The Southside didn't whisper at night. It growled.
It carried a rhythm you had to grow up with to recognize. The distant hum of old box Chevy engines idling too long on a curb. The sharp laughter from a porch filled with men who didn't laugh unless they were hiding nerves. Sirens that flickered in the distance but rarely came close enough to matter. Arguments that started quiet before erupting into shouts that no one dared step outside to break up. All of it layered into a single truth: the Southside wasn't built for the weak, and it didn't have room for the unlucky.
Big Head stood at the cracked window of the abandoned duplex, watching the street with the steady calm of a man who trusted nothing, not even the silence. No one ever figured out how he got the nickname Big Head. Some thought it was because he was smart. Others thought it was because of a fight years ago where he was cracked across the skull with a metal bat and didn't fall. The truth was simpler: on the Southside, names stuck long before stories did, and Big Head wore his like a badge.
He inhaled slow. The air smelled like someone burning cheap weed mixed with the metallic scent of damp pavement. Behind him, the crew was tucked into the living room, each man moving like the four walls were shrinking around their edges. Psycho paced near the doorway with the same twitchy energy he always carried when the night felt wrong. He tapped a bat against his thigh, a beat that grew louder as his impatience grew.
Jack stood near the curtains, peeking through the thin rip in the fabric. His breathing was too fast. Rob sat at the kitchen counter counting the same stack of money he had already gone through twice. Murk leaned against the wall, silent, arms folded, face blank as a stone.
They were waiting on a drop. Not a shipment—nothing valuable like that. Just a simple transfer. A message. A test. A small task that should have felt insignificant, should have been over twenty minutes ago. But the Southside had a way of turning small tasks into reasons someone never made it home again.
Jack sucked in a breath. "Car just rolled slow past the porch," he said. "Black Impala. Heavy tint. Couldn't see who."
Psycho stopped pacing. His grip tightened around the bat. "Ops," he said. "Gotta be. We hit their boy last week."
Big Head didn't turn around. "We don't assume," he said. His voice was calm but carried weight. "Don't start fights we didn't plan."
Psycho snorted and went back to pacing. "I don't care who they are. If they come up here, I'm knocking someone's head off tonight."
Big Head didn't answer. He kept his eyes on the street. A soft breeze lifted dust from the curb. A dog barked in the distance. A porch light flicked on across the road, illuminating a shadow that ducked out of sight immediately. Something felt off.
Rob cleared his throat for the fourth time. "You think the money transfer's good?" he asked. "What if they ran off on us?"
Big Head finally turned his head just enough to look at Rob. His stare made Rob swallow back the rest of the question. Big Head never raised his voice unless things were about to get bloody. His silence was worse than yelling.
"If they ran off," Big Head said, "we'll handle it."
The room went quiet. Even Psycho stopped tapping his bat.
Jack squinted through the rip in the curtain again. "Car stopped this time," he whispered. "Engine cut."
Big Head tilted his head slightly, listening. He had a strange talent for reading silence. He could tell when a street was empty because it was late versus when it was empty because danger was walking toward you.
"That's not random," Big Head said. "They're here for something."
Psycho smiled, wild and eager. "Good."
Two heavy knocks suddenly slammed into the door. Not a friendly knock. Not even a cautious one. These were the kind of knocks that carried a message: someone outside didn't respect whoever lived inside.
Rob froze. Jack backed away from the window. Murk finally pushed off the wall, eyes sharpening.
Psycho lifted the bat. "I'm opening it."
Big Head raised a hand without looking at him. "No you're not."
Psycho scoffed. "So what, we let them punk us?"
"No," Big Head said. "We don't move without information."
Jack moved slowly toward the door and pressed his eye to the peephole. He squinted. Then leaned back. His face tightened.
"It's Alicia's cousin," he said. "That dude that runs with Blue."
Psycho broke into a grin. "Oh yeah. I been wanting that fade."
"Not in this house," Big Head said. "If anything goes down in here, we burn a safe spot."
Psycho didn't hear anything after the word fade. "He came here. That means he don't respect us." His tone dripped with hunger.
The door shook again, harder this time. Dust fell from the hinges.
Murk stepped in front of everyone without a word. His hand moved behind his back, retrieving a blade he kept tucked horizontally under his shirt. No one ever heard it slide out. No one ever heard him move. Murk was the type of man you didn't notice until he was behind you, and by then it was too late.
Big Head stepped up to the door. He exhaled once, calm as always.
"Keep your heads," he said. "I'll handle it."
He reached for the lock.
Before he could even touch it, the door exploded inward.
Wood splintered. The doorknob slammed into the wall with a crack. Jack stumbled backward, falling into the couch. Rob dropped his phone. Psycho lifted the bat with both hands.
Murk shifted into a deadly stance.
But the person standing in the doorway was not Alicia's cousin.
It wasn't anyone they expected.
The air seemed to collapse inward. Big Head's expression hardened.
"Damn," he said quietly.
"This changes everything."
The man in the doorway didn't belong on the Southside. You could see it in his posture, in the way he stood like the whole block was beneath him. He wore a dark button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled to his forearms, revealing lean muscles and veins like small ropes. A thin scar crossed his left eyebrow and disappeared into his hairline. His haircut was too clean for this part of town. His shoes were too expensive for this porch.
Two more men stood behind him on the steps, shoulders broad beneath black jackets. One of them scanned the street left to right, hand tucked inside his coat. The other never took his eyes off the doorway.
Big Head knew money when he saw it. He knew danger when he felt it.
This was both.
"Which one of you is Adrian?" the man in the doorway asked.
No one spoke.
The only person in that room who ever used his government name was his grandmother. The fact that this stranger knew it made something cold crawl up Big Head's spine.
Psycho stepped forward with the bat hanging loose at his side. "Who asking?"
The man's eyes settled on Psycho, studied him slowly, then shifted back to Big Head like the question barely registered. There was a weight to his gaze, a comfortable arrogance, the kind that only comes from surviving long enough to believe you might actually be untouchable.
Big Head didn't move aside. "You got my name," he said. "Where you get it from?"
"From people who know how to mind their business," the man answered. His accent was smooth with a hint of something foreign, something southern mixed with something further south. "My name is Mateo. My people told me you had something that belongs to us."
Jack's stomach flipped. Rob shot him a quick look, as if checking to see whether his face gave away guilt. Murk shifted half a step closer to the center of the room, body angled so he could see both the doorway and the back of Psycho's head.
The stolen stash.
The weed house they hit two weeks ago was supposed to be some local clown's operation. That was how Jack had laid it out. Light security. Sloppy operation. Good test for the crew to move as one.
They had taken the bricks, the cash, the guns, and left the place quiet enough that no one in the neighborhood would talk. It had felt clean. It had felt like the start of something bigger. It had felt like a win.
Now the win was standing on their doorstep calling himself Mateo.
"What exactly you think we got?" Big Head asked.
Mateo smiled with only half his mouth. "I like how you talk. Calm. Careful." His gaze swept across the room. "You picked a strange house to use as a nest. No pictures on the wall. No furniture. No food. Just men and weapons. Makes a person wonder."
Psycho tightened his grip on the bat. "You on the wrong side of town, homie. This block don't answer to you."
Mateo's eyes slid back to Psycho. His smile faded completely.
"Is that so?" he asked.
His right hand, which had been resting casually against his thigh, lifted. For a fraction of a second, Psycho shifted his weight forward like he was ready to step. Murk's fingers twitched around the handle of his blade.
The two men behind Mateo braced, hands inside their coats.
Big Head stepped in front of Psycho, blocking his path.
"Listen," Big Head said. "If this is about a package, say that. Don't walk into my spot acting like you choose who lives here."
Mateo studied him, then nodded once, like a small test had been passed.
"Good," Mateo said. "You do not grovel. I respect that." He glanced over the cracked ceiling, the naked bulbs, the patched-up walls. "I am here because my uncle's property did not reach its destination. Normally, I do not touch problems this small. But your names kept coming up in conversations. Adrian. Psycho. Murk. Jack. Rob."
Rob flinched when his name was said. Mateo noticed.
"You boys are ambitious," Mateo continued. "Ambition can be useful. Or it can be dangerous."
"We work for ourselves," Psycho said.
"It is always cute when men say that," Mateo replied. "Until they remember who really owns the streets."
The room tightened. Even the air felt thicker.
Big Head realized exactly who this man was.
The Rivera family had been a rumor for most of his life. People spoke about them in half-sentences. Everyone knew they moved powder that never got cut sloppy. Knew their money washed through clubs, car dealerships, trucking companies, even churches. Knew certain cops and judges answered their calls on the first ring.
They were the kind of people you did not see in person unless things were about to get very good for you or very bad.
Big Head kept his face still. "If you think we took something from you," he said, "the smart move is to show paperwork. Show proof. We don't fold off hearsay."
Mateo took one slow step into the duplex. The men behind him followed, forcing Psycho and Jack to ease backward. When Mateo spoke again, his voice dipped lower, and every hair on Big Head's arms pricked up.
"You're right," Mateo said. "You should not fold off hearsay. So let us talk about proof."
He reached into his pocket. Murk tensed beside the doorway. Psycho lifted the bat again.
Mateo pulled out a phone instead of a weapon. He tapped the screen a few times, then turned it so they could see.
The screen showed a grainy security camera still frame. Four figures wearing hoodies and masks moving through a dim hallway. One of them, mid-turn, had the hood slipped back enough for his jawline and side profile to show.
Jack's heart stopped.
Because that profile was his.
"Your friend is sloppy," Mateo said calmly. "He pulled his mask up to wipe sweat. The camera caught just enough. The rest was easy to confirm. What he did not finish explaining is that the house he broke into was one of ours."
Jack felt every eye in that room slide toward him. His hands went numb.
"I told y'all that camera was dead," Jack whispered.
"It was not," Mateo said. "And even if it was, information travels. The streets talk. People like to gossip when they feel nervous. And right now, everyone is nervous. They are asking who these new boys are, the ones who are robbing houses that do not belong to them and leaving bodies colder than the floor."
Psycho smiled a little at that. "So they talking about us already."
Mateo ignored him.
"If I wanted revenge," Mateo said, "I would not knock on your door. I would have driven by and cleared the whole living room. No questions, no conversations. If I wanted to make an example, your heads would be on the front page of a very specific kind of newspaper in Mexico tomorrow."
He let that image hang in the air, heavy and sharp.
"I am here because my uncle believes in options," Mateo went on. "He says, why kill a dog that can guard the house when you can give it a stronger leash."
Big Head swallowed the flash of anger that rose at the word dog. He was used to people underestimating him. He counted on it. But something in the way Mateo said it made him feel like he was standing in front of someone who had carved men up and walked away clean more than once.
"What kind of leash?" Big Head asked.
Mateo smiled again, small and tight. "You took from us," he said. "Now you owe us. Not just the value of what was inside that house. You owe for the disrespect of touching our property at all. You owe for the story people are telling at barbershops and clubs and little street corners. This talk makes others bold. We do not like that."
Murk's eyes didn't leave Mateo's hands. He watched every twitch, every shift.
"How much you think we owe?" Rob asked quietly.
Mateo looked at him like he was finally noticing someone who had been talking too much in a room where he did not matter.
"The value of the bricks," Mateo said. "Plus interest. Plus apology. But we are not greedy. We do not ask for the impossible."
His gaze swung back to Big Head.
"We want you to do a job for us."
Big Head did not answer right away. The others waited, watching him just as closely as they watched Mateo. Whatever decision he made in this moment would stain all of them.
"What kind of job?" Big Head finally asked.
"A simple thing," Mateo said. "There is a man on the Eastside. His name is Andre Gatewood. He sells our product, but he has forgotten how to count. He cheats. He thinks the distance between our cities protects him. He thinks he can talk to our enemies. I need someone local to remind him why that is a mistake."
Psycho's eyes lit up. "So you want him gone."
Mateo met Psycho's stare for the first time with a look that almost resembled approval.
"I want him erased," Mateo said. "Not just his heartbeat. His presence. His crew. His money. His stash
His name. The way people say it," Mateo finished. "When people even think of him, I want them to feel the absence. That is what erased means."
The room went so quiet that the buzzing light in the kitchen suddenly sounded loud. Outside, a car rolled over a pothole, the dull thump echoing like distant thunder. Big Head held Mateo's gaze and didn't blink.
"And if we say no?" Big Head asked.
Psycho shot him a quick look, surprise flickering across his face. Saying no wasn't something anyone from their side of the city usually considered when a man like this showed up. But Big Head asked anyway, because if he didn't, then Mateo owned his voice already.
Mateo didn't seem offended. In fact, he looked almost amused.
"If you say no," Mateo said, "then I assume you are either stupid or suicidal. Stupid men die fast on these streets. Suicidal men save us the trouble of planning. Either way, someone will be dead by the end of the week, and it will not be us."
His words didn't come out loud. He didn't need to shout. There was something far more dangerous than volume in his tone. It was the calm conviction of someone who knew he could make calls that changed the weather in other people's lives.
Murk shifted his weight, blade low at his side, eyes cutting between Mateo and the men behind him, measuring angles, distances, the reach of a drawn gun versus the swing of Psycho's bat. It would be ugly, he decided. Bloody. And it still wouldn't be enough to guarantee they walked out breathing.
Rob's mind raced in a different direction. He was already seeing numbers. The bricks they took. The street value. The idea of interest layered on top of that. The cost of refusing. The cost of agreeing and failing. It all came back the same: debt they couldn't pay in dollars alone.
Jack felt like the floor had opened beneath him and nobody else noticed they were all standing over the same drop. The still frame from Mateo's phone burned into his mind. His jawline, half-turned. Hood halfway off his head. A ghost caught in grainy pixels.
"I told y'all that camera was dead," Jack repeated, weaker this time.
"No," Mateo corrected. "You told them what you wanted to believe. There is a difference."
Big Head filed that away. Not because he didn't already know Jack had messed up. But because of the way Mateo framed it. This wasn't a man who moved off emotion. He moved off patterns, choices, leverage. The kind of man who walked into your life holding a ledger you didn't know he had been keeping.
"What if your man's already got other problems?" Big Head asked. "If we touch him, we inherit fights we didn't start."
"That is the point," Mateo said. "Andre has become comfortable making problems for us because he thinks distance protects him. I want him to understand that distance lies. I want the city to understand it too. People must remember we can reach across any river, any freeway, any fake line on the map."
"And you figure we're the ones to make that statement," Big Head said.
Mateo shrugged slightly. "You already made half a statement by breaking into our house. Clumsy, but loud. The question now is whether you finish the sentence or die on the comma."
Psycho chuckled under his breath. "Man talks pretty."
Murk shot him a warning glance. Psycho ignored it.
"You want him erased," Psycho said. "Cool. We've handled worse than some local plug who don't know his place."
"Have you?" Mateo asked.
The simplicity of the question hit harder than if he'd laughed at them. Psycho's smirk thinned.
Mateo took another step into the room and looked around slowly, taking in the empty walls, the stacked crates, the two chairs that didn't match, the card table in the corner. Everything about the spot screamed temporary.
"This is how I know you boys are new to this level," he said. "You have the hunger. The talent. The nerve to rob a house that did not belong to you. But you still meet in rooms like this. You still stand close enough to each other that one bullet could walk through two of you. You still think carrying knives and bats means you are ready for the men who own helicopters and lawyers."
He let his eyes sweep back to Big Head.
"But that can change," Mateo said. "If you are smart."
"What's the clock?" Big Head asked.
"You have three days," Mateo said. "Seventy-two hours from tonight. I like clean deadlines. Either Andre Gatewood disappears, or you boys do."
"Three days?" Rob blurted. "We don't even know his full layout. We don't know what he moves with, where he sleeps—"
"Then I suggest," Mateo said, "that you start doing what men in your position are supposed to do. Watch. Learn. Hunt."
Jack swallowed. "And if we pull it off?" he asked.
Mateo smiled again, that thin, practiced curve of his mouth that never reached his eyes.
"Then we will consider your debt… addressed," he said. "You will still owe us conversation. Occasional tasks. But the heat from the little mistake with the house will cool. People will stop asking questions about who robbed who. They will talk about who killed Andre instead."
"And if we fail?" Big Head asked, even though he already knew.
Mateo looked at him like he had just asked whether fire would still be hot tomorrow.
"Then your names go in the ground with you," Mateo said. "And someone else gets a chance to be useful."
He slid the phone back into his pocket. The two men behind him shifted, tension easing from their shoulders but not disappearing entirely. They were still ready to move if anyone in the room did something stupid.
Mateo took a slow breath and looked thoughtful for a moment, as if he had remembered something small but important.
"I almost forgot," he said. "So rude of me."
He reached into his shirt this time, fingers dipping inside the inner pocket. Murk tensed again, blade angling out just enough to catch a glint from the overhead light. Psycho tightened his grip on the bat.
Mateo pulled out a folded piece of paper.
He held it up between two fingers and let it dangle for a moment before taking a single step forward and handing it to Big Head.
Big Head took it without looking away from Mateo. The paper was thick, expensive stock. Not something bought at the corner store. He unfolded it with his thumb.
On the page, in crisp black ink, was a printed photograph.
His grandmother's house.
Same chipped paint. Same leaning fence. Same crooked mailbox that had been hit twice by kids trying to learn how to drive. The shot was taken from across the street, angled just enough to make the porch clearly visible.
Sitting on that porch, in a cheap lawn chair with a blanket over her knees, was his grandmother. Headscarf tied. Slippers on. Laughing at something off-camera.
Someone had circled her in red.
Big Head's heart didn't speed up. His breathing didn't change. Outwardly, nothing moved. But somewhere behind his ribs, something primal stood up.
"Beautiful woman," Mateo said quietly. "Strong eyes. Reminds me of my own abuela. I am sure you love her very much."
Psycho glanced at the photo, then at Big Head. Jack felt his stomach twist. Rob looked away.
"We do not hurt old ladies," Mateo went on. "Children, yes, sometimes, when business absolutely demands it and they are not as innocent as they look. Men, of course, every day. But grandmothers? No. That is a line we try not to cross."
The word try didn't go unnoticed.
"I want you to understand that what I am asking of you is not a request," Mateo said. "It is an arrangement. One that allows all of us to keep what we love intact."
Big Head folded the paper and slipped it into the pocket of his hoodie, the motion careful and controlled.
"You sending someone to her house," he said. "Or you already been."
Mateo lifted his shoulders in a half shrug. "We like to know who we are speaking to. Where they rest. Who they would die for. It keeps future conversations… efficient."
The threat hung in the middle of the room, quiet and undeniable.
Psycho's jaw clenched. "If anything happens to her—"
"If anything happens to her before the seventy-two hours is over," Mateo said, "you may assume we have decided you are more trouble than you are worth. If anything happens to her after that which is not caused by us, then that is the Lord's business, not mine."
He looked back to Big Head.
"You are the one they listen to," Mateo said. "So I will make this very simple. Kill Andre Gatewood. Burn his safety nets. Bring me proof. Do that, and your grandmother will never know my name."
"How you want proof?" Big Head asked.
Mateo smiled for real this time, small but genuine. "You are already thinking like a man worth investing in. I like that. Bring me something that cannot be faked. Something he would not give up unless he was already dead."
"What's that?" Psycho asked.
Mateo paused for a moment as if considering.
"He wears a chain," Mateo said. "Thick gold. Cross pendant. Real, not plated. Has his mother's name engraved on the back. She gave it to him when he turned eighteen. He is very proud of it. I want that chain. And I want a photograph of whatever is left of his face so there is no confusion."
Rob winced. Jack swallowed again.
"You get that done," Mateo finished, "and we will talk about the next chapter of your lives."
"The next chapter?" Jack repeated.
"Men like you do not stay small unless you are cowards," Mateo said. "If you survive this, there is room for you to grow. That is all I am saying for now."
He looked around one last time, his gaze taking in each of them individually. Murk. Jack. Rob. Psycho. Then he settled once more on Big Head.
"Three days," he said. "Starting now."
He turned and walked out of the doorway without waiting for a reply. His men stepped back onto the porch with him, scanning the street again with professional ease. The night swallowed them up, the sound of their footsteps fading into the low growl of an engine as the black Impala rolled away from the curb.
The door hung half-open, its frame splintered from the earlier impact. For several long seconds, no one spoke.
The Southside's sounds seeped back in slowly—distant music from someone's backyard, a muffled argument from down the block, a siren far off on another street like it belonged to a different city entirely.
Psycho exhaled first, the sound half laugh, half disbelief.
"So that's it?" he said. "We on a clock now."
"Looks like it," Rob said softly.
"We not doing this because he told us to," Psycho added quickly, turning toward Big Head. "We doing this because nobody comes on our side talkin' like that and walks away thinking we scared."
Jack rubbed his face. "Bro, you forget the part where he had a picture of Big's grandma on deck? You think that was a joke?"
"That's why we handle it," Psycho shot back. "So nobody ever thinks about pulling up on our people again. So they learn who they playing with."
Murk finally spoke, his voice low and even.
"He was right about one thing," Murk said. "They could have just shot through the wall and been done. The fact that he walked in here means we still got breath to move pieces."
Rob looked toward Big Head. "What you thinking, man?"
Big Head walked over to the door and pushed it slowly until it was halfway shut again. The hinges squealed. He stared at the cracked wood, at the faint outline of Mateo's handprint still visible in the dust.
Three days.
His grandmother's laughter in that photograph.
Andre Gatewood's name rolling around his mind like a bullet in a chamber.
"I'm thinking we don't ever let someone else write our story," Big Head said finally. "But right now, they holding the pen."
Psycho's eyes lit up. "So we take it back."
Big Head turned around, the weight in his gaze landing on each of them in turn.
"First thing we do," he said, "is learn everything about Andre. Where he sleeps, where he eats, where he keeps his money, who he loves. Nobody that loud don't have weaknesses. We find them, we press them, we make sure when we come, we don't miss."
Jack nodded too fast. "I can ask around. I know some people on that side—"
Big Head cut him off with a look. "You already did enough asking for now," he said. "You don't talk to nobody until I say so. The streets know your face now. That's a problem we control, not feed."
Jack's cheeks burned. He looked at the floor.
"Murk," Big Head said, "you start with what you do best. Shadow work. Find his trails. You ain't seen unless you want to be."
Murk nodded once. No ego, no questions.
"Psycho," Big Head continued, "you keep the hitters ready, but you don't swing at nothing until we got a plan. That man would love if we rushed this. We don't give him that satisfaction."
Psycho scowled, but it wasn't defiance, not really. It was frustration at being leashed. "We can't just sit still either."
"We won't," Big Head said. "We moving smart. Not scared. There's a difference."
He looked to Rob last.
"You go through the numbers," Big Head said. "Figure out how much we got liquid, how much we can move if we need extra hands or tools. If this goes wrong, we might need to disappear fast. I want to know what we can afford."
Rob swallowed. "You thinking about leaving?"
"I'm thinking about options," Big Head said. "Men that only see one road end up dead in the ditch beside it."
He walked back toward the center of the room, the boards creaking softly under his boots.
"One more thing," he added. "Nobody goes near my grandmother's house. Not even to check on her. We don't spook her. We don't bring heat to her. She lives her life like nothing changed, understood?"
Psycho nodded. Rob murmured agreement. Jack stared at the folded paper in Big Head's pocket like it was made of explosives. Murk's gaze stayed steady.
Big Head let the silence settle around them again.
"Our names ain't big enough yet for what just walked through that door," he said. "But if we survive this, they will be."
He thought of Mateo's eyes. Cold. Measuring. Amused.
"He said we already finished half a sentence," Big Head said. "We robbed their house. We stirred the pot. We made people talk."
"So what's the rest of the sentence?" Rob asked quietly.
Big Head glanced at the broken door one last time.
"We make the whole city understand one thing," he said. "The Southside ain't safe for nobody. Not them. Not Andre. Not anyone who thinks they can play on our name."
The words hung there, heavy and dangerous. A promise. A threat. A prophecy.
Outside, somewhere far off, a gunshot cracked the night.
It didn't belong to them.
Not yet.