Had he no honor? Surely, when he began skimming from the Red Diamond pot, he knew the price he would have to pay if caught. Had he done nothing to prepare himself for that…well, others might have called it an eventuality. But anyone who truly knew Raymond would have called it an inevitability. Perhaps the Boston snakehead was one of those people who were incapable of thinking that far ahead.
Future banking. It was a concept that his father lived by. And he’d told his son that future banking was the ultimate difference between a snakehead and a dragonhead.
This man was no future dragonhead. Actually, this man had no future left to bank at all.
This explained why Phantom had not been in communication over the last couple of weeks. He must have been busy fetching the snakehead from America. And now here he was, shoving the man to his knees in front of Victor.
He smelled foul. Phantom wasn't known for his gentle touch. Victor had no doubt his cousin hadn't bothered to give the man bathroom breaks on the long plane ride from Massachusetts. The soon-to-be-former Boston snakehead reeked of rank body odor, piss, and shit.
“Please! Please!” the man begged in ABC-accented Cantonese. “I’m sorry! I’ll do anything. Just please don’t—”
Phantom slapped a piece of duct tape over his mouth. The Red Diamond owned this building. Real estate was one of Raymond’s favorite ways to wash money. And the staff knew better than to let any of the legitimate residents into the garage when they were out here.
But the space was open air. They didn’t want his pleas to carry too far. Or his screams after the betrayer ceremony begun.
Still, the man continued to cry and beg on the other side of the duct tape.
Victor had half an instinct to put the Boston snakehead out of his misery right then and there. He'd obviously had plenty of time to suffer on the journey here.
But there was a protocol for these things. Rules they had to follow.
Victor and Phantom stood by solemnly as his father offered up a prayer to Emperor Guan, a god both the triad and the police were known to worship back in Hong Kong. None of them were particularly religious, but this was how things were done in the Red Diamond.
After the prayer came a listing of the Boston snakehead’s crimes. It was a short list. Stealing, and therefore serving his triad with the ultimate disrespect.
After that, it was finally time for the part the snakehead had probably been dreading the most while pissing and shitting himself the entire way to Tokyo.
From what Victor had seen, this next bit was even worse than the death that would follow it.
First, Phantom brought out a switchblade, lifted his hand, and cut off the fingers of the snakehead’s right hand.
Quickly and efficiently. The ritual was meant to be a bit of a show (and a warning) for those who weren’t participating. But it was also crucial that everyone perform their part of the betrayer ceremony as quickly as possible. The show would be rather anticlimactic if the betrayer bled out before the ritual was completed.
Still, Phantom was awarded for his efforts with a nice spray of blood across his white suit. So was Han when he stepped forward to cut the fingers off the man’s left hand. Good thing they had duct-taped his mouth. The snakehead’s muffled screams would have been heard for blocks if they had been allowed to come out unfettered.
Now it was his father’s turn.
Raymond stepped forward with a scalpel held tight in one hand. Meanwhile, Phantom grabbed the sobbing snakehead by the back of his neck so that he couldn’t move his head, despite his abject pain.
It was an impressive display of Phantom’s strength. The man was screaming now and thrashing wildly below his neck to escape what came next. But Phantom made sure the guy’s head did not move as Victor's father raised the scalpel and brought it down for one precise slice.
Phantom’s expression barely changed as blood from the man's sliced-off nose sprayed across Raymond’s crisp white suit.
After Victor's father was done, Phantom finally let the snakehead go.
This was no mercy. The severely deformed man thrashed like a dying fish upon the garage’s concrete floor, blooding oozing from his face and hands.
Luckily, he’d been muffled. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have been able to hear Raymond when he turned to the other Red Diamond, waiting in the shadows, and yelled out, “Betrayer!” in Cantonese.
“Betrayer!” they called back in unison as Victor stepped forward with his gun.
Strange, after what happened to him, Victor had wondered if he would feel any reservations before taking part in this first ceremonial transfer of power.
But he raised the gun without a second thought. His was a role finally played out on stage after a lifetime of rehearsal. There were no doubts in his head as he pulled the trigger. Only intent.
