K had arrived in Charlotte a day late.  He was alone, sullen, and limping from a badly bruised leg, and the gruff question of “where’s L?” from his boss, along with his other henchmen’s confusion and observations that L should be with him, were answered by him chucking the files he’d filched from the FBI to them, and then his gun, which conspicuously had a bullet missing from the round in its chamber.  He’d been allowed a day to grieve before his boss sent along his daughter Gina to cajole him out of the room K had been given in the mansion the gang owned near Charlotte with the news that K had been promoted for his loyalty.

This had apparently meant a feast, and K had been in absolutely no mood to go.  Even the fact that his boss’s elusive daughter, whose existence was known only to the highest rankers (and K, because she was the one who'd lured him into the cartel in the first place) was his girlfriend and she happily snuggled up to him on his bed did nothing to lift him out of his funk.  It was a month before he was functioning normally again.

The lack of functioning normally, however, did not mean that K spent a month of not functioning at all.  He refused to go on all but the smallest and simplest of errands during that time, didn’t speak much, and nobody saw him smile.  It was also obvious that the only two people he trusted were his boss and his girlfriend, though the couple kept that secret even from her father, let alone anybody else.  By mid-April, he’d found somebody to shoot against on Monday nights, and game and film nights were spent with Gina, usually kissing.  Drag racing had been replaced by refining his techniques to hotwire cars under the tutelage of one of his boss’s most trusted men.  Friday he stayed alone.  Dumpling night was sacred, and nothing was going to change that.

By May, though, he was back on the streets with a little ring of his own, taking orders direct from either the boss or the boss’s second-in-command Gonzalez.  It was largely territorial scuffles or chasing people up for money they owed, though K seemed to prefer the former and often returned a bit bloodied up.

“Can’t Gonzalez do it?” Gina complained one muggy night at the end of summer.  She’d spent a fair amount of the afternoon patching up K’s busted lip and cuts all over his arms – even though she was more or less seventeen, she’d thought learning how to turn somebody into a punch bag a much better life skill than learning how to correctly stitch up small, open wounds, but despite her ineptitude, she still insisted on taking care of K when he was injured because “I’m your girlfriend, you dunce, and that’s what girlfriends do.”

“Your dad asked me to,” K responded gruffly.  His lip was throbbing and he really wanted to touch it and pinch the pain and swelling out, but Gina kept smacking his hands away every time they went near his face.  For some reason, while he wasn’t allowed to touch the cut himself, Gina was allowed to kiss him.  Or poke it.  Or his lips from time to time.

“Yeah, but Gonzalez handles all the big drugs shipments,” Gina pointed out.  “And this handover is in New Mexico, for the love of God, and in October, so it’s not like they don’t have time to prepare something else.  You’re fifteen and you will get shot.”

“The whole reason I’m going is so your dad doesn’t get shot.”

Gina frowned, hand hovering just beside K’s face.  He took advantage of the distraction to scoot a little further away from her so she wouldn’t prod his split lip again.  “Why’s the old fart going?”

“Apparently other cartels are eyeing this shipment up.  It’s been a bit of time since somebody attacked your dad, and Gonzalez told me partners bringing it up through Mexico have been doing shady deals with the boss’s rivals, so your old man wants us there for extra security.”

“I still don’t see why Gonzalez can’t go instead of you.”

K sighed and caved a little, tilting his head to lean it on Gina’s shoulder.

“Because he’s gonna be gone the best part of a week, and everyone knows that the rest of the gang will listen to Gonzalez more happily than they will to you or me because he’s practically six hundred and we’re both toddlers.”

Gina laughed.  It was a pretty, tinkling sound, and K was going to miss it.  He let her finish before leaning up and kissing her, but some part of him still felt incredibly guilty that he was going to be leaving her behind.

K and Gonzalez didn’t get on terribly well.  K wasn’t sure who had decided that the other was utterly repugnant first, but he knew that a lot of Gonzalez’s hatred of him was because the boss held K in just as high esteem as he did Gonzalez, and Gonzalez was almost triple K’s age.

He was also almost triple K’s size – an absolute giant of a Hispanic man with shoulders so broad he couldn’t get through a standard-sized doorway (K had definitely not helped his case with Gonzalez by being unable to help laughing every time Gonzalez had to go through a door sideways because it was the only way he could fit) and biceps possibly bigger than K’s head.  He was, as K had said to L when the man had first arrived in the cartel, not the kind of person you’d want to wrestle with.  L had wondered out loud – and in Gonzalez’s hearing – whether the huge lumps of muscle covering the man’s body made him bulletproof.  Either way, it was easy to see why he was so high up the organisation.  K suspected that even the marines would think twice before trying to take him on in a fight.

“You screw this up and you’ll wish you were dead,” the man grunted, almost cornering K in his room as the boy polished the barrel of the gun he’d decided to take with him.  “If this doesn’t go perfectly and you come back alive, I’m gonna tear you apart myself.”

K barely spared him a glance.  “Failure isn’t in my dictionary, don’t worry.”

He flinched when a dent appeared in the wall by his head.  K tried not to swallow too obviously: that wall had been solid brick and Gonzalez had put a small hole in it with just his fist.

“You’re a little tot playing dress up with the big boys,” he sneered.

K forced a confident smirk onto his face.  “And guess what, big boy?  This is all going to go off without a hitch.  Probably because you won’t be there.”

Gonzalez looked like he wanted to spit in his face.  K’s grin spread so far he almost felt sickened by it, but they were supposed to be leaving that evening to c