Chapter 35
The drive to the 9th District took longer than usual. Traffic was heavier, the streets clogged with delivery trucks and people moving between the districts.
Elijah sat at a red light, his fingers tapping the wheel, his mind still on the morning.
The light turned green and he drove.
The bar appeared at the end of the street, and Elijah slowed. A group of men stood across the road, six of them, maybe seven.
They were watching the building not hiding it, just standing there, hands in pockets, cigarettes burning, eyes tracking the workers who moved in and out of the bar.
Elijah parked down the block and watched.
The men didn't move toward the building. They didn't talk to each other and just stood there, watching.
Elijah counted them again, Six, One of them had a scar across his cheek, another had arms thick with muscle.
He got out of the car and walked toward the bar. His steps were steady, his hands out of his pockets, his eyes on the men.
They watched him pass. One of them said something low, and another laughed.
Elijah kept walking,
The bar looked different than it had a week ago. The windows were replaced, the frames painted black. The door was new, the wood clean, the handle shining.
The sign that had hung above the entrance was gone, taken down, leaving only the faded outline of letters that had been there for years.
Workers moved inside, the sound of hammers and saws filling the air.
Kai stood outside, his arms crossed, watching a man on a ladder who was fixing something above the door frame. He looked up when Elijah approached.
"You're here," Kai said.
Elijah glanced back at the men across the street. "Who are they?"
Kai followed his gaze. "Local gang members. They've been there since this morning. Watching and Waiting to see who's doing the work, who's paying for it."
"They going to be a problem?"
"Not yet." Kai turned back to the building. "They're just watching. Everyone watches in the 9th. It's what they do. When they stop watching, that's when you worry."
Elijah looked at the bar. The workers were moving fast, their motions efficient, practiced.
One was running wire through the walls, another was fitting a new window frame, the place was coming together.
"How long until it's done?" Elijah asked.
"Tomorrow." Kai said it like it was nothing.
Elijah turned to him. "Tomorrow? Yesterday this place was still falling apart."
"We started yesterday. Money does a lot of things."
Elijah looked at the workers again. They moved like people who had done this a hundred times.
Kai had found them somewhere, paid them something, and they had made a week's worth of work disappear into a day.
"You said we didn't have money for this," Elijah said.
"We didn't. Then you fought Marcus." Kai smiled, but it was thin. "Now we have money. Not enough to do everything, but enough to do this."
They stood in silence for a moment, watching the work. The men across the street hadn't moved.
"You called this meeting," Kai said. "What's the plan?"
Elijah took a breath. He had been thinking about this since he left Lisa's house.
Since before that, maybe and the moment he had chosen to become something else.
"I want to start the gang," he said. "For real."
Kai's expression didn't change. "We already started. The building, the money, Henry—"
"I want to move," Elijah cut him off. "I understand the danger, but we need power. We need money. We need control over this district."
Kai was quiet. His eyes were on Elijah's face.
"I've been thinking about my future," Elijah said. "About what I want. Not what I'm running from. Not what I'm scared of. What I want."
He looked at the bar, at the workers, at the street that was already starting to look different than it had a week ago.
"I want to develop the 9th District. I want to make this place something. Not just safe, but something that matches the other districts. Something that surpasses them. I want to build it so that when people look at this district, they see what it could be. And I want to build it so that no one ever touches my family again. Not my mother, not Amy, not anyone I love. I want to create a place where they're untouchable. Where anyone who even thinks about hurting them knows what's coming."
He turned to Kai. "I want to build something that lasts."
Kai stared at him for a long moment. Then he smiled. It was different from the thin smile before. "That's the Elijah I've been waiting for."
"So you agree?"
"I agree with the goal. But we need to be smart about it." Kai turned to face him fully. "Three people can't manage a territory. Three people can't protect anyone. We need numbers, People who know how to fight, who know how to move, who know how to be quiet when they need to be. We need a foothold before we can do anything else."
Elijah nodded. "I know."
"So what's your move?"
"I want to go to an underground fight tonight. A lower one. Not the unranked fights I was in before. This is different, everyone there has a breathing technique."
Kai raised an eyebrow. "You want to fight."
"I want to show people what we're made of. Win some fights, make a name. People who are looking for something more, who want to be part of something bigger they'll see us. They'll come to us."
Kai was quiet for a moment. Then he laughed, short and surprised. "I had the same idea. This morning. Before you called."
Elijah blinked. "You did?"
"I was going to tell you tonight. But you beat me to it." Kai shook his head. "We're thinking the same way now. That's good. That's what we need."
They stood in the afternoon light, the sounds of the work behind them, the men across the street still watching.
The sound of footsteps approached. Elijah turned.
Henry was walking toward them, his hands in his jacket pockets, his green eyes moving over the bar, the workers, the men across the street.
He stopped beside Elijah and looked at the building.
"This is it?" he asked.
"This is it," Kai said.
Henry nodded slowly. "Looks better than I expected, for the 9th."
Kai smiled. "It's going to look even better tomorrow."
Henry looked at Elijah. "You said we were going to talk about what comes next."
Elijah looked at both of them. "We're going to a lower underground fight tonight."
Henry's eyes lit up. "Lower underground. I haven't been to one of those in a month."
"We're going to fight," Elijah said. "Show people what we can do. Draw attention. Find people who are looking for something more than the next match."
Henry smiled. It was wide, eager. "So we're making a statement."
"Yeah," Elijah confirmed.
"And if someone comes at us hard?"
Elijah thought about the question. "Then we show them what we can do."
Henry's smile didn't fade. If anything, it grew. "Good. I've been waiting for something interesting."
Kai laughed. "You've been waiting for something to hit."
"That too."
He looked at the men across the street.
They would keep watching, keep waiting, until they knew what this new building meant, who was behind it, what it was for.
"Tonight," Elijah said. "We go after dark. We fight, bring new members and start taking over."
Kai nodded, Henry cracked his knuckles, still smiling.
Elijah looked at them. His second-in-command and His fighter. The gang, It was small now, just the three of them.
"Meet at the bar at midnight," he said.
He turned and walked back toward his car. The men across the street watched him pass.
He got in his car and sat for a moment, his hands on the wheel. The afternoon sun was starting to lower, the light turning gold, the shadows stretching across the street.