Chapter 1 - THE INVITATION TO THE ABATTOIRThe digital clock on my nightstand read 3:14 AM. In the dim light of the penthouse, Sofia looked smaller than she had a few hours ago at the altar. When I walked her down the aisle, she had been radiant, draped in imported silk, laughing nervously about the open bar.
Now, sitting on my leather sofa with a damp towel pressed to her split lip, she looked like a ghost who had wandered back from the grave.
“Alex,” she choked out, her voice scraping against her throat like dry gravel. “The security guards… they looked the other way. Carmen paid them off. Javier must have arranged it all before he walked out of the room.”
I didn’t speak. I was methodically cleaning a surgical steel instrument I kept in my desk drawer—not for medicine, but for precision work. My mind wasn't racing; it was freezing over, dropping below zero until every emotion crystallised into pure, unadulterated lethal intent.
“Marcus,” I said into the encrypted burner phone, keeping my eyes fixed on my trembling sister.
“I’m outside the gate, Boss,” Marcus’s deep voice rumbled through the speaker. The captain of my inner circle didn't need preamble. He knew the tone of my voice. It was the tone I used before a warehouse burned or a bank account was drained of its last cent.
“Assemble the clean-up crew and the heavy hitters. We’re paying a visit to the Grand Horizon Hotel. Penthouse Suite 1402.”
“Is it a rescue, Boss?”
“It’s an execution,” I said quietly. “Not of lives—of an entire lineage.”
Sofia gasped, clutching her bruised arm. “Alex, no! Carmen has political connections. Her brother is a municipal judge! If you touch them, the police will—”
“The police?” I cut her off, a grim, humorless smile touching the corners of my mouth. “Sofia, look at me.”
She raised her swollen, tear-streaked face.
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“Do you think the police in this city operate because of laws, or because my signature is on the permits that built half their precincts?” I stood up, shrugging on a heavy black wool overcoat that smelled faintly of rain and gunmetal. “Carmen Robles wanted to play the feudal lord in my city. She forgot who owns the land the castle is built on.”
We didn’t wait for morning. By 3:30 AM, three black armored SUVs rolled out of my estate like panthers leaving the den, slicing through the empty neon-lit streets of downtown.
