Screams tore through the abandoned building like someone was dragging steel across bone.
They climbed the stairwells, bounced off the cracked tiles, and slithered into the crumbling corners where mold and rot breathed quietly in the dark. It sounded like a slaughterhouse someone forgot to shut down. Like the dead were arguing with the dying.
The hallway lights flickered, half-dead, buzzing with failing electricity stolen from a pole outside. Rain drummed against the roof in a frantic rhythm, leaking through broken panels and dripping down the walls in slow, grimy trails.
At the far end of the corridor, one door stood open.
A violent amber glow spilled from inside, slicing through the shadows like a blade and casting jagged shapes that looked alive.
Inside the room, a man knelt in a tub of melting ice, naked and shaking hard enough his bones rattled under his skin. His wrists were torn raw from the ropes biting into him, three fingers missing from his right hand. Blood dripped into the icy water, turning it a thin, cloudy pink.
He wasn't quiet anymore.
He begged.
"P-please, please… Dee, I swear… I swear on my life… I don't have it… I never touched the money…" His voice broke on the word life, like even he didn't believe he still had one.
Dee, a massive man, tattooed, a storm in human form, sat on the edge of the tub, a fist pressed against his lips. Not holding back emotion. Holding back words. Rage. Thoughts. Memories. Something dangerous.
The scar running down his cheek throbbed red under the hot industrial lamp. Ink covered his arms in dark mythologies, ancient demons grappling saints, tattered angels dragging swords, sigils threaded across his knuckles. On the back of his right hand, the tattooed skull grinned outward, its teeth smeared now with flecks of the victim's blood.
The skull always seemed hungrier during nights like this.
Behind Dee, four of his men stood silent, leaning against the wall like carved stone idols. They watched, wary, reverent. Afraid. Dee didn't need volume to command obedience; his silence weighed more than any threat.
The victim sobbed louder when Dee shifted his weight.
"D-Dee… don't do this… we—we've been brothers for years, man… c'mon… listen… s-s-someone's messing with us… someone—AHHH—!"
His howl split the air when the ice cut deeper into the fresh wound where his fingers used to be.
One of Dee's eyelids twitched. Just barely.
He leaned closer, breath steady as winter, voice soft with lethal patience.
"Where," he said, "is the fucking money?"
The man shook so violently the tub rattled.
"I don't—Dee, I don't know! I swear on Shade's grave, I never touched a cent!"
Bad choice of words.
Dee's jaw tightened.
Shade's grave was still too fresh.
The memory is still too loud.
Too wrong.
Dee exhaled through his nose.
Then his calm cracked.
He grabbed the knife beside him, slashed the ropes with a single brutal sweep, and yanked the half-frozen man out of the tub. Ice scattered across the concrete floor. The victim slipped, slid, crashed onto his side. His scream bounced across the room.
Glass crunched under Dee's boots as he dragged him across broken bottles and shattered tiles. The man kicked weakly, slipping on the ice, sputtering blood.
"Please—please—Dee—listen—listen—I didn't—"
Dee grabbed a snapped chair leg and swung.
The blow struck ribs, sharp, hollow, final.
The next three turned the bone into something soft.
The ones after that broke whatever will remain.
The victim's screams strangled into choked gasps, then into wet, trembling moans. Blood spread across the floor, the color deepening with each hit, the puddle inching toward the shattered doorway.
Dee didn't stop until his own breath scraped his chest.
"You… you know me…" the man wheezed through broken teeth. "I… I raised you… remember? I kept you alive… you were a starving kid… and I—"
Dee swung the chair leg again.
Silenced him.
When the man finally collapsed in a fetal curl, barely breathing, Dee stepped back. Heaving. Sweat slid down the ink on his neck, tracing the paths of his tattoos like they were crying for him.
The man on the floor trembled, coughed blood, and whispered:
"J-just kill me already, you little bitch… I-I told you… the books don't lie… the money's not there…"
Behind Dee, his men stiffened.
The silence pressed in.
Dee stared down at the bleeding body.
Something in the man's voice, fear, yes. But also the truth.
He hated that.
"Maybe the books don't," Dee muttered, "but you do."
He pulled the Glock, raised it, and fired three clean rounds into the floor beside the man's head, close enough that bone fragments rattled.
The victim screamed, body convulsing.
Dee lowered the gun.
"Take this trash out of my sight."
Two men dragged the broken body away, leaving a streak of dark red trailing through the doorway and into the hall.
Dee stood motionless, breathing slow, trying to swallow the bitterness crawling up his throat.
Everything had gone to shit since Shade died.
Everything.
He rubbed his jaw with a blood-smeared hand, smearing red across the ink that climbed his neck. The tattoos looked darker now. Meaner.
Something didn't add up.
Shade's death didn't add up.
Nothing added up.
He reached for his phone.
Two calls.
One to the best tracker he had, a wom who moved like smoke and found truth in shadows.
The other to a soldier who followed orders like religion.
He hit the number for the tracker.
The phone rang once.
Then:
"…yeah."
Her voice. Barely a whisper. Nothing else.
He gave the location.
She said one word.
"Coming."
Click.
Five Minutes Later
Rain sheeted down the car windows, smearing the passing city lights into streaks of sickly yellow and bruised blue. Dee sat in the back, elbows on his knees, staring at the floor like it held answers.
He pressed his knuckles into his lips again.
That holdback gesture.
Half habit, half instinct.
The kind of thing a man did when he had too many thoughts clawing inside his skull.
Shade's ghost gnawed on all of them.
The driver stole a glance in the mirror but looked away instantly. Nobody wanted Dee's attention. Not when he was quiet. Quiet meant something bad was brewing.
Dee closed his eyes.
Shade had been the only one who could read him.
The only one he let in.
And maybe that was the problem.
Now Shade was dead.
And nothing stayed steady.
Money was missing.
Soldiers were sloppy.
Territory was leaking.
Trust was thinning.
Someone was pulling strings behind the curtain, and Dee didn't know the name on the hand.
He hated that more than death.
The car slowed as it approached the coffee shop.
The women stepped out of the building, hood up, face hidden in the shadow of the gray fleece. Small, quick, quiet. A wraith. The hood had water dripping off it, shielding whatever expression lay beneath.
Dee watched her in silence as she approached the car.
He didn't trust her.
Not really.
Not since Shade.
She had been Shade's shadow, Shade's blade, Shade's little lapdog—always two steps behind him, always looking for his approval. Loyal in a way Dee found suspicious even back then.
But she was the best tracker he had.
The only one who could sift through lies like they were ash.
He couldn't say any of that to her face.
Not yet.
She climbed into the back seat, closing the door softly, her hood still hiding everything.
She didn't look at him.
She never did unless forced.
He let the quiet hang between them.
Let it hurt.
"Connie…" he murmured.
Her head turned slightly, the faintest acknowledgment.
"I need you to hear me."
She didn't breathe.
Didn't move.
"Shade's gone," Dee continued, voice rough. "But the way he went? It doesn't sit right."
Her shoulders tensed. Just barely.
But enough.
"You feel it too," he pressed.
A tremor went down her fingers, hidden in her lap.
He leaned in.
Close enough he could hear how shallow her breathing was.
"If Shade died the way it looks, fine. But if he didn't?"
He paused, letting the words drip like acid.
"If someone made a move on him, on us, then there's a thread out there someone doesn't want pulled."
Connie's chin dipped beneath the hood.
Her silence had weight.
A knife's weight.
"You're the only one I trust to follow it," Dee lied.
"Find the truth."
She didn't answer.
He watched her hands tremble.
"Shade wanted something for you," Dee murmured. "Something better than all this. You remember? The plans? The dreams?"
Her breath caught.
He heard it.
"If you drown now," he said, voice sharpening, "then Shade died for nothing."
That hit her harder than any blow.
She stiffened.
A small, choked inhale escaped her.
He twisted the blade deeper.
"Or maybe…" he said softly, "you're too far gone to finish what he started."
Her head lifted.
Just a fraction.
But enough.
She shook her head slowly.
Not done.
Not yet.
Dee nodded once.
"Good girl. Go find the truth."
The car stopped at a curb.
Connie opened the door and slipped out, her hood still low, her face never shown. The night swallowed her immediately, like she belonged to it.
The driver let out a shaking breath.
"Jesus… she scares me."
Dee leaned back, eyes on the wet window.
"She should."
Then, colder:
"But pain makes her useful. Push the right way, she'll run herself ragged for answers."
The driver didn't respond.
He didn't have to.
Dee already shifted gears, voice turning flat and businesslike.
"We're raising prices across all fronts. Legal. Illegal. Doesn't matter. No discounts. No favors."
"That's gonna hit the neighborhoods hard," the kid muttered.
Dee lit another cigarette.
"Better them than us."
The car blended back into the wet city night, swallowed by neon and smoke.
But Dee's fingers tapped against his knee, an unconscious tic betraying the storm under his skin.
Because beneath all the threats, all the orders, all the careful manipulation—
there was something else he hadn't said to Connie.
Something that had been itching at him for a long time.
A question he didn't trust, a suspicion he didn't share.
Something about Shade.
About her.
About a moment she wasn't where she claimed to be.
And Dee knew:
He couldn't ask her yet.
Not until she brought him something first.
Something real.
Or until she slipped.
Whichever came first.