If you're looking for an adventure in the morally grey, and a crash course of the human condition, this is the story for you! What is good and evil? Where is that line drawn, and who decides that? Packed with humor, danger, feels, and awkward relati...
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Those bastards from the south side of town were harassing Tim's gang again. Tim and his gang primarily occupied the north western sector of the city and they constantly butted heads over the border of their territory. What were they even fighting over? While Rachel ran with Tim's gang more often than not and they all listened to and loved her, she wasn't as active as the rest of them. School and her father's time schedule didn't give her the ability to be in every scuffle, and those jerks left her out of anything they thought was going to get too rough.
Could she fight? Yes, but not like the rest of them. It was pretty gruesome watching Tim go at the rival boys, and they left in pieces or with holes that didn't look healthy. Rachel herself had cut a few people here and there, but never straight up shanked a guy anywhere that they'd need a hospital for. Her weapon of choice was the baton. Guys didn't get up when she cracked them with that, regardless of where she hit them. Bone fracturing and bruising was more tolerable to her palate than someone bleeding out in an alley.
Still, most of what Tim got into wasn't all that 'life threatening'. Gangs around here were more of a way for the masses to feel like they had some semblance of power when they knew full well that if the mob stepped into their neighborhood, they were powerless. So, they beat the crap out of each other, but people didn't die all that often if the mob wasn't involved. Killing off the gangs also removed the only people who resisted the mob pressure in some areas, though the Moceris had never bothered Tim.
They were nothing to the Moceris, just some high school punks running in No Man's Land, where even drug sales weren't profitable enough for those Italian assholes. Children like them were too small time to mean anything unless they started to sell and encroach on a border. There was no hesitation when someone stepped on the mob's toes, just people going missing or windows getting broken, lives being threatened, and whatever the mob didn't want, stopped.
Thankfully, she and Tim had lost the assholes from the south side that had been chasing them and they were no longer running. It had taken her several blocks to catch her breath before she skipped to a normal canter with Tim next to her. The Hispanic boy was her closest friend and confidant. With short soot for hair and even darker eyes, Tim was a hundred sixty pounds of muscle and a few more of concealed knives, but he also had immeasurable loyalty and kindness for her. Because of that, his gang followed him in pampering and adoring her, and they all had each other's backs.
They had met so many years ago, right around the end of middle school, if she remembered correctly. Her gang initiation had pretty much been her thirteen-year-old self getting wasted on some vodka Tim had lifted, and that had been awful. It hadn't taken much at the time, and she had watched everything spin as the guys laughed at her.
Man had her father been pissed.
The man probably would have been more pissed if she'd been forced to do the normal initiation, which consisted of beating one of the other rival gang's members to a bloody pulp, but she'd sat there and took his reprimanding in silence. Well, that and with some nausea. Rachel had thrown up most her stomach's contents when she'd been deposited on her doorstep by Tim, before he took off like a bat out of hell. So she hadn't been in much shape to really comprehend and receive said admonishment with a clear head.
