Chapter 4 – Nico
The boards beneath my boots moan with every step. This pier’s been dying longer than most of the men who come out here. Salt eats through everything eventually—wood, steel, flesh.
I pull my coat tighter as I step around a broken plank. Wind howls off the Atlantic, sharp and constant. The lamplight overhead swings, barely hanging on to the rusted fixture. It throws shapes across the wet planks. Nothing steady. Just chaos in motion.
I like this place for that.
The scent’s all wrong—fish rot, old gasoline, damp wood, and the bite of old bullets fired too close to salt.
Marco’s boys have been using this dock to drop messages. They think I won’t come out for the small ones. They think I’m too busy patching leaks in a family boat that’s already sinking.
They think wrong.
The runner’s ahead.
I see the back of his jacket near the edge of the pier. He’s alone, hunched like he’s trying not to look cold. Bad posture. Worse instincts.
I close the distance without rushing. No point in noise.
When the wind dips, the boards echo with every footstep. He hears me. Turns.
Too late.
He lifts his hand like there’s a reason for it to matter. Gun half-raised, cheap polymer grip. Not Brotherhood issue.
“Marco says back off or—”
“You’re wasting breath.”
I step in, drive the blade through his throat before the threat finishes leaving his lips.
His eyes go wide. Blood spills across his shirt in thick pulses. The metal taste hits the air.
I twist the handle once, then pull out.
He staggers. I follow him down, blade slipping into the soft give of his gut. His mouth opens again, no sound. He drops fast.
I crouch beside the body.
The blood moves slower now. It puddles around him, staining the wood. A knot of it seeps through the cracks between planks.
I wipe the knife on his jacket. Press a hand to his chest.
“Tell him no,” I say to the still-open eyes.
He’s not breathing anymore. Doesn’t matter.
The message’s already sent.
I stand, breathing even.
The wind’s worse now, tugging at my coat. The lamp above swings harder.
Behind me, footsteps.
I don’t turn right away. I know the stride.
Luca.
He stops a few feet back. I hear him pull in a breath like he ran the last leg of the boardwalk.
“You didn’t have to gut the guy,” he says.
I finally turn.
“He had a gun.”
Luca stares at the body, lips pressed tight.
“Still. This makes it messy.”
“It makes it clear.”
He steps forward, scans the scene. His foot nudges the pistol the runner dropped.
“You could’ve just—”
“No. We’re past warnings.”
Luca looks at me now, eyes narrowed.
“You’re trying to scare Marco?”
“I’m reminding him who built this pier,” I say. “Who bled on it first.”
He doesn’t argue. He knows the history.
Marco Salvatore wasn’t Brotherhood. He wasn’t even second-gen when we let him in. He was a favor. A token. We gave him routes, guards, profit. And now he wants to forget how he got any of it.
Luca sighs. “You know this’ll escalate.”
“It already has.”
The wind kicks again. Rain starts to spit—cold, sharp drops pelting our jackets.
Luca pulls up his hood. I don’t bother.
He glances at me, then past me, toward the end of the pier where the blood’s pooling.
“You’ve been different lately.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“No. It’s more than that.” His voice lowers. “This girl—”
“Don’t start.”
“I’m not judging. I’m just asking—”
“She’s not involved.”
He folds his arms. “You gutted a guy two hours after talking to her.”
“She didn’t cause this.”
“But she might shift it.”
I stare past him. Let the wind hit my face.
Elara Ricci.
She’s not the reason I’m bleeding men in alleys and piers. She’s not the one who made the Brotherhood rot from the inside.
But she’s the first thing in a while that didn’t feel like more decay.
She stood her ground. Didn’t flinch when I killed that drunk outside her club. Didn’t try to seduce, plead, or fake fear. She saw the blood, looked me in the eye, and told me I didn’t get to ask if she was okay.
That stuck.
Not because I liked it.
Because it was honest.
And honesty’s a dying breed around here.
“She’s not mine,” I say, finally. “But she reminded me what sharp feels like.”
Luca says nothing.
The runner’s body is starting to cool.
Blood’s still leaking, slow and thick.
I look down again, then back to Luca.
“Clean it.”
He nods, already pulling out his burner.
I step away from the pier’s edge. Rain soaks through my shirt now.
I feel it again—that thread in my chest. Not emotion. Not interest. Just... awareness.
Elara doesn’t know it, but she’s in this now.
And if she comes with chaos?
Fine.
The Brotherhood needs a little chaos to clear the rot.
I take three steps from the body before I hear the scrape of movement behind us.
Luca tenses beside me.
I pivot—no hesitation.
Another figure emerges from the shadows beyond the last beam of the hanging lamp. He’s young. Barely old enough to shave right. Cheap bomber jacket, red laces on his boots, trying too hard to look like a man who’s earned the stripes.
He hasn’t.
But he has a gun.
It’s shaking in his hand.
His voice isn’t.
“You think you scare people?” he yells. “Fuck you!”
The barrel’s pointed right at my chest.
Luca is frozen like he’s not sure whether to reach for his piece or run.
I don’t reach for the blade.
I walk forward.
“You don’t want to do that,” Luca mutters, almost too low to hear.
I keep moving.
The kid’s hands tighten on the grip. His feet stay planted. Dumb courage. Or just no idea what the hell he’s gotten himself into.
“I’m not trying to scare you,” I say, voice even.
“I said back off!”
“I’m just done talking.”
I reach him before he reacts.
Grab the wrist holding the gun, twist hard. There’s a snap—maybe his thumb. Doesn’t matter. The weapon clatters to the boards.
He opens his mouth to scream.
I slam his head into the rail behind him.
Wood cracks.
So does his skull.
The impact rings out over the water, sick and final. He crumples fast, deadweight to the ground. Blood pours from the split above his ear, down his neck, soaking his collar.
His legs twitch once, then stop.
Luca exhales sharply behind me. “Jesus Christ.”
I turn. Look him in the eye.
He doesn’t speak right away.
“What the hell is this now?” he asks, voice tighter than before. “This isn’t cleanup. It’s a message.”
“Exactly.”
I crouch. Flip the kid’s body to his side. His eyes are still open, wide in surprise.
He didn’t think it would end this way.
They never do.
Luca doesn’t move.
“You think Marco sent him?” he finally asks.
“No,” I say. “I think the first guy did. And I think this one followed without knowing how deep he was.”
Luca swipes a hand through his hair. The wind keeps pushing at us. It cuts harder now, but I barely feel it.
He shifts his feet like he wants to say more.
I don’t give him the space.
“We’re being tested,” I say. “They want to see if we’ll fold.”
“And you think this proves we won’t?”
“No. This proves I won’t.”
He looks at the blood spreading toward the edge of the pier.
“You’re escalating.”
I nod. “Good.”
Luca’s quiet again. He doesn’t argue. That’s why I keep him around. He questions. But when it matters, he follows.
The bodies are laid out in a line now. The first one neat, throat to gut. The second, brutal—head cracked like glass. No blade involved.
It’s worse that way.
I know that.
I let it happen anyway.
The truth is, I wanted to feel it.
Not the kill. Not the victory.
The after.
The quiet.
That strange calm when everything’s been stripped away. When the blood's cooling and no one else is breathing but you.
It doesn’t feel like power.
It feels like control.
And control is the only thing I trust.
My knuckles are raw. The kid’s teeth must’ve cut me on impact. I wipe my hand on his jacket.
Luca breaks the silence.
“We need to dump them fast. The water’s high. If we drop them on the north side—”
“Leave them.”
“What?”
I face him.
“Leave them where they are.”
He stares like I’ve grown a second head.
“That’s not the play.”
“It is tonight.”
“Nico—”
“If Marco wants to test our edges,” I say, “let him cut himself on mine.”
Luca swears under his breath. “And if the cops show up?”
“Then we know who’s watching.”
He doesn’t argue again. Just steps back, pulling his burner to call cleanup in reverse—to cancel the crew he was about to ping.
I stay standing between the two bodies.
The light from the rusted lamp swings over me in intervals. I don’t flinch. Don’t move.
Elara’s name slips out. Low. Like a tick.
“Elara…”
Luca doesn’t hear. Or pretends not to.
I stare out over the waves. They crash hard against the wood, churning like they’re trying to claw something back to the surface.
I don’t want her in my head.
She’s not part of this.
She’s not in the Brotherhood.
She’s not bound by anything I’ve built or broken.
But she’s there anyway.
Her face. That mouth. The way she talked back like I wasn’t the guy who put a knife in another man’s gut in front of her.
She didn’t react to the blood.
She reacted to control.
Didn’t want mine. Didn’t want anyone’s.
And maybe that’s what sticks with me.
Because most people break in silence.
She cracks loud.
And she stays standing.
I step over the second body and head for the boardwalk.
Luca follows. Footsteps careful behind mine.
“You ever going to explain why this girl matters?” he asks after a few yards.
“No.”
“Figures.”
He lights a cigarette as we reach the first set of stairs. The wind snatches half the smoke as it leaves his lips.
“She’s already in,” I say.
“She knows that?”
“No.”
I keep walking.
His footsteps pause, then catch up again.
I don’t turn around.
The truth is, I don’t know what Elara’s going to do.
But I do know what I’ve done.
The message has been sent.
To Marco.
To the city.
To her.
If Elara’s going to be part of this, she’d better be ready to get her hands dirty too.