Alessio turned toward her and started talking. I couldn’t hear the words through the glass, but I could tell he was being loud and aggressive. My old man would have called him an “angry addict.” Alessio was clearly the kind of man who mistook intimidation for control.
The woman shook her head once and started arguing back. Alessio grabbed her by the arm hard enough to jerk her toward him before he slapped her across the face. Her head snapped to the side from the force of it, but instead of shrinking back, she hit him right back across the mouth.
Hard enough that I swore I fucking felt it. My mouth twitched slightly. Good for her.
Alessio froze for half a second, more shocked than hurt, maybe, and the men standing around him immediately straightened like they didn’t know whether to laugh or step in. The woman looked furious now, breathing hard, her hands curled into fists at her sides while Alessio stared at her with murder in hiseyes.
He stepped toward her again, but this time one of the men near the door grabbed his shoulder and muttered something to him quietly. Alessio ripped himself free with another curse, still glaring at her before finally turning and disappearing back inside the building.
The woman stayed where she was for a second longer, rubbing at her jaw before walking off down the sidewalk without looking back once. No one followed her.
I leaned back slightly in the seat, my attention still fixed on the building as I replayed everything I’d just watched. The unlocked entrances, men high while standing guard, and Alessio putting his hands on a woman outside in full view of everyone because he thought nobody would ever challenge him.
Disorganized, sloppy, and weak.
I rested one hand against the steering wheel and kept watching the entrance another minute before starting the car.
He was on borrowed time.
And when I was done, there wouldn’t be anything left of him to prove he’d ever tried to build something at all.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Alexei
Ifollowed Alessio and tracked his movements and routines for the next couple of days, watching him long enough to learn every mistake he made. He didn’t vary his routes, didn’t change his habits, and didn’t question the faces around him. He moved like he thought no one was watching him, like the name he carried was enough to keep him safe.
I saw where he went when he needed product, where he went when he collected money, and how often he got high. Everything he touched was destroyed along the way.
By the end of it, I knew exactly where he was at every hour he ran the streets. He wasn’t careful, he wasn’t disciplined, and he wasn’t untouchable. Hewas sloppy, reckless, and already losing control of something he never should have had in the first place.
I was done watching. Tonight I ended this.
I didn’t leave the house right away. I gave it just enough time for everything to settle into place and Lucia to be asleep. Vissarion had already done his part. I knew where Alessio was and who he was with. There wasn’t anything left to figure out, and at that point, it wasn’t about information anymore. It was about ending it.
I changed, cleaned up, and walked out without saying anything to anyone. The drive was quiet. By the time I pulled up to the building again, it was already late. The street was empty in that deliberate way that came from people knowing better than to be around places like this after dark.
Nothing about the exterior had changed since the last time I watched it. There were no extra men, no added security, and no sign that anyone inside understood what kind of problem they had created for themselves.
I stayed in the car for a moment, watching the entrance and letting my eyes adjust to the darkness and any movement. Two men stood outside instead, but that didn’t improve anything. One leaned againstthe wall smoking while the other paced with his phone in his hand, more focused on the screen than the street. Neither of them checked the road, neither of them watched the door, and neither of them had any idea how exposed they were.
That made this easy.
I stepped out of the car and crossed the street at a steady pace, not rushing and not drawing attention. Places like this didn’t expect trouble to walk in through the front, and men like Alessio relied on that kind of stupidity to keep them breathing. They didn’t see me get close, and they didn’t hear me when I stepped in behind them.
Years of training as The Butcher had made this second nature. Silent footwork drilled into me since I was a boy, breath control that let me move without being heard, and the muscle memory of killing without a sound. These men never stood a chance.
The first one dropped before he could react, the blade going in clean and fast under his jaw. I let him fall and turned to the second before he understood what had happened, slamming him into the wall and cutting his throat deep enough that he wouldn’t make a sound before he slid down beside the other one.
I stepped over them and pushed the door open.
Inside, the air was thick with smoke and something sour underneath it. It was the kind of smell that came from too many people and not enough control. Product sat out in the open, not even covered, and the men inside were talking instead of paying attention to anything that mattered. A couple of the men looked up when I walked in, confusion hitting before anything else, but they didn’t recognize me and they didn’t react fast enough to make a difference.
I crossed the space between us before the first one could speak, grabbed him by the front of his shirt, and drove him into the table hard enough to break it. The blade followed through his ribs before he could draw breath to scream, and I was already moving when his body hit the floor.
The next one reached for a gun, but he was too slow. I stepped inside his reach, snapped his wrist before he could bring it up, and drove the blade into his stomach, pushing it up until his body folded in on itself.
I preferred a blade to a gun. It was more personal, more intimate.
