by R. A. Smyth
Three Divisions
Crescentwood Book 1
R. A. Smyth
Mum is dead.
The father I never knew has claimed me, and I’ve been uprooted from my world and thrown into a life of privilege.
I’m not welcome here.
Two boys are leading the school to drive me out, and I’m being followed constantly by two more.
Things are much darker here than I thought; Crescentwood is full of dangerous criminals and dirty politicians.
I’m a pawn in a game I don’t know how to play, but I’m stronger than they know.
Trust no one. Corruption rules this town.
Three Divisions
Three Divisions Copyright © 2020 R.A.Smyth
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
I owe a huge thank you to everyone that has helped me write this book, from my beta readers to my ARC reviewers. I owe a special thanks to my new friend Nikki – she doesn’t know it yet but the hard work she has put into helping me has earned her the job of my personal assistant. She’s stuck with me now.
I owe my biggest thanks to my most loyal supporter, my dog (yes, my dog), Sandy. She has had to listen to me rave on about the idiocy of my characters and deal with my grumbling when I can’t work out what way the story should go, and she has done it all without a word of complaint.
In all seriousness, this book is for all of you out there who need to escape from the real world for a while. I hope the world of Crescentwood provides you with the same break from reality that it has for me.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Epilogue
Prologue
KIRK
6 Weeks Ago
My men filter into the room one by one, nodding their heads to me in a show of respect and an element of fear. They chat among themselves while finding a seat and waiting for the meeting to begin. I don’t acknowledge any of them.
This is an important meeting. One I have been keen to have with my men for a while now. What I am about to tell them tonight could change everything for us.
We have done well for ourselves, between our various legal and illegal activities, our cash flow is more than enough for us to live on. With the rumors of our reputation preceding us, no one within a 100-mile radius would think they could overpower us. They know they would end up dead.
The only way to get to the top and ensure you stay there is to be ruthless. Cut down your enemies. Ensure everyone remains loyal to you. The best way to do that is with fear. No one will go against you if they fear you.
When I first established our little, if you can call eighty fully-fledged members little, family, I made sure to do it right. I recruited those with a known criminal history that had skillsets I could utilize. I also offered membership to people I knew from my paramilitary days with the Aryan Nation, and reached out to those who were dishonorably discharged from the military to ensure we had plenty of people who had received armed weapons training and would be beneficial in coercing and intimidating anyone who didn’t fall in line.
With my hand-selected militia, I quickly and brutally cut down anyone who posed a threat to our arrival and takeover of the Oregon area, ensuring any current street gangs either joined with us or disbanded – and were permanently eliminated.
Once we had established our territory, we quickly took over the previous gang’s operations, taking advantage of their already established connections to make our own deals and accrue our own supplies.
We swiftly gained a name for ourselves. The scenes we would leave behind could be described as nothing short of hellish. A bloodbath. Anyone who didn’t submit to us was tortured and left behind, as a message to everyone else, that we were not to be messed with. Go against us and this is what will happen to you, your associates, your family.
There was something about that time, right at the beginning of it all. The heady sensation that came with all that carnage. It made me feel alive. Nothing is better than bathing in the blood of your enemies and demonstrating to everyone around you how fucking ruthless you are.
Don’t get me wrong, there are always deserters, traitors, idiotic people who think they can take us on. There’s still ample opportunity for me to flex my authority, but it doesn’t give me the same high that it used to.
I think that’s why I started thinking about how we could expand and improve our reach. It’s not enough that our little corner of America fears us. I want everyone to fear us. To fear me.
Once everyone is settled in, I raise my hand, officially starting the meeting, and, instantly, the room goes quiet, everyone giving me their full attention.
“Men,” I begin, ensuring I look at each and every one of them individually. These are my people, my men. They are under my command. “I have some exciting news. The last few weeks I have been working on making new connections in uncharted territory for our organization. If all goes well, we will have a secure investment in a new, lucrative business. You will have all the money and pussy you can ever dream of.”
This exclamation causes murmurs to erupt amongst the men. Most of us are high school dropouts, with minimal education and criminal records a mile long. Miscreants. Even those who entered the military don’t have clean records. They wouldn’t be here if they did.
I don’t think anyone in this room ever imagined the future I am creating for us. Hell, before they became members, many of them were homeless or drug-addicts, living paycheck to paycheck, struggling to get through the day.
Now though, as a club, we are thriving. It has taken a long ass time, but we are now the only distributors of untraceable firearms and narcotics in Oregon and Northern California.
Why stop there though? We have cornered this little section of the world. It’s time we start thinking bigger.
Unfortunately, it won’t be an easy goal to achieve.
Already, I have had to pander to the whims of others, all to ensure appropriate identities and allegiances are forged in order to project the appropriate image that I need to meet my goal.
My hard work is paying off though. I am currently in the process of guaranteeing I have important businessmen and state officials in my pocket, along with the loyalty of the most ruthless men in America and, soon, the backing of the richest of the rich in the country.
“We are used to working in the shadows, shaking hands on backroom deals, and avoiding any confrontation with the law. For this, we will have to operate differently; smarter. We will have to
cozy up to those that enforce the laws of this country, make connections with those that could care less about us scum down here in the dirt. We will have to leave behind our identities, and wear sheep’s clothing so we can walk amongst the upper class of society as though we belong. But I can guarantee you, men, that when we succeed, the reward will be worth the sacrifice.”
After ironing out the details and receiving celebratory claps on the back from my men, I am finally left alone in my office, enabling me to revel in the satisfaction of knowing my hard work will soon pay off. Soon everyone will know who we are. Our names will be said in hushed whispers, everyone too afraid to give a voice to their nightmares, for fear they would suddenly appear before them as though summoned.
People will piss themselves at the mere mention of the name Kirk Jones, my name; and God-fucking-damn if that doesn’t sound better than my wildest fucking fantasy.
Chapter 1
SOPHIE
The clock on the wall behind the bar tells me it’s 2 am as I run my cloth over the counter top one final time, before grabbing my bag and locking up behind me on my way out the door. I’m late leaving tonight, as most nights, because my boss knocked off early.
Thankfully the fresh air outside wakes me up a bit as I start the walk back home, pushing away the exhaustion that has been working its way through my body and making my eyelids gritty for the last few hours.
Knowing I have to be at work in the café in four hours for the breakfast rush isn’t helping with the tiredness, but a girls gotta do what a girls gotta do, to get by. It’s not like working two jobs while going to school full time is anything new to me; you just never seem to adjust to the chronic feeling of fatigue. It’s on days like this, when I’m beyond exhausted, that I feel closer to forty than seventeen, but I have to do whatever I can to help my mum out, to ensure we can pay rent and bills, and feed ourselves.
Our life is one of survival, of scraping by with the bare essentials and nothing more. Some days I struggle to remember what life is all about, why we keep trudging on, but then my mum has a good day where she smiles and laughs and makes everything feel right in the world. It’s on those days that I remember exactly why we get up each day and continue the fight to remain alive.
My mum has had mental health problems my entire life, resulting in a plethora of diagnoses from bipolar disorder to depression, meaning it’s always been a struggle for her to maintain a stable source of income. Unfortunately, things have gotten worse as time has gone on, with her having fewer good days. Instead, it feels like every day recently she is either a shell of herself, remaining in bed all day, practically catatonic, or she’s an emotional mess getting upset or angry over the slightest thing, often throwing things across the room and destroying what little furniture we have.
Like I said, the good days are worth it all. Worth the late nights and early mornings. Worth my education taking a backseat. Worth my lack of a normal childhood with friends and normal worries like if a boy at school has a crush on me, or what the current fashion trends are.
I pass the café, where I have to be for work in a few hours, before turning the corner onto my street. The street itself isn’t much to look at. It’s dodgy as fuck, but then half the estates in this part of town are. One wrong turn and you could end up on a street you seriously shouldn’t be on, and for no other reason than because you don’t belong to the ‘right’ denomination – Protestants or Catholics. That was just Belfast or, well, Northern Ireland as a whole. Completely messed up if you asked me. I certainly didn’t have any time or energy to give two shits about what religion people were; so long as they left me alone, I left them alone.
The street we live on is full of terrace council houses containing a strange mix of residents. You have the cute elderly people whose houses you can spot immediately by the well-maintained front square of lawn and window boxes filled with flowers; you have the middle-aged couples and foreigners who work all hours and keep themselves to themselves; then you have the hoodlums who just want to stir up trouble, are always partying and playing their music too loud. Those are the houses to avoid, but that can be difficult to do at this time of night, especially if the weather is good and they are standing outside smoking. Thankfully I’m in luck tonight as all is quiet as I amble down the street towards my terrace at the far end of the road.
Our own house isn’t terrible. It’s a small two-bedroom, one-bathroom terrace. Looking at it from the outside, it looks worn down, as if life has been battering at it and it has long since given up fighting back. Weeds are growing up between the cracks in the paving slabs and paint is peeling off the door and window, but I do my best to keep the inside clean and tidy. I just don’t have the time, money, or energy to waste on pretty window boxes of flowers or making it feel more homely with pictures and decorations or whatever.
Standing outside the front of the house, looking up at the darkened windows, the weight of everything hangs over me like a dark cloud of oppression, weighing heavy on my soul. I can't wait until I turn eighteen and I’m done with school. I could have dropped out at sixteen, but I want to better my chances of getting a higher-paid job once I do finally finish school. I don’t want to live this life forever. I want more for myself, for my future.
Once I’m eighteen I can get a job at one of the strip clubs in town where I will be able to earn a lot more than I do now, meaning we wouldn’t constantly have to decide between having heating or having electricity; we wouldn’t have to live off ramen noodles every night or go a day or two without food when the money won’t stretch far enough.
Working in a strip club would only be a temporary solution. Something to pay the bills while I finish off school, possibly do an online college course or while I apply to jobs. I haven’t exactly had the time to work out the specifics.
Thankfully over the summer, when school was out, I was able to save up a decent amount of money. It should tide us over for a while, but there is never enough. We will burn through it in no time.
My little side-gig pickpocketing drunk students and unaware tourists also helps, especially with the explosion in tourism since ‘Game of Thrones’ hit the big screens and became an international success. It’s risky, I can’t afford to get caught, so I only resort to it when I’m desperate, which seems to be more and more often these days.
Not wanting to waste any more time out in the cold, I quickly unlatch our front gate and hurry up the path to the door. Inserting the key and pushing against the door to unstick it, I practically fall through the doorway, into the hall.
I don’t immediately notice the sickly-sweet odour in the air or feel the heavy weight of silence in the house, which is more desolate than normal. It takes a full minute of standing frozen in the hallway before the clues register in my brain. As soon as I realise what’s going on, the horribleness that has happened in this house tonight, time seems to slow down. I sluggishly stumble my way down the hall towards the kitchen, following the ever-increasing stench in the air.
I know what I’m going to see when I push the kitchen door open. I know I’m going to find my mother dead.
Despite not needing to see my mother’s body, that is exactly what I’m met with as I push the door open and step into the kitchen. My mum is sitting at the kitchen table, slumped in the chair with her head resting on the table’s surface, eyes wide and glassy in death with foam around her mouth. Numerous bottles of pills are scattered on the table in front of her and an empty bottle of vodka has been dropped on the floor beside her, presumably from when she lost consciousness.
I don’t know how long I stand there, just staring at the scene in front of me, not really taking anything in but also knowing this moment will be burned into my mind forever. I don’t think I will ever get the stench of death out of my skin. It feels like it has embedded itself in the very fibre of my being.
This isn’t the first time I’ve come home to find my mum has overdosed. I think part of me has always known it would end like this. She certainly has b
een trying her best for years now.
Nothing ever seemed to improve her mood for very long. I can remember short periods of time, mostly when I was a lot younger, when I would wake up to her humming in the kitchen while she made breakfast, the sunshine through the kitchen window making her blonde hair glow, and emphasising the tired, worn look on her face and the age lines around her eyes; but seeing her smiling was the best thing. It was in these moments that everything felt like it was going to be ok; that, at least for a short time, I would have my mum back - the mum who would clean the house, do the food shopping and spend time watching movies on the couch and laughing over stupid things with me.
Of course, it was during those times, when she appeared happy and optimistic, that she would make impulsive decisions. One month she spent all of our rent money on online gambling sites. In another instance she transferred every penny that was in our bank account to help support Seamus the sea lion in one of those animal adoption things. Worse than spending all our money, I would often come home to find strangers in our house who my mother had picked up online, or off the street, to sleep with or offer a warm bed – my bed - to. Some of them would linger around, eating what little food we had and giving me lecherous looks when I was home.
It was a vicious cycle, starting with a few days of lucency where I had my mum back, before escalating into a manic episode of reckless behavior and insane spending, climaxing to a failed suicide attempt and triggering her spiral down into depression, until she finally crawled her way back out of it to normality again.
I would never know how long these episodes would last. Sometimes it was only for a few days, then her mood would change once again, other times she could remain depressed or manic for months. Sadly, the periods of stability never seemed to last more than a few days.
The worst thing was that there was nothing I could do except stand by and watch her self-destruct.