside.
“You boys did good.”
Kabri said nothing. He watched Fred closely.
Fred zipped the bag shut and pushed it aside. “That vault job was clean. Cleaner than Naples. Cleaner than Antwerp. Jesus, even I didn’t think you’d make it out alive.”
Jamil shot Kabri a look. The sarcasm wasn’t missed.
Fred leaned back and signaled the waitress. Two whiskeys and a lager. He turned back to them, the fatherly warmth in his voice as fake as the teeth in his mouth.
“You know what I like about you two?” he asked.
Kabri didn’t respond.
Fred tapped the table with his cigarette. “You’re loyal. Old-school. No phones, no leaks, no loose ends. Just bullets and results. Sons in crime, you two. That’s what I call you.”
Jamil raised an eyebrow. “That why we got lit up on the way out?”
Fred didn’t blink. “What are you talking about?”
“Three men. Waiting. Not police. Professional gear. They weren’t guessing. They were sent.”
Fred’s face turned still. Not defensive. Not surprised. Still.
“If I wanted you dead, Jamil,” Fred said calmly, “you wouldn’t be sitting here drinking Lagavulin with a stitched arm.”
“Not dead,” Kabri said. “Just scared. Maybe shaken.”
Fred turned to him. “I don’t deal in ‘maybe.’ Either you think I sold you out, or you don’t.”
“I don’t deal in belief,” Kabri replied. “I deal in facts.”
Fred smiled coldly. “Then get your facts straight, mate. I don’t cut my sons off mid-job.”
The drinks arrived. Fred took the whiskey and downed it in one shot.
“Listen,” he said, wiping his mouth. “Word on the wire is that the Belgian syndicate knew something was up. You boys moved fast, but info travels faster. We’ll trace the source. Could’ve been Mason, could’ve been the Turks, could’ve been some greedy bastard who sold us out. But it wasn’t me.”
Jamil stirred his drink. “So what now?”
Fred leaned in. “Now we celebrate. Diamonds will be moved by Friday. Payouts will be sorted by Sunday. After that, I want you boys on a job in Marseille. Light work. Arms shipment transfer. Easy pay. You’ve earned it.”
Kabri was quiet.
Fred raised his glass again. “To the code. To the brotherhood.”
Jamil hesitated, then clinked glasses with him.
Kabri didn’t move.
Fred’s eyes lingered on him. "You’ve got questions. I see that. Ask."
Kabri finally spoke. “If we’d died in that warehouse, would you have buried us, or just replaced us?”
Fred’s lips curled into a smirk. “Both, probably. But I’d have cried. Swear to God.”
The table laughed, but the laughter rang hollow.
Later that night, after Fred and his guards left, Kabri and Jamil stood in the alley behind the pub. London’s sky was dark again, heavy with secrets.
“You believe him?” Jamil asked, lighting a cigarette with shaky fingers.
Kabri didn’t answer immediately.
“I don’t trust belief. I trust patterns. And Fred’s pattern… is survival.”
“You saying he’s planning something?”
“I’m saying we need to watch the watchers.”
Jamil exhaled smoke. “I’ve bled for that man.”
Kabri turned to him. “So did the three who burned in Naples. You think they didn’t?”
Jamil was silent for a moment.
“Then why not walk away?”
Kabri looked out across the black river where the city lights shimmered like broken promises.
“Because this isn’t over. It’s just started.”
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
Chapter 241
The grave was modest.No ornate stone, no flowers, no names.Just two mounds of earth beneath an acacia tree, a flat rock marking the space between them. And beside it, a small wooden box — weathered by sand, protected by silence.Amir brought his daughter here for the first time on her twelfth birthday.She had never met them — the men buried here. She knew of them only as shadows from her father’s stories. But even at twelve, she felt the weight in the air. The silence. The ache.She knelt between the graves and whispered a greeting, as if sensing they were listening.Amir stood a few paces back, arms crossed, heart heavy. He wasn’t sure he could explain everything — not all at once. Not the betrayals. Not the lies. Not the love. But something told him it was time.Not to forget.But to pass it on.“Tell me,” she said quietly, looking at the mound on the right. “Was he the one who hurt people?”Amir nodded slowly.“Yes. But he also tried to save someone.”She turned to the other gra
Chapter 240
The desert swallowed sound.No sirens. No engines. No voices. Only the wind, scraping against forgotten stones like a memory refusing to be buried.Kabri was gone. Jamil too. The last gunshot had echoed across the cliffs like thunder splitting the sky — and then... silence.Weeks passed.Then months.And in time, all the great fires died. The burned-out mansion crumbled under vines in the hills of Portugal. The hideouts turned to dust. The names “Kabri” and “Jamil” passed through intelligence circles as rumors, then as ghost stories, then not at all.What remained?Sand.Wind.And one man standing alone — Amir.Amir had returned to the desert not for closure but because he had nowhere else to go.The grave of two brothers lay under a crooked tree near the ruins of their childhood camp. Unmarked, save for a flat stone and a weathered necklace buried beneath the sand. One bullet had ended a war. The second, a legacy.But the story hadn’t really ended.Amir knew that now.He stood at the
Chapter 239
The memory returned uninvited.A patch of afternoon sun spilled through the tall reeds beside the Wadi River, golden and warm, catching the faces of two boys too young to know what blood meant.Kabri was twelve. Jamil, nine.And for the first time in months, their laughter wasn’t stolen — it was real.No shadows yet.No oaths.No guns.Just two brothers in cut-off shorts, muddy knees, and palms sticky with date syrup, daring each other to jump across a deep ditch carved by the rain.“Last one across is a chicken!” Jamil yelled, already sprinting.Kabri snorted. “You say that every time.”“Because you’re always the chicken!”Kabri launched forward.The air split around them as they leapt.Jamil landed first, barely sticking it, wobbling with arms flailing. Kabri came after — feet thudding hard — then fell flat on his back, breath gone.Jamil doubled over laughing. “You landed like a pregnant goat!”Kabri groaned. “I hope the goat kicks you.”They rolled into the grass, wrestling half-h
Chapter 238
The box sat on the shelf, wrapped in a torn military scarf, untouched for years. Amir had not opened it since the last night he had needed to be a weapon.Inside: a Glock 17, two extra magazines, a suppressor wrapped in cloth, and a folded note in Kabri’s handwriting:“This is not for you. This is for the man you swore never to become.”Amir stared at it now, not as a warrior or a fugitive, but as a man inching toward the edge of something more sacred — peace. A peace he had not earned. But one he might finally allow himself to keep.The years since Kabri and Jamil’s deaths had been spent in cautious rebuilding. No wars. No shadows. Just Noor’s laughter and the scent of bread rising in a sunlit kitchen. A wife who loved without questions. A home without locked rooms.Still, the ghosts remained. Not with knives or voices — but as temptations.Every week he passed a locked drawer.Every month he checked security footage of the perimeter, “just in case.”But today, something in him shift
Chapter 237
The wind whispered through the olive trees behind their home in southern Spain. Amir had built the cottage with his own hands — not as a fortress, not as a hideout, but as a place where nothing needed to be watched. A place where knives weren’t hidden in books, and smiles didn’t have layers.The girl was just five, a shadow of her mother’s jawline and Amir’s wide eyes. She played alone in the sunlit garden, a mess of curls falling over her forehead, fingers stained with juice and dirt and youth. Her name was Noor.And she was humming.The melody was faint, broken, innocent.But Amir froze the moment he heard it.The air left his lungs.It wasn’t a song Noor had ever been taught.It was Evelyn’s lullaby.He stepped outside quietly, watching his daughter draw circles in the dirt with a twig. Her hums rose and fell like a breeze through reeds, her head tilting as if listening to music only she could hear.It was impossible.Amir hadn’t heard the tune since that night in the cabin. Since
Chapter 236
It was the third night after the wedding when Amir finally dreamed again.Not a nightmare. Not the kind with fire, blood, or the endless sound of gunfire. This dream was colder. Quieter. Too still.And the table was long.A grand oak table, polished to a shine, set in the middle of a candlelit hall he didn't recognize—something between a monastery and a memory. Shadows danced on stone walls. Frost crept at the edges of the stained-glass windows. And thirteen chairs lined each side, untouched.Until they came.The first to appear was Kabri.He took the seat at the far end of the table, dressed in black like he always was in Amir’s memories—but not the militant version. Not the fighter. Just a man. A man with tired eyes and fingers still stained with ash. He didn’t speak. Just looked at Amir with a gentle sorrow, and that ever-present weight behind his gaze.Then Evelyn entered.Wearing red.The real Evelyn, or the illusion? He didn’t know anymore. Her face was as he remembered it the
You may also like
Beyond The Eyes
Talented momma3.3K viewsThe Burnsfield Project
Jason Boyce8.3K viewsSECRET STORIES OF THE SPIRIT'S
Mila97 2.7K viewsThe girl on swing
Razee Zainal1.8K viewsDawn Of The Night
Ngoc Trần1.4K viewsDouble Personality; THOMAS BRADLY.
RedCEE1.2K viewsBounds by scales and secrets.
Andrew411 views246: A Killer's Promise
JJ Dizz11.0K views