Chapter 3 - The Apex Predator
Victor Costello did not like interruptions.
At forty years old, he was a man carved from granite and cold calculation. His dark hair was cropped close to his scalp, his sharp, angular jawline shadowed by a heavy five-o'clock shadow, and his eyes—a striking, pale slate-gray—missed nothing. He sat behind an eight-foot slab of polished ebony wood, listening to his chief lieutenant, Marcus, brief him on the docks situation in the third district.
When the muffled, ragged sound of a woman crying drifted through the solid mahogany door, Victor’s sentence died in his throat.
Marcus stopped talking as well, his hand hovering over a leather-bound folder.
Victor raised a single finger. The silence in the room became absolute, heavy enough to suffocate a man.
“What is that?” Victor asked, his voice a low, gravelly baritone that vibrated through the floorboards.
“It’s just one of the cleaning girls, Boss,” Marcus muttered dismissively, shifting his weight. “The night shift. I’ll go clear her out. Probably dropped a bucket or cut her hand on the tile.”
Victor didn't answer immediately. He stood up from his high-backed leather chair. He wore a crisp white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, revealing lean, corded forearms laced with old, faded scars from a life fought in the gutters before he built an empire.
Without another word, Victor walked across the room.
He didn't slam the door open. He pulled it open with smooth, silent precision.
The corridor outside was dimly lit by wrought-iron wall sconces casting flickering amber light over the dark wainscoting.
There, huddled against the wall a few feet from his door, was Sadi Hayes.
She was a wreck. Her gray maid’s dress was stained with gray water and bleach, her hair had come loose from its pins, falling in a dark mess around her shoulders, and her hands—her poor, mangled, bleeding hands—were clamped over her mouth as she tried desperately to silence her own weeping.
Victor stood over her, his massive frame blocking the light, casting a long, dark shadow that swallowed her entirely.
Sadi froze.
Through her tear-blurred vision, she saw the polished black leather of expensive dress shoes. She slowly raised her eyes upward, past the dark slacks, past the muscular chest, until she met the piercing, cold gaze of Victor Costello himself.
Her heart stopped. She knew the rules. Never look him in the eye.
She scrambled backward like a frightened animal, pressing herself flat against the wainscoting, her breath hitching in a terrified gasp.
Before Sadi could open her mouth to beg for her life, before she could apologize for disturbing the king of the city, the burner phone in her lap buzzed violently again.
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The screen lit up with an incoming text message from Mick O’Shea:
Fifty-nine minutes left, Sadi. Tick-tock.
