Manhattan: In Love with the Infamous King

Nolan POV The four of us are sitting in my penthouse suite lounging on my modular white sofa while staring at the tv with the list of applicants. I fight the urge to fight back an eye roll at the next one that appears on the screen. Ryker’s idiotic face fills half of the screen with his resume on the other half. Victoria, or Tori for short, lets out a scoff while Trent and Phillip just give each other a glance before laughing out loud. “Does that kid ever stop?” Trent speaks up as we all know who Ryker is. Ryker has been trying to be our sniper, our Ace, for years. And for a while back there, we thought maybe he could have done it if he wasn’t a terrible shot. His resume is full of s**t. There’s no way in hell he’s done half of those things because if he did, those missions would have gone down a lot differently. I move on with the next applicant, but I can tell everyone is tired of looking at them. Trent, our Jack, is texting some girl about the party tonight, clearly not paying attention. Man-w***e. Tori, our Queen, is actively participating but she leans over to lay her head down. Phillip, our Ten, is on his laptop monitoring our security while in our meeting. Sighing, I stand up and the rest follow suit. “Let’s just end it here today.” “Nolan. There are just not any good applicants right now,” Tori stated with concern in her voice. She knows first hand how hard I have built this gang from the ground up. “Did you guys hear The Whisper shot down ten men in Taiwan last week? He disappeared without a trace.” Trent wiggles his eyes, grows in delight of his story. “I have tried to reach out to him, Nolan. His firewall is intense, even for me.” Phillip lets out a disappointed breath. “It’s fine. Keep trying for now, but we need a sniper if we are going to take this next client.” I gave them a hard-eyed look, so they knew to take this seriously before turning on my heels and heading towards my office down the hall. Tori’s soft footsteps can be heard behind me as she follows me through the long hallway until we reach my corner office. When we walk in, you can see the rest of NYC through my floor to ceiling window walls, all bullet proof. “Find out anything you can with your connections in Taiwan. We need to know everything we can about The Whisper. Gangs across the world are trying to recruit him and I refuse to be beat to it.” I state calmly as I run my left hand through by pitch black hair. “That’s not the reason you want him.” She says back to me. “You need to let it go.” “Would you be able to?” I whip back at her. She ponders for a moment before shaking her head and heading out of the office to get ready for tonight. We own one of the hottest clubs in NYC, and it’s a great cover to meet potential clients. Trent pops in next. “Hey man, are you good?” He’s my best friend and I don’t know where I would be without him. “Yeah, I’m fine.” “C’mon man, I’ve known you since we were like six. What is it?” He pesters me further because he knows that I’ll lose my temper eventually if we don’t talk about it now. “What the hell are we going to do? We have looked the past year and a half for this guy who is supposed to have like a god given gift with an M82, but no one has even seen this guy’s face.” Trent nods in understanding. “I know you feel like you owe this guy something, but if he wanted to collect on it, he would have came by now.” Trent gives his usual response while I shake my head promptly. “I don’t want this hanging over me. We end this and we end this now.” Alex POV I pack up my laptop at the dismissal of class and make my way across Columbia University’s campus. When I reach the coffee shop where I’m meeting my friend Kennedy, I go up to the barista and place my order for an iced caramel macchiato. Towards the back end of the coffee shop, she waves me down. Setting my laptop tote down, she instantly starts raving about her 21st birthday tonight. “You have to come!” “I would love to celebrate with you, but you know I’m playing catch up.” I give a decent frown to show how upset I am. “Just come for an hour! I met this really cute guy the other day and he can get us into the Royal Flush Club!” She sequels a little on the loud side and I try and not roll my eyes at her. It’s no secret that the members of the Royal Flush are dangerous people, but that only made people more curious about their night club. I have heard how provocative it is, with the essentially half naked women and men dancing on poles inside and outside one of the rooftops in Manhattan. Having no interest to party it up, I’m quite quick to turn it down. “Kennedy, I’m not 21 yet!” I give a small smile before she squeals again, but this time at the door. A young handsome Latino man walks in with a pair of faded dark jeans and a white t-shirt. He comes towards us as Kennedy call him closer. I make sure my back is to the wall as he approaches and gives Kennedy a giant hug. “Alex, this is Trent! Trent, Alex.” He flashes a huge smile at me before I return with a small one. “Baby, convince her to come with us tonight!” She coos at him and I shake my head. “I’m 20 so not exactly club friendly.” I put my hands up in my defense and then promptly grabbing my laptop tote to head out. He glances at me again before focusing his attention back to Kennedy. I don’t look back at him and head straight home. I live all the way in Brooklyn so it takes me a bit to get home, but when I make it there, I place my finger on the hidden keypad before it unlocks and I enter. My house is a decently sized warehouse loft with tons of bricks as a part of its layout. It is open concept with the kitchen facing the living room with light brown wooden furnishings. I walk up the bronze metal stairs to set my laptop tote down before turning on my pc. Stepping into my large walk-in closet, I change into a crop tank top and short shorts. Checking my messages, I am notified of Ten’s attempt to hack into my database again. I’m not exactly surprised, a lot of the black market world has tried to hack me for the past year. Ten, however, has always been closest to breaking into it. Writing a few extra lines of code, I make sure to block his future attempts. He’s persistent though. I wonder what he wants. Not thinking about it too much, I head back down to my living area and head to my small gym to work out. After an hour of practice and work out, my phone rings and I pick it up to hear Kennedy screaming at me. “Alex, you are coming out tonight! C’mon, for me!” I walk back to my room as I listen to her whine to me about how she only turns 21 once, yeah yeah yeah. A notification on my computer screen catches my attention. It’s a job request. I put Kennedy on speaker phone and continue your to answer her with my typical “I know” and “Yeah.” The picture pops up and it’s the guy from the coffee shop with a name “The Jack - $500,000” Crap. “Fine, Kennedy. I will go! Geez!” I respond to her as I walk over to my closet to pick something out for tonight. She squeals loudly before making plans, saying goodbye, and hanging up. I reach for my very simple mid length black backless dress with sleeves. Going over to my screen, I click “Reject.” As much as I would love to take the job, it’s a little too close to my home base, but I can’t exactly let Kennedy get caught in some gang retaliation. And lord knows I would never be able to convince her to not go to one of the most exclusive clubs in the city on her 21st birthday. I make my way to the bathroom and take a long hot shower before starting on some light makeup. Kennedy can really pick them, seriously, The Jack? A couple of hours later, I pull up to meet Kennedy at the front of the building where the club is located at. She’s already there in a white dress, well barely. I swear it looks she’s swearing string for clothes, but thankfully her “Birthday Girl” sash covers up most of her cleavage. We bypass some people to get into the lobby and see Trent emerge from a private elevator on the other side. He comes up to us and gives Kennedy a slobbering kiss. “Happy birthday baby.” He says as he pulls up a bag of Tiffany’s in her face. Oh god, he’s one of those. She, of course, loves it. I have to remind myself that she’s my oldest friend because otherwise I don’t know if I would be able to handle her all the time. There’s five of us girls and Trent leads us to the private elevator that opens up to the club. It’s packed and there’s people making out, dancing, and seriously strip teasing. Yeah, I should find new friends. But I’m stuck here now, so I might as well do what I came here to do. I know what you must be thinking, why would a sniper of my caliber be here? The simple answer is it gets lonely, very lonely. Kennedy has been my friend since before I chose this life and it would feel weird to abandon her. I am nice to her other friends and they invite me to things, I just hardly ever go. She’s been through it with me during my dark times, and I’ll stand by her now when this i***t might get her killed. Maybe I should just accepted the deal, it would have been easier for me to shoot him than risk exposure, but then I would have to be there for Kennedy for the aftermath. Everyone is dancing around and I can see men and women staring at us. I’m not surprised. Kennedy is really beautiful with light blonde hair that goes her chest and mesmerizing blue eyes. I, on the other hand have pitch black hair and brown eyes. One by one, all of Kennedy’s friends get asked to go dance or grab a drink, but I refuse any offers I receive. Instead I go out to take scan of the city on the outdoor part of the club. Looking up and towards the center of the building, I see two men on the terrace way above us staring at the party below. I glance away excitedly like I’m actually interested and fascinated to be in this club. It works out well as Kennedy and them think I’m having a blast. Before an hour has slipped past, Kennedy and her group of friends are riding that tipsy drunk to the fullest while I sip on my club sodas. I keep an eye out and observe in where I deem the most safe spot. This corner at the bar of the club where you can see everyone but not everyone can see you. It’s also too hard for anyone to shoot at you from the outside at this angle. A man sits next to me and he starts to stare like he recognizes me. “Can I help you?” I say in a neutral tone. I’m in public and I can’t exactly use my normal chilling tone with him. He looks away a little bit, but he’s angsty. “Are you Alex Kane?” I blink, a little surprised. That’s how you act normal right when a stranger knows your name. So I turn to him and nod to him. “Wow, I’m a huge fan of your thesis of securities programming at Columbia.” Oh he’s just an intellect. Rare to find one of those in this type of setting. “I’m Phillip, Phillip Hayes.” I look at him and nod. “So that’s how you know what I look like.” He seems caught off guard with my response and he gives me a questioning look before standing up to face me. I give him a chuckle. “2015 Hackathon.” His eyes widen as he seems to realize that I recognize him too. He extends his hand and I give him a handshake. “Though I prefer to keep my life private.” He nods in understanding, hacker code. “My apologies. I had to know who you were after I read it. You are definitely not what I expected“ He looks around and makes contact with someone in the crowd though I don’t look in that direction. “How do you mean?“ I say while searching the crowd for any abnormal movements. “Well you were 17 when you wrote it and well you’re .. you’re .. “ he trails off and I know what he wants to say, but he’s too embarrassed to say it out loud. “A girl?” I finish for him before I stand up as I see Kennedy and the rest of the gang come towards us. He nods sheepishly while Trent and a very attractive female come up to us. He seems to know them well. I wonder if it's them, the Royal Flush. With a intimidating and secretive King, the seductive tactical Queen, the tradesman Jack, and the hacker Ten, they make up the elite members of the Royal Flush Gang. This can't be a coincidence.