CHAPTER 80: LESSON.

Yeah, he felt it, the boy felt that something was not just off, but entirely different and it wasn’t juts the gun. It was the whole being of Joseph, towering over him not in height, but in the suffocating aura that radiated from him. An aura the boy had never experienced in his life. It was like something straight out of a movie, and it was almost unbearable to actually think that something like this could exist... that some people could cause sheer terror with nothing more than their voice, their eyes, their entire presence.

And the boy froze, not because of the gun pointed at him, but because deep inside he realized that even if the gun was gone, even if this fucker in suit stood there empty-handed, but with his perosana and presence... with this quick change, the fear would still crush him. It was not a fear that came from logic, it was primal, like the body itself understood the danger before the mind could even shape the thought.

"I–I don’t–"

"Oh no, I hate this." Joseph said as he made a step toward him and pushed the barrel to his head. "Stand for what you stand for, don’t take it back. You are a gangster, aren’t you, boy?"

Shit, he couldn’t say a thing. First, he was about to piss himself, and second, the barrel hurt from how hard Joseph pressed it against his head... he had never been in something like this before... never had a gun pointed straight at his head. The thought alone almost broke him, it was real, too real, and one small mistake could be the end.

"A real gangster dies with what he believes in. What is your name?" Joseph asked.

"R-Rio."

"Now see, Rio... you stand for the street, don’t you? You are a gang banger, as well as your boys." He glanced at them, but they too were just frozen in place. "Then why don’t you gangbang? Why don’t you show what you stand for? You stand for a street, and now I am on your street."

Still nothing, he just stood, his eyes filled with fear and, well, tears. Yeah, he started to cry a bit... and on the other hand, Joseph... he wanted to play more... no, not just that, he wanted to make an example or more like, teach them something.

These motherfuckers, teenagers wanting to act like they know how to be gangsters, how to be criminals, but they are just fucking shit, no, not even shit, just farts. They don’t even know how to control a situation, how to be a man in one. They are fucking boys, little fuckers who think a knife is everything, that it’s terrifying, that it’s something they can use to control a situation, but no.

He lived it from childhood. He had seen things. Joseph grew up among killers, among demons on their own. He heard things, he saw things, and a fucking knife is nothing in this world... it’s just a fucking joke to look at it.

These kids, they have no idea. They think they’re threats, thinking power comes from a fucking knife... but no power comes from control, from knowing when to strike, when to wait, when to survive. A knife? It’s just a toy. A reminder that they’re still children... and nothing more... yeah and when he looks at them, he sees nothing but a pathetic performance, a game they’ll lose the moment reality touches them.

They don’t know fear. Fear is when you wake up and the world doesn’t care if you exist. Fear is when the people you trusted turn against you, when your own family betrays you. That is fear and these boys... these boys haven’t even scratched the surface.

They think they’re predators, and that’s what makes them weak. All flash, all anger, no patience, no understanding. A knife doesn’t make a man... the choices you make when there’s no one to save you, when no one is watching, when the world is laughing at your blood... that’s what defines a man.

"How old are you, Rio?" Joseph asked again, still just pressing the gun at his forehead.

"Sixteen." He whispered, a faint, hollow word... just like the reality he lives in, the reality he tried to build up...

Sixteen. My fucking God... what are they doing with their life... He thought, and just got angry about it. These little fuckers, sixteen, trying to act like they are somebody, acting like this... it angered him so much...

He tried everything to get away from his family, to not be a Cassian, a criminal, to not let their name define his path through his actions... yeah, he tried everything to live a normal civilian life...

And these fuckers are on their own, chose this, with a knife, to beat up another kid... yeah, that too... looking the same age... and dealing with a fucking laced weed.

Anger, that’s what it is... how they can’t see that this is the wrong path to take... a path that only ends with terrifying death. He wanted to shake him, to make him see, to break through whatever delusion was keeping him alive in that false reality.

But that too was just sad... to think that one day they could fuck with somebody like Joseph, and if it happened, that man wasn’t going to spare them. No, he would make sure they died a terrible death. Maybe tortured, maybe their whole family wiped out, their bodies dumped in an acid barrel, or thrown into a river, maybe even fed to pigs or dogs. Yeah, that’s the price they chose to pay for playing at being fucking gangsters.

Though there was one simple thing that angered him the most... somebody had recruited them. Somebody older, more experienced, had pulled them in and destroyed their lives with this street mentality. Yeah... that was just wrong.

Even if Joseph is a bit... crazy, even if he sometimes acts like a psychopath with serial killer behavior, he hates this the most, when people use children to fight their wars. Back when his father was the biggest in the game, he never used children, never threw teenagers into battle. He used men. Not just him, but even his enemies back then had enough morality to not let children with a future die because of their wars.

There are rules to the game, rules that left a drop of morality in them. That’s why Jelena didn’t die, that’s why Gabbana didn’t, or Vicente. Even Pablo had the sense not to kill them, even if they knew that when these kids grew up, they would be dangerous.

"Do you even know what you’re doing?" Joseph asked, still pressing the barrel against the boy’s forehead.

"I... I just want to be... big." He said it, and it was the truth,the genuine thing the boy believed in and wanted to reach. Yeah, that low voice, almost a whisper, with the fear in his eyes, the fear in his whole being, showed that this was what he truly wanted, even in the middle of all this bullshit.

Joseph felt it... of course he did. His brothers had all been like this boy, looking up to their father, their mother wanting them to become the next big thing.

But it’s true to everybody in the world.

Everybody wants to make it big. Everybody wants to show off money, to fuck whoever they want, to buy private planes, yachts, mansions, to travel, to have so much money that they don’t even look at the prices, don’t have to hunt for the cheap stuff.

But it is a joke.

The desperation, the hope, the foolish little spark that made a boy think he could survive in a world like this, a world he didn’t even know about, just the street gangs and that’s it... not a single clue about the big one, the man who could wipe them all out in a day.

And that was what made Joseph’s next move deliberate. Every second he held the barrel there, every second the boy’s life hung by a thread, it was a lesson... but there was one more thing... a lesson the boy would never forget.

Joseph lowered the gun and put it back at his waist. He did it kind of slowly, maybe to create more tension, to make them wonder what his next move would be... but nobody could even guess what it would be.

Hana and Amine thought that was it, that it was over, that he would never do anything to teenagers like them... but they were dead wrong. Yeah, Joseph had morality, but it was so small that sometimes the darkness overpowered it... whether it was a teenager or not.

So he leaned down and picked up the butterfly knife, looking at it, flipping it once, and then looked straight up into the boy’s still shocked and frozen eyes, with a smile.

"Don’t panic, as a lesson... I’m going to stab you."