Brandon left the apartment, locking the door behind him with a decisive click that sounded final. The bright hallway light cast a glow on his face. In the fleeting illumination, his expression was not that of a man scorned, but of an executioner on his way to the gallows.
The ride to the docks was a blur of yellow streetlights and the rhythmic sweep of windshield wipers against a light drizzle.
Brandon drove with a rigid posture, his hands gripping the steering wheel, knuckles white. The city, with its vibrant, careless life, seemed to mock him from the other side of the glass.
A couple laughing under an awning, a musician strumming a guitar in a subway entrance, each scene was a tiny, sharp reminder of a world he felt locked out of.
He wasn't going to the warehouse to make a deal anymore. He was going to issue a command.
The video had been the final push, the act of psychological warfare that had inadvertently forged him into something harder, sharper.
