Chapter Seven: The Teeth of Wolves
The hit came at midnight.
Vincent was staying in a rundown apartment above a closed tailor shop on Taylor Street, the kind of place you only lived in if you wanted the world to forget you existed. Cheap mattress, cracked tiles, window stuck halfway open like a broken mouth.
He heard the boots on the stairs before he saw the shadows move.
Three men. Trained. Not amateurs. Luca's fingerprints all over it.
The door burst inward with the force of an execution order—but Vincent was already rolling off the bed, Glock in hand. The first man barely cleared the threshold before Vincent's bullet took him low in the gut, folding him like bad origami.
The others fanned out, disciplined, shooting by instinct. Plaster exploded off the walls. The smell of cordite bit the back of his throat.
It was ugly. Quick. Two more shots, one to the shoulder, one square in the throat. Silence, except for the soft hiss of blood leaking onto the linoleum like spilled ink.
Vincent stood there, heart pounding steady, eyes sharp.
Frankie burst in five minutes later, gun drawn, too late to save anyone but Vincent.
"They're not playing anymore," Frankie said, out of breath.
Vincent looked down at the bodies cooling on his floor. "Good. Neither am I."