2025-11-17 06:52:02Years passed like shadows crawling across broken walls—slow at first, then gone before either brother noticed. The docks had given them a name, but the streets beyond gave them purpose. By fifteen, Harold and Diego were no longer just survivors; they were fixtures in the city’s underbelly, half-known faces in a hundred whispered stories.
The slums stretched out from the harbor like a bruise—alleys choked with smoke, markets where voices rose over the stink of meat, the constant rhythm of a city too tired to sleep. The brothers lived in a shack made of stolen tin and plywood, tucked behind an auto repair shop whose owner didn’t ask questions as long as they didn’t steal his spark plugs.
Diego had grown taller, shoulders broad, voice roughened by smoke and arguments. He ran errands for small-time dealers, carried packages, sometimes guarded backroom card games for a few coins. Harold stayed quiet, working his mind like a blade, writing in his black notebook every night under the flicker of a dying bulb.
Their world ran on rules unwritten and enforced by fear. Diego moved through it with charm; Harold mapped it with precision.
---
One night, Diego kicked open the shack door, grinning through the rain. “Got us dinner, hermano,” he said, tossing a bag of bread and cold sausage onto the floor. “Old Rico paid me extra tonight. Says I got ‘the look of a man who gets things done.’”
Harold didn’t look up from his notes. “You’re seventeen.”
Diego laughed, tearing a piece of bread with his teeth. “And you’re fifteen going on forty. You ever stop writing in that damn book?”
“Not until I understand how all this works.”
“What’s to understand? You get money, you don’t get killed. Simple.”
Harold finally looked up. “You really think it’s that simple?”
Diego chewed and shrugged. “Maybe not for you. You’re the thinker. I’m the doer.”
“That’s the problem,” Harold murmured.
Diego frowned. “Problem?”
“You keep walking into people’s games without knowing who owns the board.”
Diego pointed with the bread. “And you keep staring at the board so long you forget to move a piece.”
For a moment, neither spoke. The rain rattled on the roof like distant applause.
Harold sighed, closing his notebook. “Maybe that’s why we work.”
“Damn right it is,” Diego said, laughing again, and tossed him a piece of sausage. “Eat something before you think yourself to death.”
---
Days blurred into a grind of small hustles and late-night whispers. Diego ran deliveries, earned respect from older men who saw in him the makings of a street soldier. Harold followed him sometimes, staying silent, learning who controlled which corners, which cops looked the other way.
In the markets, kids fought over scraps while preachers shouted salvation from under torn umbrellas. The air always smelled of gasoline and sweat.
One afternoon, Harold found Diego arguing with a man near the meat stalls. The man—tall, with tattoos running down his neck—had a hand on Diego’s collar.
“Your brother owe us,” the man growled.
Diego spat blood and smirked. “I don’t owe you a damn thing, Vico. You want money, talk to Rico.”
Vico’s hand tightened. “Rico’s dead.”
The words hung there like a knife.
Harold stepped forward, voice cold. “Let him go.”
Vico turned, grinning. “Oh, look—the little brother with the big mouth.”
Harold’s face didn’t change. “You’re standing in the open, middle of a crowded market. You really wanna do this here?”
Vico laughed, but his eyes flicked around. Harold saw it—the hesitation, the flicker of doubt.
He pressed harder. “You make a scene, you’ll have ten people watching, maybe one calling the cops. You won’t walk two streets before someone sticks a blade in you for the bounty.”
Vico sneered, but his grip loosened. “You talk too much, kid.”
“Maybe. But you listen, and that’s what matters.”
Vico shoved Diego away. “Tell your brother Rico’s debt doesn’t die with him.” He disappeared into the crowd.
Diego rubbed his neck, still breathing hard. “You could’ve got us both killed.”
Harold stared after the man. “No. He was already scared. Just needed to remind him of it.”
Diego shook his head. “One day that mouth’s gonna write a check your fists can’t cash.”
“Then you’ll have to cash it for me,” Harold said.
Despite himself, Diego smiled. “You really are crazy.”
---
That night, they sat behind their shack, the city humming in the distance. Harold scribbled in his notebook again, candlelight flickering on his face. Diego leaned back, lighting a cigarette.
“What are you writing now?”
“Vico. Rico. Debt routes. Power shifts since last week.”
Diego exhaled smoke toward the stars. “You keep that book like it’s a bible.”
“Maybe it is,” Harold said. “Except mine doesn’t talk about heaven.”
“What does it talk about, then?”
“Control.”
Diego raised an eyebrow. “You think you can control this?” He gestured toward the city, its chaos, its noise.
“Not yet,” Harold said quietly. “But I can learn how the ones who do it think. Every man leaves a pattern. Even the ones who think they’re unpredictable.”
Diego studied him for a long moment. “Sometimes you scare me, Harry.”
“Good,” Harold replied. “Means I’m doing something right.”
---
Weeks later, tragedy came in the form of a friend.
Tino was a street kid like them—skinny, quick, always smiling. He’d run with Diego for years, a loyal follower with nothing to lose. One night, Tino was caught in a crossfire between rival dealers. They found his body in a drainage ditch two blocks from their shack.
Diego smashed a crate against the wall when he heard. “He was just a kid!”
Harold stood silent, his expression unreadable. “They all are.”
Diego turned on him. “That’s all you’ve got to say?”
“What do you want me to do, scream, shout? No, it won’t bring him back.”
“I want you to care, damn it!”
Harold’s jaw tightened. “You think I don’t? I care so much I can’t breathe half the time.” He slammed his notebook shut. “But caring doesn’t fix anything. Understanding does.”
“Understanding?” Diego spat. “You sound like some old man in a library. You think writing names in that stupid book’s gonna stop bullets?”
“No,” Harold said softly. “But it’ll tell me who fired them.”
For the first time, Diego saw the rage beneath Harold’s calm. Not loud or wild, but something precise, cold, surgical.
“You’re changing, Harry.”
Harold looked up. “So are you. Everyone is.”
Diego didn’t answer. The silence between them was heavy, filled with ghosts.
---
After Tino’s death, Harold’s obsession deepened. He charted the city’s underworld in that notebook—the gangs, the dealers, the middlemen, the dirty cops. Every name had a story; every story had a weakness. He began to see how the pieces fit, how one death could ripple through ten lives.
One night, Diego found him awake again, eyes red from hours of writing.
“You’re gonna lose your mind if you keep this up,” he said, sitting beside him.
Harold didn’t look up. “Perhaps. But I’ll lose more if I stop.”
Diego watched the candlelight dance on the pages. “You ever think about leaving? Just... running away? Start fresh somewhere else?”
Harold closed the notebook gently. “And leave what behind? The people who did this to us? The ones who killed Mom and Dad?”
Diego hesitated. “That was years ago.”
“For me,” Harold said, “it was yesterday.”
He leaned back, staring into the darkness. “I can still see their faces in the fire. Martinez’s men. The way they smiled when they pulled the trigger.” His voice was barely a whisper. “I remember every face.”
Diego reached out, gripping his shoulder. “We’ll get them. One day.”
Harold nodded slowly. “One day.”
But in his heart, that day had already begun.
---
By the time dawn bled into the sky, Harold had filled another page of his notebook. The slums around them stirred awake—the cries of vendors, the growl of engines, the city’s endless heartbeat.
Diego stepped outside, stretching, and looked back at his brother. “You coming?”
Harold closed the book, slipping it under his arm. “Always.”
They walked into the day side by side, two brothers bound not by blood alone but by a silent promise—one that neither fully understood yet.
The world had taken everything from them. Now, piece by piece, Harold was learning how to take it back.
And Diego, without knowing it, was learning how to rule it.
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Chapter 10 - Diego’s Vow
The rain eased at last, but the streets of the south side still glistened with the memory of it - puddles in cracked concrete, oil swirling like bruised rainbows. The smell of smoke lingered in the corners, faint but stubborn, as though the city itself refused to forget what had burned.Diego Flinch walked alone through the old alley near the canal, his hands deep in the pockets of a worn leather jacket that used to belong to Harold. The collar was frayed, the smell faintly of ash and iron. Every step echoed against the wet pavement.He stopped beneath the overpass, where their old tag - Los Reyes del Barrio - still stained the concrete in faded red paint. Someone had drawn a crown over it since. Maybe Luis. Maybe some kid who didn’t even know the story behind the name.Diego stared at it for a long time, jaw tight.“You’d hate this, Harold,” he said quietly. “You’d say the crown’s a target.”The city murmured in response - the sound of passing trains, distant laughter, the hiss of ra
Chapter 9 - The Vanishing
The rain hadn’t stopped for three days. It fell in heavy, gray sheets, turning the back alleys into streams of mud and oil. The city felt quieter now, as though the fire had burned not just a warehouse, but a piece of its own heart.At the edge of Saint Rose Cemetery, under a crooked tree that dripped water like tears, Diego Flinch stood in a soaked black coat, staring at a small wooden box half-buried in the mud. The coffin was too small for truth. It was empty - everyone there knew it.Only four people stood with him: Luis, Cruz, an old priest whose eyes were too tired to ask questions, and Salgado’s replacement from the port, a man named Ramos who smoked through the service. The priest’s voice trembled through the downpour.“From dust we came, and to dust we shall return…”Diego wasn’t listening. His thoughts wandered back to the warehouse, to the blast, to Harold’s voice shouting Go! right before the light swallowed everything. He hadn’t seen any body. He hadn’t found a trace. But
Chapter 8 – The Betrayal
The night smelled of rain and gasoline — thick, uneasy air that clung to the skin like sweat before a storm. Harold stood by the riverfront warehouse, checking his watch beneath the flicker of a dying streetlight. Diego paced behind him, lighting a cigarette he didn’t really want.“Something feels off,” Harold murmured.Diego blew out smoke and tried to sound confident. “You always say that before a job.”“This isn’t a job,” Harold said. “It’s a deal.”Their mentor, Salgado — an old, scary enforcer from the port district — had arranged a meeting with a supplier from across the water. It was supposed to be the crew’s first real entrance into the big leagues, the kind of trade that could transform Los Reyes del Barrio from a local name into a citywide power. But the details changed too quickly. The place, the time, the people. Harold’s instincts twisted with unease.Still, Diego was set on it. He wanted respect, and Salgado promised it.The others waited inside the warehouse — Luis, Cru
Chapter 7 – Rise of the Boy Kings
The city was never quiet, not even at night. It breathed through the cracks of every broken streetlight and hummed under the sound of sirens far away. For Harold and Diego Flinch, that hum became the rhythm of survival.It began small — a series of daring robberies, no one expected from two teenagers. They didn’t hit banks or armored trucks. They hit the people who thought no one would dare — dealers too greedy to share, corrupt cops who skimmed extra from their own, low-level gangsters drunk enough to brag about their cash.Harold planned every move with surgical precision. Diego executed them with fire. Together, they created something the streets hadn’t seen before: discipline.--------One humid night, Diego crouched behind a stack of crates near the old freight yard, his breath fogging in the moonlight. Across from him, Harold knelt with a map spread over a crate, tracing lines with the tip of a pocketknife.“Three guards,” Harold said quietly. “Two by the gate, one in the office
Chapter 6 – Harold’s Notebook
The rain had stopped three nights ago, but the streets still smelled of rust and wet stone. The kind of smell that lingered like memory. Harold walked alone under a thin gray dawn, his hands tucked deep in his coat pockets, his eyes scanning the corners where no one else bothered to look.He moved quietly, as if the city might wake up and ask him what he was doing out so early. He wasn’t heading anywhere, at least that’s what it looked like—but his steps always led him to the same place: the old municipal library at the edge of the industrial district.The building was a ruin of its former self. Windows shattered, ivy crawling over its walls, and a door that never quite closed. It had become a shelter for stray dogs and drifters, but Harold had claimed a corner room upstairs as his sanctuary.When he pushed the door open, dust rose like smoke in the light from a cracked window. The silence was heavy, almost sacred. He liked that. Here, the world didn’t shout. It whispered.He crossed
Chapter 5 – First Blood
The city had a cruel rhythm that didn’t stop for pain. Somewhere in the south blocks, under a flickering streetlamp, Diego Flinch learned that lesson with his face pressed against wet concrete, his ribs cracking under a boot.“Where’s our cut, kid?” growled one of the extortionists—a thick-necked man with yellow teeth and eyes that glittered like broken glass.Diego spat blood, refusing to speak. His defiance made them laugh, a harsh chorus echoing down the empty alley. They beat him until the laughter turned bored, and then they left, kicking over a trash bin as if to punctuate the insult.He lay there for a while, tasting iron and dust, watching the orange glow of a distant window where someone else was safe, warm, and far from this kind of night.When Harold found him, dawn had started to bleed through the clouds.“Jesus, Diego…” Harold knelt, touching his brother’s bruised jaw. “Who did this?”“Doesn’t matter,” Diego muttered, half-conscious. “They just… wanted to remind me we don
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