Not This Time – Ryder
Not This Time
Ryder
I hate that I still have to deal with this shit…
Can’t believe I’m still battling demons from decades past.
The Texas air around me is heavy—thick with heat, grit, and the kind of silence that only comes before something violent.
Dust kicks up with every step, clinging to my leather shoes like the past clings to my name.
The red earth smells like sweat and gunpowder, and even with the sun long gone, the heat still radiates off the ground like it has something to prove.
I’m standing over another traitor—one of Rush Banks’ men. His body’s nearly given out, clothes ripped and bloodied from the beating my guys handed him before I arrived.
He’d been stalking me for weeks, tracking my every move, waiting for the perfect moment to take a shot that never came. Another pawn in a tired game to topple everything I’ve built. Another failure clawing for a place at the top.
“Someone’s snitching on you to the feds,” he rasps as I load my gun. “You should know.”
“That’s nothing new.”
“No one stays loyal to a man who isn’t loyal back. Your father found that out the hard way.”
I raise the gun without hesitation. “Keep my father’s name out of your disgusting mouth.”
“Rush will get you in the end.” He coughs, red mist blooming across his chin. “He always wins.”
“Then he must be playing a different game than me,” I say, leveling the barrel. “Because I always win.”
“I don’t?—”
I fire two shots—one to his skull, one to the heart. The crack of the gun cuts through the air, echoing off the distant hills before fading into the rhythm of cicadas.
His face falls back into the dirt, and I lower my weapon.
“Move the body,” I say. “And send Mr. Banks my condolences via one of his hands.”
“Yes sir,” “As you wish,” “Right away,” my men speak in unison.
As I return to my car, I roll back the face of my watch. Behind the glass, a photo—Adeline at five, grinning with a violin nearly bigger than she is.
The last day before I sent her away to boarding school.
I thought I’d wrap things up in a year. That she’d forget. That I could rewrite her life without her ever knowing.
But fate had other plans.
Fate still has other plans…
End of Episode 17