Chapter 1 - The Weakest Link
The rain fell in sheets over the concrete neon-lit industrial district, washing away the grease and grit of the city. Inside a dimly lit tavern three blocks from the Wolfe family’s auto-body yard, Mason Wolfe sat alone in a corner booth, drowning his panic in amber liquor.
His hands, still stained with motor oil and grease, trembled violently against the glass. He kept glancing at the door every time the rusty bell above it chimed.
Eight hours had passed since the confrontation at the ICU hallway. His brothers had laughed off the "government dog’s" threat, heading back to their compound to celebrate another successful extortion racket. But Mason couldn't erase the image of my eyes—the cold, void-like stare of a man who looked at human beings not as threats, but as structural weak points to be dismantled.
A shadow fell over his table.
Mason gasped, reaching for the snub-nosed revolver tucked into his jacket.
Before his fingers could even graze the leather holster, a hand like an iron vise clamped around his wrist, driving his knuckles violently into the sticky wood of the table. The pain was immediate, sharp, and paralyzing.
I slid into the booth across from him, my face shrouded in the darkness of a low-slung baseball cap and a damp tactical jacket.
"You should never drink on duty, Mason," I said quietly, my tone conversational, almost gentle. "It slows your reaction time by point-four seconds. In my former line of work, point-four seconds is the difference between a closed casket and coming home."
"Let go of me, you son of a bitch!" Mason hissed through gritted teeth, sweat glistening on his pale forehead. "My brothers will slaughter you! Dominic will rip your head off!"
"Dominic isn't here," I replied, applying just enough pressure to his wrist bones to make his knees buckle under the table. "Neither is your father. Right now, it's just you, me, and the ghost of the woman you helped hold down while your family used a hammer on her."
"I didn't do it!" Mason squealed, his eyes brimming with pathetic tears. "I was just at the door! I told them it was too much! I told Dad she was a martial artist, that she’d talk if she woke up—"
"Quiet," I commanded softly.
The air in the booth instantly grew ten degrees colder. Mason snapped his jaw shut, shuddering under the intensity of my gaze.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small, encrypted recording device, placing it on the table between us. Beside it, I laid seven rifle cartridges, neatly lined up in a row.
"These are 7.62x51mm NATO rounds," I murmured, touching the tip of the first bullet. "This one is for Dominic. The second is for Julian. The third is for Hector. The fourth, fifth, and sixth are for your remaining brothers. The seventh is for your father."
Mason stared at the bullets, swallowed hard, and looked up with a trembling lip. "What about... what about the eighth?"
"There is no eighth round, Mason," I said, leaning closer until he could smell the faint scent of rain and gun oil on my collar. "Because you're going to buy your life tonight. You are going to tell me every location, every corrupt cop on your father's payroll, and every piece of evidence they used to wipe my house clean. Or I drop these seven rounds into your brothers, and I leave you alive to take the fall for all of it when Victor realizes who sold them out."
Mason’s breath hitched. He looked at the recording device, then back at my eyes. He saw no mercy, no doubt, and no hesitation—only a lethal equation waiting to be executed.
"Okay! Okay!" Mason sobbed, breaking completely. "The bleach... Detective Miller gave us the industrial cleaner! He erased the traffic cam footage from the intersection! And the ledger... Dad keeps the payoff ledger in the safe behind the painting in the back office of the yard!"
I pressed the record button on the device. "Start from the beginning, Mason. Speak clearly. Every name. Every date. Give me the Wolfe Pack on a silver platter."
For the next twenty minutes, Mason poured his guts out, weeping as he dismantled the empire his father had spent thirty years building through violence and intimidation.
When he finished, I retrieved the recorder, stood up, and gathered six of the bullets from the table, leaving a single cartridge standing upright in front of Mason's half-empty glass.
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"What's this?" Mason whispered, looking at the solitary bullet.
"That's your souvenir," I said, slipping into the shadow of the tavern. "When your father finds out what happened tonight, you're going to wish I used it on you."
