Page 42 of The Butcher
The room didn’t stay quiet after that. Voices started rising and men moved without direction, grabbing at whatever they could find, but there was no structure behind it. They reacted. I didn’t. The next one came at me wide and sloppy, and I stepped inside, caught him at the throat, and put the blade under his ribs before he knew what was happening. Another tried to run, and I didn’t let him get far before dragging him back and cutting across his throat in one clean motion.
Blood covered my hands, dripping down my forearms and soaking through my shirt. I felt the hot, wet sprays land on my neck, and I resisted the urge to rub it in, marking my kills in a primal, savage way.
The room was turning into a slaughterhouse. Blood painted the walls in arterial sprays, pooled thick on the floor, and the copper stench mixed with piss and shit from men who died terrified. They had dared to reach for what was owned and controlled by the Drakovichs. Now they were paying in pieces.
It didn’t take long to take them all out. By the time the room went quiet again, the only one left standing was Alessio. He hadn’t moved, not at first. He stood near the back of the room, staring at what was left of his crew like he couldn’t process it. The confidence he’d been carrying before was gone, stripped clean off him, and what was left wasn’t control or anger. It was fear.
When he finally looked at me, it was worse up close. His eyes were unfocused, his breathinguneven, and the edge of whatever he’d taken still sat in his system. He tried to straighten like it would give him something back, but it didn’t land the way he thought it would. He opened his mouth to speak, but I didn’t let him finish.
I crossed the space between us and hit him hard enough to drop him, watching the way he struggled to get back up, slower than he should have been, weaker than he thought he was.
I grabbed him by the front of his shirt and hauled him up just enough to keep him on his knees. He struggled, but there was nothing behind it. No control or strength. Just panic and whatever was left in his system.
“You think that name gives you something?” I said, keeping my voice low and steady. “You think having Rossi blood makes you untouchable?”
“I’m his son,” he choked out, blood already at the corner of his mouth. “Francesco’s blood runs through me. He threw me away like I was nothing. Like I didn’t matter.” His voice got louder the longer he spoke, more desperate and unhinged. “I had to build something for myself. I had to take what was mine. That’s how this works.”
I didn’t respond.
“Bastards don’t get handed anything,” he wenton, his words starting to slip together. “Not like you did. Or maybe not you. You take it. That’s what men in this world do, right?”
I tightened my grip and forced his head back so he had to look at me. “You don’t know anything about what I was handed or what I take,” I said. “But I know exactly what you did. You hit my routes. You took product that wasn’t yours, burned through money that didn’t belong to you, and made noise where there shouldn’t have been any. You didn’t build anything. You fucked shit up.”
“It’s my name too,” he snapped. “I’m Rossi blood. I deserve a seat at that table.”
“You don’t deserve anything,” I said flatly. “You don’t have the control to hold it.”
“Fuck you,” he spat. “You think you’re better than me? You’re just another trained dog doing what you were told. That’s all you are.”
I let him talk, because men like him always said more when they thought they were about to die.
Alessio let out a rough laugh, the sound breaking at the edges like he didn’t have full control of it anymore. Blood streaked his mouth when he spoke, but he didn’t seem to care, his eyes locked on mine like he still thought there was a way out of this.
“You think this ends here?” he said, his voiceuneven but pushing through it anyway. “You think I’m the only one making moves like this? There’s plenty of others just like me doing the same thing in the shadows. The Rossi name carries more than guns and cash. You know that.”
I didn’t respond, and he took that as room to keep talking.
“There are routes already in place,” he went on, faster now. “People moving through ports, across borders, city to city. It’s already happening. I tapped into it. Built on what’s already there.”
His chest rose hard as he sucked in a breath, trying to steady himself when I kept him in a viselike lock.
“We could run it right,” he said, his voice dropping lower. “You and me. You’ve got control and connections, I’ve got plans. Big plans and plenty of low-level help who don’t care about dying to make shit happen. We take it coast to coast, lock it down, make it ours before anyone else gets close.”
I stayed silent, watching him. He wasn’t wrong about one thing. The routes existed. The Rossi name sat behind it in ways most people never saw, buried through layers of men and operations that kept it far enough removed to deny. It had grown too big to cut out in one move.
Taking something like that down would take time, planning, and the kind of reach that didn’t leave anything behind. That didn’t mean I would ever touch it.
“You know what you are,” he pushed, something desperate creeping into his expression. “I can see it in your eyes. They made you the same way they threw me away. We’re the same kind of men. The ones they use when they need something.”
His mouth twisted into something that almost looked like a smile.
“Two sons they didn’t want standing on their own,” he said. “We build something bigger than them. Take what they tried to keep out of reach.”
The mention of building something bigger made my blood run colder. He thought he could stand next to me. He thought he could reach for what I was connected to. Did he not know the Rossi name was tied to shit that should have been buried? Things involving trafficking and flesh. Is that what he wanted control over? I smiled, something violent uncoiling in my chest.
There was nothing lower than selling humans. And the Rossi dynasty had their hands in that for a long time. But over the years, they’d removed themselves far enough with shell companies and middlemen that no one would ever be able to solidly link them to it.
My grip tightened on him just enough that he felt it.
