Nolan withdrew the massive knife with practiced efficiency, his expression cold and detached.
He flicked the blade sharply. Red and white matter splattered across the dusty floor, leaving the weapon pristine once more.
Truly a master-crafted Catachan weapon.
It hadn't required much effort on Nolan's part. Sergei's short life had ended with surgical precision.
Nolan wasn't a murderous person by nature. He simply wanted a peaceful, quiet life. But sometimes, achieving peace required staining your hands with blood. There was nothing else to be done about it.
The experience he got from the simulation, training under Sly Marbo, had changed him. Those lessons stayed in his bones, in his breath, in the way he moved.
Using his military boot, Nolan nudged Sergei's corpse, rolling it slightly to reveal what the dead man had been hiding.
A phone, clutched in the hand tucked behind his back. The recording function was still running quietly.
Apparently, Mr. Sergei had failed to understand his mistake until the very end.
Nolan bent down and retrieved the phone. He also stripped the corpse of anything that could prove identity: wallet, keys, and what little cash remained. Then he carefully cleaned up traces of his presence at the scene.
He turned and left without looking back.
It was past midnight now.
The sky, which had remained bright during the first half of the night, gradually darkened as thick clouds rolled in. The air grew heavy with moisture, carrying the damp smell of approaching rain.
A downpour was coming.
Along the tidal banks of the East River, Warehouse 10 sat facing the Brooklyn Bridge, hidden among countless similar industrial buildings.
On paper, anyone investigating would find this was simply a small storage facility. It supposedly held idle equipment for an obscure Manhattan-based company.
Under layers of corporate camouflage, as long as one paid attention to the timing and dress of people entering and exiting, even police officers would assume it was just another warehouse with legitimate security guards.
Vladimir Ranskahov.
It was with this ingenious setup that he'd rapidly gained favor with the gang's leadership, becoming one of the Tracksuit Mafia's most prominent lieutenants.
However, recent times had brought dramatic changes to the underworld.
These shifts had pushed Vladimir into dire straits. His former glory was fading.
Did criminals need order?
To some extent, yes.
The unwritten rules of gang culture helped most criminals escape legal punishment. They also prevented excessive friction between rival organizations, protecting everyone's economic interests.
But when those unspoken rules became codified, transformed into insurmountable mandates enforced by violence, Vladimir had made a disturbing discovery.
His degree of freedom was now less than that of ordinary New York citizens.
Yet Vladimir had no way to retreat.
Above him loomed the gang leadership, strategizing ruthlessly. And above them, the even more terrifying underground king.
Below him were gang members waiting for their cut, while criminal profits decreased year after year.
In this steel jungle, as a middle-management lieutenant of the Tracksuit Mafia, Vladimir could only struggle to survive.
Inside the brightly lit warehouse, wooden crates were stacked nearly to the ceiling.
In an open space surrounded by these towers of boxes, Vladimir sat cross-legged on a table, his expression serious and focused. He counted stack after stack of old, worn bills.
This was criminal profit he'd soon turn over to leadership. If even one bill went missing, fierce accountability would follow from the bosses above.
Therefore, dedicated Vladimir didn't dare show negligence. He always handled the counting personally.
Because so much money was involved, and to prevent anyone from succumbing to temptation, Vladimir hadn't brought any additional manpower. Only two trusted confidants, brothers named Ivan and Nikolai, stood guard outside the warehouse.
His phone vibrated in his jacket pocket.
Vladimir blinked his dry eyes several times and pulled out the device. He twisted his neck, trying to relax tense muscles, then glanced at the message. A weird laugh escaped his lips.
"I really miss that crazy, innocent youth..."
The message was from his cousin Sergei. No words accompanied it, only a large photo of Sergei celebrating enthusiastically with two naked women.
Vladimir smiled and pocketed the phone.
After anyone's first major crime, hormones with nowhere else to go always rushed toward two things: women and drugs.
Eventually, once the means of crime grew more routine and the emotional numbness set in, nothing would evoke those feelings anymore.
One day, Sergei would understand this too.
Vladimir's smile faded. He frowned suddenly.
His hand moved instinctively toward the submachine gun resting on the table beside him.
Something about the environment wasn't quite right.
And it was too quiet in the warehouse.
Where were the sounds of Ivan and Nikolai smoking cigarettes, chatting, their footsteps during patrol routes?
"Ivan? Nikolai?"
Vladimir called softly, listening intently for a response.
When his call received only silence, Vladimir pulled the gun's bolt with an expressionless face. He quickly rolled off the table and crouched in the corner formed by several wooden crates.
The overhead warehouse lights remained warm and bright, but cold sweat began beading on Vladimir's forehead. Even his palm, gripping the gun handle, grew slick with moisture.
He was forced to wipe his hands repeatedly on his pants to prevent the weapon from slipping at a critical moment.
Silence stretched out.
Vladimir swallowed hard and shouted into the eerily quiet warehouse.
"Friend! If Ivan and Nikolai are still alive, please spare them! They're just men trying to make a living! They have families to care for!"
His voice echoed off the metal walls.
"Do you need something? If I can solve your problem, I definitely won't refuse! The cash on the table, if you're not afraid of gang revenge, you can take it freely! If you think it's too little, there are ten kilograms of pure product hidden in the black crate in the corner. High purity. Worth millions on the street!"
For a moment, only faint echoes answered him.
Vladimir was certain now. The intruder definitely wasn't police.
If not a professional killer sent by a rival gang, then it must be one of those mysterious vigilantes who'd been appearing lately.
THUD. THUD. THUD.
Suddenly, a round object roughly the size of a basketball rolled out from a narrow warehouse aisle.
It tumbled and flipped across the concrete floor, finally coming to rest at Vladimir's feet.
One instinctive glance.
Vladimir's face transformed, all color draining away.
He squeezed his eyes shut, grief forcing itself through clenched teeth.
It was a human head.
A bloody, severed head with familiar features.
Ivan's head. Both eyes pierced through by thin iron nails.
And wrapped around the tail end of each nail protruding from the eye sockets were several strips of toilet paper, now soaked red and plastered to the dead man's face like some grotesque Halloween costume.
Absurd yet terrifying. Fear breeding more fear.
Vladimir's breathing grew ragged. He suddenly opened his bloodshot eyes wide.
Through gritted teeth, he roared at the darkness.
"I swear in God's name! The Tracksuit Mafia will hunt you down forever! We'll hunt your family! Kill everything you care about! Even if all you have is a dog, we'll find it, butcher it, and deliver the pieces to you personally! Wait for death, you bastard!"
BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG!
Vladimir, consumed by rage and grief, thrust his gun barrel past the edge of the wooden crate. He pulled the trigger and fired blindly, bullets spraying in every direction.
Hot shell casings ejected from the weapon, occasionally bouncing off his face. He flinched but kept firing.
Every time his eyes swept across that horrific severed head, complex emotions of sorrow and fury stripped away his rationality.
The submachine gun's magazine emptied with a hollow click.
Vladimir gasped violently, his fingertips trembling as they fumbled at his waist for a fresh magazine.
But at that moment, an iron nail wrapped with toilet paper at its tail shot out silently from the gap between two wooden crates nearby.
It pierced the back of Vladimir's hand with perfect accuracy.
Vladimir screamed. The gun tumbled from his suddenly nerveless palm.
Before he could react, more iron nails flew through the air like bullets.
They struck Vladimir's face, one after another, punching through flesh and embedding three inches deep into bone.
Blood poured down his face in rivulets as Vladimir staggered backward, his screams echoing through the warehouse.