Jin knew that, more than likely, he wouldn’t live to see tomorrow.

  The thought sat in his chest like a weight he couldn’t name.

  It wasn’t panic.

  It wasn’t rage.

  It wasn’t even the kind of fear most people would expect.

  He stood there anyway, shoulders loose, face calm, like he was waiting on a late delivery instead of the end of his life.

  There was no one to blame but himself.

  And that truth didn’t make him sick.

  It made him proud.

  Proud, because it meant his life was still his own.

  Even now.

  He had lived his whole life caring about one thing: his goals.

  Everything else was background noise.

  And the same way he approached his life was the same way he would approach his death.

  The risk he was about to take brought him closer to what he wanted, so he could accept whatever came after.

  At this moment, as nonsensical as it sounded, his death wasn’t the important part.

  How close he was to success was.

  “Jin, there’s just nothing I can do for you, brother. I told you not to take their money, and you knew the risks going into it, and now you want me to swoop in and save you from yourself just so you can make the same decision that brought you here.”

  The man’s voice cut through the silence.

  Jin stood at the doorstep with the countenance of someone taking a painful dump in a bathroom that wasn’t theirs—face tight, awkward, trying a little too hard to look hurt.

  Under that big, burly, scary exterior, his brother John was soft-hearted, and Jin wanted to make him feel bad.

  It wasn’t working.

  Jin had always been a bad liar.

  Even with the obvious acting, John had never seen Jin bother trying to lie to him in the fifteen years he’d known him, and he could appreciate the effort Jin was putting in just to ask for help.

  If the circumstances were different, he might have even changed his mind.

  But he knew all too well what following Jin entailed, and all the baggage he came with.

  Jin just stood there, lips pressed tight, holding the same painful expression because he had nothing nice to say.

  His eyes stayed soft, though, full of love for his brother.

  John turning him away in his time of need didn’t even feel unfair.

  It felt understandable.

  It felt like something Jin would do if their positions were reversed.

  A dangerous risk sat between them.

  No matter how big the reward was, it wasn’t worth John’s life.

  John was already happy with his stable life. He had grown content, and Jin was sure of it.

  To Jin, though, the thought of his brother being happy with this kind of life brought him no joy.

  It only confirmed what had been gnawing at him for a while:

  John had stopped walking the path they had once sworn to walk together.

  And this was the first time they were both forced to say it without saying it.

  They weren’t the same type of people.

  The brothers stood there looking at each other until Jin finally stopped searching for the right words.

  “Wire every single cent you owe me before the end of the day,” he said.

  Then he turned around and left.

  He left the man he had grown up with.

  The man he had fought countless battles with.

  The man he had built his empire with.

  The only man who had never once turned his back on him.

  For the very last time.

  Only twenty-three years old, and Jin already had countless hours of practice compartmentalizing dangerous and stressful situations.

  Usually, moving on came easy.

  Not tonight.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  The old, beat-up car swallowed him up, the door shutting with a tired clunk.

  The engine turned over.

  Tires rolled.

  The street pulled him forward, and even though he tried to move on, the thoughts followed him anyway.

  The road was bumpy.

  Rain poured hard.

  The city didn’t care.

  People still filled the streets, laughing with their friends, crowding under awnings, waiting to get into clubs like tomorrow was promised to everybody.

  He drove through it slowly.

  Headlights.

  Wet pavement.

  Neon in puddles.

  Music leaking from doorways.

  Faces flashing by and disappearing again.

  Even the darker corners of the city, which Jin knew better than most, had a certain undeniable charm to them tonight.

  And for once he wasn’t watching the city from a distance.

  He was in it.

  Moving through it.

  Heading toward it.

  Heading toward what felt like his certain demise.

  An influx of hallucinogenic drugs, tested, researched, and distributed by his team, had consumed the street life of Barin City like a tidal wave.

  Every part of social life felt it, but the most striking part was simple:

  The streets were lined with people strung out, high out of their minds.

  It was everywhere.

  Someone laughing at nothing, soaked through, like the rain couldn’t touch them.

  Someone staring into traffic like they were watching a movie.

  Someone swaying with half-closed eyes, smiling like they had found peace on the sidewalk.

  Jin slowed at a light and watched a kid no older than sixteen grin at the sky with rain running into his mouth.

  His grip didn’t tighten on the wheel.

  His breathing didn’t change.

  No panic.

  No shaking.

  That was the strangest part.

  I hope the person who takes my position cares about the people as much as I do, Jin thought.

  There were no delusions.

  No pretending to be clean.

  The amount of lives ruined by his product was impossible for Jin to even estimate.

  Even so, the world wasn’t as simple as good people and bad people, at least not to Jin.

  Some lines still existed.

  Some principles still mattered.

  Bloodshed for the sake of bloodshed was disgusting.

  Suffering for the sake of suffering was pointless.

  To Jin, sin was a tool.

  A disgusting one.

  An unfortunate one.

  But still a tool.

  Only what was necessary mattered.

  Only what brought him closer to his goals.

  He passed a corner he used to control directly, back when he still handled distribution himself.

  Two men were arguing under a busted streetlamp while a third sat on the curb, laughing to himself with blood on his sleeve.

  Jin watched them in the mirror for a second, then looked back at the road.

  Holding himself to the same standards the law held civilians to was naive, especially in his profession.

  But the value of being a good person still existed.

  Caring about others still mattered.

  It just wasn’t the thing he valued most.

  Those thoughts kept circling in his head, sharp and irritating.

  Maybe a harsher nature would have made his employees more afraid of him.

  Maybe they would have worked harder, brought in more money, and he wouldn’t have to die today.

  Maybe being more willing to push the harsher, more dangerous drugs his chemists came up with would have made him enough profit to leave this city behind, and he wouldn’t have to die today.

  Maybe caring less would have kept him alive.

  No compartmentalizing.

  No running from it.

  The thoughts just sat there.

  Heavy.

  Honest.

  Because like John said, the risks of this life were never a mystery.

  Every decision came with the knowledge that one day the bill would come due.

  And still, Jin had made every decision without fear or regret.

  Unless something directly affected his goal, nothing else had ever earned the power to influence his actions.

  A quote rose from somewhere deep in his mind, old enough to feel like it belonged to someone else.

  “No matter where you go you will be there.”

  His adoptive mom had said it to him once.

  The words had always been familiar, but never clear.

  Not until now.

  Rain hammered the windshield.

  Wipers dragged back and forth.

  Neon smeared across the glass.

  No matter what people did to him.

  No matter how much the world tried to change him.

  No matter how much he tried to change himself.

  He was still himself.

  No running from it.

  No hiding from it.

  So you embrace it.

  The way he acted was who he was.

  That truth had been there from the beginning, and nothing in this world other than his goals was ever going to change it.

  And with death waiting at the end of the drive, something in his mind finally cleared.

  Like the clouds in his head had burned away all at once.

  For the first time in his life, the concept of self made sense to him.

  Too bad I’m about to die, Jin thought.

  If I understood this earlier, I don’t think anyone could’ve stopped me.

  The rain stopped.

  Not slowly.

  Not gently.

  It just stopped.

  The warehouse appeared ahead, dark and ugly in the quiet that followed.

  The car rolled in.

  He parked.

  The engine died, and the silence rushed in to take its place.

  He sat there for a second longer than he needed to.

  Then he got out.

  Cold air hit his face.

  City noise faded behind him.

  The door shut, and the sound echoed through the empty lot like a decision being finalized.

  He didn’t look back at the road.

  Didn’t check his phone.

  Didn’t curse.

  Didn’t hesitate.

  He walked toward the warehouse.

  Only one thought remained.

  Pure.

  Steady.

  Unshaken, even with death waiting on the other side of that door.

  I just hope one day I can taste absolute power.