Chapter 3

Willy Arkansas is the King of the South, but he has no idea what happened to his daughter.

Willy Arkansas stepped out of his Musk Duesenberg Model E car with black and blue paint, letting everyone know he was a man of wealth and power on this backward hill. He loved having both. He had worked all his life to have wealth and power to the point where he no longer had to get his hands dirty. He was the head of the family. The king of the Deep South, who knew where all the bodies were buried because he put most of them in the ground. He had killed a lot of folks to get to the point where his men opened the door for him as he stood there staring into the cabin.

                The Duke Boys had been hired to get his daughter back. His own flesh and blood took off in the middle of the night, trying to get to her grandfather in Omega. The fool who lived in the clouds never graced the ground by setting a foot on it and never left the flying city. All his power lay in the skies, and the old fool hated Willy.

                He didn’t mind. Willy hated him, too. It was one of the reasons he married the old fool's daughter, May. She was also great at giving him head, something she learned from the w****s in Omega. She was a means to an end. He didn’t love her. Willy wasn’t one for love but found it in his cold, dead heart for Evangeline.

                It was why he was walking toward the cabin on the cold night. He hated these mountains. It brought back many memories, but most of all, it was where Willy shot his old man down for hitting him.

                It only happened once, but once was enough for Willy.

                He was a cruel man as he stepped over the headless body of one of the boys. He was carrying firewood back to the cabin when someone jumped on him. The someone, an assassin in the night, took his head off with one clean cut but got him from behind. It was a dirty way to go, and Willy hated the idea of a cut-throat getting one of his men from behind. He thought a man should have the balls to stare his enemy in the eyes before killing them.

                It was a dirty way to go.

                Willy stopped at the top of the three steps, puffing on his long and fat cigar, looking like one of those Made Men in the North. But like all the men around him, Willy was a true-blooded Southerner who dreamed of the south rising again. He worked with the dirty Yankees in the big cities, but he wouldn’t allow them to be in his family. He hated them just like any good Southerner should.

                They thought they were better than the South, but Willy had seen the same hate for the black folks up there in the cities as he found in the depths of the south. It was why Willy ensured there were some blacks in his crew. He wanted to show the blacks they weren’t the same hate in his heart as there was in those lying Yankees.

                The smoke swirled around him as he looked at the door which was no longer there and then stepped into the cabin. He cast a big and long shadow from the headlights outside, but his men had already come rushing into the place.

                “Dead?” Willy asked, shaking his head.

                “Looks like an ambush, boss,” Johnny Indian said. Johnny was Willy’s secondhand man in this part of the south. He was a good man, quick to act, and had no problem killing. It was the kind of man Willy liked in his crew. “Might be the McCallion, sir.”

                Willy puffed more on his cigar, looking at all the blood freezing on the floor. He glanced over at the fireplace. The flames were dead, but the smoke still strolled towards the sky. The flames haven’t given up on life too long ago, which means this killing happened not less than an hour ago.

                Damn, so close.

                “Might be,” Willy said. “Also, it could be one of the Yankee families. Maybe, the Chicago Outfit.”

                “Could be, boss,” Johnny said.

                Willy watched one of his men study the only smart brother on the floor. He was looking at the knife wound as if he had seen it before.

                “What is it, Chops?”

                “This is an old trench knife, sir,” Tony Chops said, looking back at him. “Saw these all the time during the war, sir.”

                “And?”

                “Haven’ seen it used since, sir,” Chops said, standing up. “I don’ think this is families, sir. It might be another hitter. It could be from Omega. I know some of their hitters still use those blades.”

                He wasn’t sure if May got any letters to her old man before she took a long swim in the swamps. He wasn’t sure if Evangeline got one out, either. If they did, then the old fool would send his people to get Evangeline, and those hitters, as Chops put it from Omega, were a nasty crew he didn’t care to deal with right now. He didn’t want to go to war with Omega, but if the blows came, he would hit harder than those cloud heads. He would burn it all to the ground.

                His father always taught him if you were hit with a fist, come back with a gun and make sure everyone knows you’re meaner and crueler than they are; it was a lesson Willy took to heart.

                “S**t,” Willy said, puffing hard on the cigar. “Get rid of this trash.” He spun on his heels, walking back outside to his men standing around or leaning on their cars, chatting and smoking among one another.

                “Frist car,” he said to all his men, “who finds my daughter alive gets a thousand bucks in each of their pockets, got me?”

                “Sure thing, boss,” all the men said, smiling among each other and jumping into their cars like hounds of Hell put on the hunt.