He started talking before I even finished the sentence.
Names. Addresses. Phone numbers.
Everything poured out of him so fast it almost sounded rehearsed.
Funny how loyalty disappeared once people tasted their own blood.
Booda crouched near him while I searched the man’s pockets. I found two phones, a wallet, and a thick stack of cash held together with a rubber band.
The second phone unlocked with Face ID the moment I held it toward him.
“Open the banking app,” I said.
His lips trembled. “Please—”
I stepped on his broken arm, and his scream tore through the warehouse so violently that it echoed off the walls.
“Open it.”
He fumbled through the app with shaking fingers while tears streamed down his face. Several accounts popped up. Business accounts. Personal accounts. Thousands sat in all of them.
Booda looked over at me. “Transfer it.”
I nodded. The scary part was that I already knew how. Not just how to move the money. How to clean it. How to bury it. How to make it disappear before sunrise.
That knowledge slid into place too naturally, and something about that made my stomach turn worse than the blood on the floor. Because memory wasn’t just bringing back faces anymore.
It was bringing me back. All of me.
The man kept crying on the floor while blood spread beneath him.
“I gave you everything,” he choked out. “Please…”
I stared at him while my thoughts turned strangely calm.
Not empty.
Focused.
My eyes drifted toward the red toolbox sitting against the wall. The second I started walking toward it, the man’s entire demeanor changed. Real panic hit him then.
Recognition.
“Nah,” he whispered immediately. “No. Not that. Just kill me.”
I stopped.
A strange feeling crept into my chest. “Not what?”
His breathing turned ragged. “Please don’t do that shit to me.”
“What shit?”
He shook his head violently, tears mixing with the blood on his face. “I heard about you.”
The warehouse suddenly felt colder.
Booda stayed quiet behind me.
