Battered. The right definition to describe the condition of the face of an eight-year-old ragged boy who has now been cornered by a group of adult men wearing black suits uniform, complete with their round hats.
Their furious faces continued to terrorize the poor boy's mind. But what made the horde of men in suits grew furious was the expression of the boy who had been cornered. The blue-eyed pupils stared back the pack of men in suits without showing any fear. Even though the boy knew, he would not win against them anyway.
The boy attacked one of them, the nearest from where he at, hitting the man's lower abdomen repeatedly, hoping he could defeat him. But what can an eight-year-old boy do with that small fist? The boy easily slammed a few meters back after getting a brutal kick landed on his tiny chest.
The hordes of men in black suits laughed with their annoying smirks, laughed at their prey who could not do anything. But the laughter did not last long, when the boy with full persistence got back up, he wiped the fresh blood that came out from his mouth with his small hand and tried to strike into the horde of men in black suits for the uncounted time.
"Just surrender, boy. Return the item that you stole from our boss and pray that our boss will forgive you."
Fall, bleed, rise, fall, bleed, rise.
It keeps repeating, until the boy no longer has the strength to get back up. Seeing him lying down, someone in the gang of men in suits approached, crouching to align their positions and attaching the end of the revolver-type pistol to the poor boy's head.
"If you listened to what my friend said, you don't have to suffer this much." he said in a slightly sympathetic tone. The man put his finger at the trigger of the gun, "Now answer my question, boy. Do you want to return the gold watch to me and continue to survive, or do you prefer to die while still fighting for what you have achieved with sweat and blood, even though it's not yours?"
The boy who was exhausted looked into the eyes of the man in the jacket who put the end of the gun's barrel to his head, inhaled deep oxygen and spat in the man's face. With saliva mixed with blood clinging to his face, the man in a suit laughed very loud, making his friends at the back put on a confused expression.
The man in the suit wiped his face that covered by saliva with a little bit of blood mixed in there and then hugged the boy who had been tortured by his friends. Or in other words, his subordinates.
The man stood up and turned around, staring at the faces of his friends with a big smile. "I think we have a new member. And this time, he is still very young."
The man turned back to the boy, "Hey kid? Do you have a place to stay?"
The boy shook his head, still staring back at the man in the black suit with a feeling of wanting to fight back.
"As I thought, you must be one of the abandoned children of civil war victims that wandering around here. From now on, you will be our youngest member. Maybe it's still too early to say, but later, I'm sure, you will become the most respected Mafia. I can see it from the look in your eyes."
"Take care of him. Clean the wound, give him food. And after his stomach is full, teach him everything he needs to know." the man said before walking away from the boy and his friends. "Oh, and one more thing. Now your name is ... Mmmm, let me think about it for a second. I need to give you a strong name ... Maybe, David? Yeah. David Stockholm. That's sounds really bad, in a good way, of course. Hahahahahaha."
The boy, who was almost dying, stared at the back of the man in the jacket who was walking farther and farther away, with his left hand in his cloth pants pocket and his right hand casually twirling a revolver-type pistol. The boy continued to stare at the boss of the men in the suit until a hard blow from a blunt object landed behind his head, causing him to collapse into unconsciousness.
Duakkkkk ...
"Looks like we have to switch professions to become baby sitters for the next few years." said a man from a group of men in black suits while carrying the unconscious boy on his back like a worthless garbage bag.
Another person patted the man's back. "Take it easy. Boss has never misjudged anyone so far. After all he is Hendrick Brasco, the cruelest mafia in this era. Maybe for the century."
And that's where David Stockholm's journey to becoming the most respected mafia began.
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**[ Nineteen years later]**
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With an intense gaze, regular breathing and heartbeat. On the sixth floor of a skyscraper parking lot David noticed the movements of someone in a hotel room exactly two thousand meters from where he was through a CheyTac Intervention .408, American-made sniper-rifle, within a maximum radius of two thousand five hundred meters.
David inhaled and exhaled slowly, trying to keep his heart rate calm.
The target is a bald-headed fat man who is now having conversation with his collagues. It had been about thirty minutes for David to watch them, waiting for the right moment to make a hole in the fat man's forehead.
David is still trying to regulate his heartbeat. Of course, it is very difficult to maintain the position of holding a weapon weighing fourteen kilograms at the height of the sixth floor of the building that long.
Still trying to be patient until the vibrations of the cell phone start trying to break his focus. David tried his best to ignore the cellphone which kept vibrating in the pocket of his pants. Until the long-awaited moment finally arrived.
The fat man--the target--walk towards the window to recieving a phone call. In that position, David can very easily pierce his head.
The fat man narrowed his eyes; a reflex he did when the reflection of the small light from a sniper-rifle's scope shot right into the pupil. And a second later, there were only the scream from his collagues.
David put his rifle on the floor and took the cellphone that was still ringing inside his pocket. After sliding the green icon up with his thumb, David put the mobile phone's screen right in front of his ear.
"Speak." David asked, packing his daring shotgun back into the suitcase quickly and precisely. "Tell them to wait. I'll be there in five minutes."
David hung up with Lucy, his personal secretary. After putting the briefcase back in the trunk of an Aston Martin DB10 which is worth three million and one hundred thousand dollars, David pressed the start button to start the engine and then stepped on the gas pedal slowly, leaving the parking area located on the sixth floor of that skyscraper building.
It didn't take long until David arrived in front of the entrance to an another skyscraper building with a logo that reads Stockholm Corp. large in the front of the building. Someone opened the door of David's car with several others lowered their head forty-five degrees to him.
The atmosphere inside the building remained the same, everyone stood and bowed forty-five degrees to David as he passed. Some of them complained silently because they missed a valuable opportunity to look at the CEO's adonis face. Lucy, who had been waiting for David in front of the meeting room, opened the door politely. The woman in tight clothes breathed as much air as possible as David walked past her, trying to take a sip of the pleasure of her own boss who always managed to burn up her sexual desire, even though David did not do anything to her yet.
Although until now Lucy has not managed to make David want to touch her beautiful body. Bad rumors are spreading among employees about the CEO of Stockholm Corp. is a lover of the same gender, but that rumors are not affect the charm of the Greek God; David.
David sat in his chair, in front of dozens of investors who came from all over the world calmly and very professionally, showing the charisma of an elite in the business world. Make anyone who saw him would not realize that David Stockholm, a young adonis-faced millionaire who is adored by every women actually is the most respected mafia in this era.