Chapter 4 - The Judgment
Outside the refrigeration office, in the dim hallway of the slaughterhouse, the reckoning was waiting.
Enzo had dragged Vittorio back down the hall and thrown him onto his knees beneath a row of rusted, empty meat hooks. Vittorio was shaking violently, tears streaming down his face as he looked up at me with pleading eyes.
"Boss! Please! Twenty years! I gave twenty years of my life to this syndicate!" Vittorio wailed, grabbing at the hem of my wool coat. "You can't kill me over a municipal clerk! She was going to ruin us all!"
I pulled my coat free from his trembling grip, stepping back and lighting a fresh cigar with steady hands. The orange ember glowed brightly in the damp, freezing air.
"You didn't just target a municipal clerk, Vittorio," I said, exhaling a thin cloud of blue smoke toward the ceiling. "You targeted a mother. You terrified a seven-year-old child and forced her to walk through a freezing rainstorm to find a monster, hoping that monster would show her more mercy than my own blood did."
"I was protecting the business!" Vittorio sobbed.
"No," I corrected him coldly. "You were protecting yourself. And in my world, self-preservation at the expense of honor is a capital offense."
I looked at Enzo.
"Take him out to the pier," I ordered, my voice devoid of any human warmth. "Make sure his accounts are drained into the syndicate's orphan fund, and see to it that he never sees the sun rise over the North District again."
Vittorio screamed—a high, piercing shriek of absolute terror—as Enzo and two other men hoisted him up by his arms and dragged him down the long, dark corridor toward the open loading bay.
May you like
A moment later, a single, muffled shot echoed across the harbor.
Then, silence.
