Page 40 of The Butcher
“I’m not,” I repeated, fiercer this time.
His hand came up to my jaw, firm enough that I felt it immediately, but soft enough I knew he’d never hurt me. He held my gaze for another second before leaning in and kissing me deeply, as if he needed to be sure I was here with him and accepted it all.
“You see what I am now,” he said against my lips.
I didn’t hesitate. “I see who you became, and I’m not going anywhere.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Alexei
By the time the information came in, a few hours had passed since Lucia had been in my office, but the conversation still sat with me.
Vissarion didn’t send clean reports or summaries. He sent raw pulls, scattered data, and feeds that weren’t meant to be accessed. It was up to me to make sense of it, but that was never a problem. Men like Alessio didn’t know how to hide what they were doing. They moved too fast, spent too much, and trusted the wrong people. And it always left a trail.
Money moved through his hands like he couldn’t hold on to it. Payments came in, got split, and disappeared almost immediately.
He wasn’t building anything solid. He wasthrowing cash around, trying to buy loyalty from men who didn’t have any to give. That worked for a little while, but it never lasted. The kind of people who followed money like that were the first to disappear when it ran out.
The names tied to him didn’t help his case either. No structure or consistency. They were men who bounced between jobs, who didn’t care who they worked for as long as they got paid. That wasn’t a crew. That was a problem waiting to fall apart.
I didn’t need more than that to know how this ended.
The location Vissarion flagged showed up twice within a short window. Alessio didn’t know how to separate anything yet. He was using the same place too often, moving through it like no one was watching.
And so I knew exactly where to go first.
An hour later, I sat in an unmarked car with blacked out windows. I didn’t bring a crew because I didn’t need one.
The building sat off a side road that didn’t see much traffic. It was the kind of place that looked abandoned at a glance. The outside lights were dead, and the windows were either boarded, broken, or toodirty to see through. Anyone driving past wouldn’t look twice.
I stayed across the street at first, inside the car that blended in with everything else around it. I didn’t rush it. I watched. That was the first rule I learned. You don’t walk into something blind.
You take your time and let it show you what it is.
Men moved in and out of the building without checking anything. No one watched the street for longer than a few seconds at a time. The door stayed open too long whenever someone stepped through it. No rotation or structure.
“Fucking amateurs,” I murmured.
I waited longer than I had to, just to see if anything changed. It didn’t. Then Alessio stepped outside.
I recognized his bloodline immediately. There was no question about where he came from. Same features and build as his father, Francesco. He had the kind of face that carried Rossi blood whether he was recognized or not.
His posture was off, loose in the wrong places, tight in others. He wasn’t settled or in control. He looked like a man trying to act like he belonged somewhere he hadn’t earned.
Alessio lit a cigarette with unsteady hands andtook a long drag before exhaling. And then he pulled out a little vial, poured a line on the back of his hand, and did the line.
That explained the money, and the mistakes.
Alessio stayed outside long enough to do another line off the back of his hand. He didn’t even bother to check the street before he finally disappeared inside, wiping his nose with the back of his wrist like no one was watching him fall apart in real time.
The tinted windows gave me enough cover to sit back and watch the building from across the street without drawing attention to myself. The place looked exactly like the kind of operation run by men who thought fear and a last name were enough to build power. Music pulsed low every time the door opened, and people moved in and out without anyone bothering to check who they were or why they were there.
Too careless and easy.
One of Alessio’s men stumbled out the side entrance first, rubbing at his nose before leaning heavily against the wall like he could barely hold himself upright. A second later, Alessio stepped outside behind him, pacing near the door with sharp, restless movements that made it obvious he was still riding whatever he’d shoved up his nose.
A woman followed him out a few seconds later. Even from this distance, I could see the tension in the way she held herself. Her arms were folded tightly across her stomach, her attention fixed anywhere except him. She was strung out, too.
