20

The black fountain pen glided effortlessly across the thick parchment, the sharp scratching sound the only noise cutting through the suffocating silence of the penthouse office. Giovanni Blackwood set the pen down, the dark ink glistening under the dim, ambient lighting.

He slid the document across the mahogany desk toward his secretary, a sharp, impeccably dressed man who stood at absolute attention.

"Send this across immediately," Giovanni commanded, his voice cold and cutting. "Inform them that the major acquisition between our company and the Marchetti group is officially dead. We are pulling out."

The secretary took the papers with a crisp bow of his head. "Right away, sir."

With a weary exhale, Giovanni reached forward, his fingers brushing the edge of his laptop, about to close it and finally end a grueling workday. But before the screen could snap shut, the double doors of his office burst open.

Vivienne stepped inside. Her usual composed, icy demeanor was fractured, her expression tight with sudden urgency.

"Giovanni, we have a problem," Vivienne said, dropping an encrypted tablet onto his desk. "The goods we were expecting at the docks. The entire shipment has been tampered with."

Giovanni’s hand froze on his laptop. The air in the room instantly plummeted to sub-zero temperatures. He slowly lifted his head, his dark eyes locking onto Vivienne with a lethal, predatory intensity.

"Did we discover who was behind it?" he asked, his voice dangerously quiet.

"We’re digging, but they left almost no trace," Vivienne explained, crossing her arms tightly. "According to our intel, it’s a new syndicate coming up in the underworld. They are completely faceless. No one knows who the leaders are—they’re keeping themselves entirely anonymous for now. They don’t even have a centralized headquarters. Everything is decentralized, and they’re strictly using hired mercenaries to do their dirty work."

A dark, mocking smile touched Giovanni’s lips, though his eyes remained entirely devoid of warmth. The sheer audacity of it was almost amusing.

"A nameless ghost playing in my streets," Giovanni murmured, standing up from his leather chair. The sheer power radiating off his towering frame filled the room. "How dare they target me? Do they think anonymity will protect them from what I do to my enemies?"

He snapped his laptop shut with a definitive click.

"Find them," he ordered Vivienne, his tone leaving absolutely no room for failure. "I don’t care how many hired guns they hide behind. I will get to the bottom of this, and when I do, I will burn whatever foundation they think they are building."

Leaving Vivienne to coordinate the response, Giovanni grabbed his tailored coat and checked his watch. It was already pulling up to 9:00 PM.

The weight of the empire pressed on his shoulders as he left the corporate headquarters. He didn't head straight back to the fortress. Instead, he had his driver make two stops along the way, pulling up to his two premier luxury hotels in the heart of the city. He walked the perimeters quietly, his sharp eyes surveying the high-end security, the staff operations, and the elite guest arrivals, ensuring his legitimate business fronts were running flawlessly.

Only when he was satisfied that his empire was secure did he finally slide back into the leather seats of his car, giving the driver the final directive to head home to the villa.

When he arrived home, the grand villa was completely quiet, but the peaceful atmosphere didn't last long. Vivienne approached him immediately, leaning in close to murmur a quiet update directly into his ear.

"The guards caught some people spying on the estate earlier," Vivienne whispered, her expression grim. "They're being held in the basement right now."

Giovanni didn't say a word. His expression hardened into stone as he turned and headed straight for the lower levels of the house. He stepped into the dimly lit, cold concrete basement where the spy was tied to a chair.

Without a shred of hesitation, Giovanni began the interrogation. He was ruthless, using every brutal method at his disposal to crack the spy's silence. He pressed a searing torch straight against the man's thighs, listening to the agonizing screams echo off the walls. When that didn't work, he systematically twisted the man's bones, applying excruciating pressure, employing all sorts of torture just to extract the name of the anonymous leader behind the recent attacks.

Finally, broken and gasping for air, the spy trembled. As soon as the person was about to open his mouth and say exactly who was behind it, his eyes went wide with sudden terror. Instead of speaking, the man violently bit his own tongue, severing it completely, and suffocated on his own blood. He died right there in the chair. He would literally rather die a agonizing death than mention the person pulling the strings.

Giovanni let out a dark, frustrated hiss, tossing the tools aside. His tailored clothes were heavily stained with dark blood.

The moment he stepped out from the basement back into the main hallway of the villa, Rosa was standing there. She instantly froze, her eyes locking onto the crimson splatters soaking his shirt. The sharp, metallic smell of blood hit her senses, and her stomach completely turned. She could not stand the smell, and the sheer horror of it kept her rooted to the spot, not even bothering to go anywhere close to him.

Giovanni barely looked at her, his mind still burning with fury over the dead end. He walked past her to go upstairs to his quarters to change out of his ruined clothes.

While he was upstairs changing, a twisted sense of curiosity and dread pulled at Rosa. Her feet moved on their own, drawing her down the cold steps into the basement.

When she stepped inside, the breath was completely knocked out of her lungs. She saw all sorts of horrific torturing devices hanging from the walls and laid out on tables. And then her eyes dropped to the floor. She saw the dead man's mangled body slumped over, the pooling blood reflecting the dim light.

A wave of pure terror crashed over her. She wanted to scream, a violent sob rising in her throat, but she quickly slapped both hands over her mouth, stifling the sound before it could escape.

"What are you doing here?"