Chapter 3 - Blood on the Rusted Iron
The rungs of the ladder were slick with ice and freezing rain, biting into Victor’s bare hands as he pulled his weight upward. Every muscle in his upper body burned from the explosive adrenaline, but his focus remained razor-sharp.
He didn’t make a sound as he hauled himself over the lip of the roof.
The wind up here was vicious, tearing at his wet hair and freezing the sweat on his skin. Ten yards away, a figure in a tactical hoodie was leaning over the parapet, tracking Javier’s position in the alley below with a long-barreled rifle fitted with thermal optics.
Victor closed the distance in three silent strides.
The assassin sensed the shift in the air a second too late. He started to spin around, his hand dropping toward a secondary sidearm, but Victor drove his shoulder forward like a battering ram, slamming the man’s spine against the concrete edge of the roof.
The rifle clattered from the assassin’s hands, sliding over the edge and crashing into the alley below.
“Who hired you?” Victor demanded, his forearm pressed hard against the man’s throat, cutting off his air supply.
The assassin choked, his face turning purple, but a twisted, bloody smile crept across his lips. He clawed weakly at Victor’s wrist.
“You’re... too late, Rossi,” the man rasped, his voice rattling in his chest. “The package... was never meant for you.”
Victor’s eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?”
“The girl... she isn’t a civilian.”
Before the assassin could finish, a sharp, high-pitched whistle cut through the wind from the adjacent rooftop.
Victor threw himself flat onto the gravel just as a heavy-caliber round obliterated the brick pillar inches from his head. When he looked back down, the assassin in his grip had gone limp—not from Victor’s chokehold, but from a precise, execution-style bullet fired from an unseen sniper across the street.
Professional courtesy among competing syndicates: dead men don't talk, and loose ends get tied up permanently.
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Victor cursed, rolling to his feet and sprinting back toward the access ladder.
Down in the alley, the situation had shifted.
