WERE YOU ATTACKED?

I lessened the pressure of my foot on the gas as I entered the black, crumpled countryside, half-built over the years on the other end of my empire. The air smelled different here, staler and rank with sewage.

Ernest has let this all go to shit,I thought angrily.

Like his great-grandfather, he had no business sense, only one of greed. He wanted fortune and lusted for anything that moved, but unlike Gabriel, he had no actual way of maintaining it. Gabriel had had me, at least. Ernest had no one.

Or had Gabriel ever had business sense? I had been much younger then, too. Perhaps I had been misled by Gabriel’s charisma as well. It was harder to remember now, with all the years that had passed.

The crumbling compound was upon me, and I killed the lights, dropping my feet to the ground to walk the motorcycle toward the low wall of the area. A low din of voices met my ears, but no one was wiser about my arrival. Ernest’s guards were half drunk on whatever crappy moonshine they bootlegged amo