Chapter 4 - The Fall of Raymond Vance
Apartment 3B on Oak Street smelled of cheap beer, stale cigarette smoke, and domestic terror.
Raymond Vance sat in a leather recliner, a half-empty bottle of whiskey in his hand, watching a muted television game show. He checked his watch for the third time in ten minutes.
"Where is she?" he muttered to himself, anger boiling in his throat. "If she's gossiping with those diner bitches again, I'm going to break her other arm."
He stood up, intending to grab his jacket and walk down to Frankie's to drag her back by her hair, when the front door of his apartment didn't just open—it exploded inward.
The heavy wooden frame splintered into a thousand pieces as a battering ram smashed the lock.
Before Rey could even blink, three massive men in tactical gear swarmed into the room like a localized storm. They moved with terrifying, silent efficiency.
"What the—!" Rey yelled, reaching instinctively for the pistol resting on the coffee table.
A heavy boot slammed down onto his hand, pinning it to the wood with bone-cracking force. Rey screamed as a knee drove into his back, forcing him face-first onto the cheap laminate floor. Heavy zip-ties snapped tight around his wrists with brutal speed.
"Get off me! Do you know who I am?!" Rey roared, thrashing uselessly against the floor. "I'll call the cops! I'll—!"
"The police won't be answering your calls today, Mr. Vance," a cold, calm voice echoed from the doorway.
Leo walked into the apartment. He stepped over the shattered pieces of the front door as if entering a formal parlor. His dark overcoat was immaculate, his expression completely detached. He looked around the squalid apartment with quiet disgust.
Two men hauled Rey to his feet, shoving him roughly against the kitchen island—the exact spot where, just days before, he had broken Sadi's collarbone.
Rey’s eyes widened in sudden, stark terror as he recognized the expensive overcoat and the dead, pale-blue eyes of the man standing before him. He lived in the underbelly of the city long enough to know the legends. He knew who owned the shipping ports. He knew who kept the peace.
"L-Leo?" Rey choked out, the bravado evaporating entirely from his voice. "Boss... I didn't know... whatever she owes you, whatever she did, I'll pay it—"
Leo walked slowly toward him, stopping just two feet away. He reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a pair of black leather gloves, and slowly slipped them onto his hands, finger by finger.
"She doesn't owe me a thing," Leo said softly. "In fact, it's the other way around. You owe her for every single day she spent working in pain because you're a miserable, pathetic animal who couldn't survive five minutes in a real fight."
"Wait, wait, wait!" Rey panicked, his knees turning to water. "It's a domestic thing! It's between us! You can't touch me over a broad!"
Leo didn't yell. He didn't lose his temper.
He simply drew back his right fist and drove it directly into Rey's nose with a sickening crack.
Rey shrieked, blood instantly spraying across the kitchen counter.
"That's for the clavicle," Leo said, his voice dropping into a register so cold it made the armed guards flinch.
He hit him a second time, a brutal hook to the ribs. Rey folded over like a broken doll, gasping for air.
"And that's for making her wear a fifty-pound canvas apron to hide your handiwork."
Leo stepped back, pulling off the leather gloves and dropping them onto the floor. He looked at Donnie.
"Put him in the back of the transport van. Take him down to the container yard on Pier 14. Lock him in an empty shipping container for a week with a bucket of water and a single blanket. Let him think about what it's like to be trapped and hurting."
"Understood, boss," Donnie said, hauling the sobbing, bleeding Rey up by his collar and dragging him toward the ruined doorway.
Leo turned around.
Standing just outside the shattered threshold, supported by a female paramedic who had arrived with the medical team, was Sadi.
May you like
She had watched the entire thing.
Her eyes were wide, shining with unshed tears, looking at Leo not with fear, but with a profound, staggering disbelief.
