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He had been born into the life he ruled. His mother had been a twenty-dollar hooker who found herself knocked up. How he had survived his first three years of life, he would never understand. Desmond thought she tried to be a good mother with her lack of skills and education, but when it had become too much, she had returned to the same way of life she’d lived before his birth.

His earliest memories involved being left alone in a tiny one-room efficiency and him scourging through the cabinets for food. He had no doubt he would have starved to death if not for a child next door, who had seen him wandering around the low-income housing complex and brought him to his apartment. Jager hadn’t had much more than what he had, but what he had been blessed with was a street-smart mother who had enough compassion to keep her two children fed. After that, Jager would come and get him when he would go out to play then take him home to his place to eat before bringing him home.

Only a couple years older than him, Jager had a cunning intellect that went beyond his age. He’d taught him everything he needed to know to survive in the dog-eat-dog world they had been born into. When Jager’s mother had nearly been stabbed to death by her pimp, it had fallen to him to not only keep his mother, his little sister, and himself fed, but Desmond as well.

Desmond owed his life to Jager. He had kept him by his side rather than let him get hooked into the gangs that were controlling the city. They had learned to make their own way, banding together and fighting their way up the ranks of the crime-infested streets, delivering drugs from low-level pushers to bigger pushers. Then, as they grew older, they dealt small quantities to larger and larger quantities.

Making their way up the ranks didn’t come without repercussions. They had to become as bloodthirsty as those who tried to take what was theirs. There wasn’t a day, or night, when they didn’t have to fight to survive another day. The one thing he and Jager had in common was the cut-throat mentality to live at whatever the cost. They began to be feared, and those weaker than them started coming to them for protection. When the hookers started begging Jager and him for their protection, they did offer them safety while taking a lower percentage of their profits than their current pimps, and without the beatings and cruel servitude they had to endure.

Resentment and jealousy began to put a target on their backs. Jager was the first one to pay the price of their status when his sister had been kidnapped and he was blackmailed. Jager and Desmond had gone to the meeting to get her back at all cost, willing to lose their life to free Ariel. They had underestimated Jager’s ruthlessness when the kidnappers wanted to show what damage they had inflicted on the girl.

There was nothing left of her to save.

It was a tactical error they had paid with their deaths. Afterward, Jager had earned the nickname King by showing no mercy to anyone who stood in their way.

Learning from Ariel’s death, they would select those who could place a wall of protection around them. King picked Henry as muscle, using him to keep the women safe on the streets, then opened a strip club to take them off the streets. Next, he convinced a biker gang to do the real dirty work. King and he stopped dealing drugs, using the Predators’ motorcycle club to gain leverage and monitor for a cut of the profits.

He had just turned sixteen when a dirty cop who King had paid off became greedy. King had bought Desmond a brand-new Mustang for his birthday. King had just taken him outside to see the car when the cop had pulled in. Seeing the car, he had demanded it as payment for keeping his mouth shut. King had laughed in his face, and the cop left with a warning that they would regret not giving him the car.

Two days later, Desmond had been closing the strip club when he turned to find someone behind him. Desmond recognized the man as the cop’s brother. Before he could say a word, he found himself slashed in the chest. Bleeding, he started fighting back, the life-and-death struggle taking them to the ground as each fought viciously to stay alive.

Gaining control, Desmond plunged the knife into the chest above. Then he managed to stand, staring down at the dead man whom he had just killed. Hearing the sounds of sirens, he took off.

The Predators had hidden him until King managed to get him out of the country. Killing a cop’s brother, and the reward for his capture, made it impossible to stay without spending the rest of his life in prison.