Wrong answer.
The captain mouth was moving. Demands most likely. I didn’t hear anything. The car park seemed to shrink. Lights dimmed at the edges. Engines idled in the background. Men held their breath as something colder than simple violence slid into my bones and locked in.
“You raise a gun to my brother’s head,” I tilted my head, studying him like a specimen under glass, “in my city… in my fucking city?”
He never saw me move.
One heartbeat, the barrel was buried in Bastion’s hair.
The next, his wrist was in my hand. The bones gave under my grip with a bloody crack.
He screamed. The gun dropped to the floor. I twisted his arm until it bent the wrong way, then drove him down to the concrete. His head hit hard. Once. Twice. The third time there was a different sound, something deeper and final, and his body went slack.
I didn’t stop.
It wasn’t about him being dead now. That part was done. This was about my hand being fucked up enough to remind me for weeks exactly when I’d failed to prevent a barrel touching Bastion’s skull. I handled this. No one else. Cartilage tore. Knuckles split. My own skin opened on bone. I kept going until there was nothing left in him to break.
When I finally pushed up, my shoulders were heaving. Blood speckled my shirt, my wrists, the concrete.
I turned back to the circle.
“All captains. Step forward.” My wiped blood off the dripping blood from my cheek with my forearm.
They hesitated. Of course they did. Men like that only moved fast when they thought they were safe.
“I have means,” I went on, conversational, like we were discussing catering. “Money. Time. Soldiers with free nights and very creative imaginations. I can stretch a death weeks. Months. Years, if I’m bored enough.” My jaw ticked. “Or you can pick the short version. Either way, it’s coming.”
A ripple went through the line.
One captain stepped forward. Then another. Then the rest, like dominoes finally understanding gravity.
“Kneel.”
No one moved.
I took a single step toward them. “Last chance. Short death or long. On your knees.”
One dropped. The others followed, until all of them knelt in a row, heads forced down.
Behind me, Nik moved.
He rolled his sleeves higher, drew his gun, and walked down the line of captains. He stopped at the first neck. One clean shot.
Body dropped forward.
Next neck. Another shot.
He went captain by captain, while I turned my back on them and faced the vice-heads—the men who would live long enough to remember this properly.
I walked toward their line and let them hear every shot as I closed the distance.
“You know—” I flexed my hand, blood still covered on my knuckles “—I don’t enjoy chaos. Or shouting.”
Another gunshot behind me. A body thudded.
“I prefer order. Structure. Obedience.”
I stopped in front of the nearest vice-head. His pupils were blown wide. Sweat beaded at his hairline. He looked like a child who’d just learned monsters were real and wore suits.
