Alan, the Champion — Chapter 19 — Under My Protection
The two of them recover and go home. Now under Alan's protection.
Before he was King, he was cannon fodder, a convict, a killer. At thirteen, he ran grown men.
The two of them went to our doctors, recovered, and went back home.
I sent some cash to both of them. It wasn't payment or an apology. It was just what I could do in the time I had before disappearing from Marélia.
And before I left, I gave one last order. The order reached every corner: the neighborhood, the Banca, the top brass, the council up top.
Kim and Jack were under my protection.
Outside everybody's jurisdiction. Any problem with those two, the person came to settle it with me, no matter what it was. Nobody laid a finger on those kids. Not the cops I paid, not the crime I ran. Nobody.
I didn't explain why. A king doesn't explain.
What I didn't tell anybody was how much that order was going to cost me.
Because those two went looking for trouble all the time. All the time. You can't imagine the amount of problems I had to put out, over the years, just to keep that word standing. Fights with people from the Baixada. Fights with sons of important people. Fights with my own men, who didn't understand why two little punks could hit anybody and walk away.
Every time, the answer was the same. They're mine. Leave it to me.
There was one year when a boss from the new Baixada — the one that formed from the pieces of the old one — put a price on those two's heads. It wasn't personal. Kim and Jack had broken a few of his guys at a party, and he needed to answer so he wouldn't look weak in front of his own men. I understood the logic. I invented half that logic.
I went to him in person. Didn't bring a gun, didn't bring men. Just sat down across from him and told him those two kids were my business, and that if a single hair on their heads fell, I'd treat it like they'd come at me directly.