Chapter Ten #2
A ragged, animalistic sound escaped his throat before the howl tore free. He stared at his bloody stump in wide-eyed disbelief, chest heaving, trying to command a limb that no longer existed.
Another burly thug had nearly made it to the back door, hand reaching for the knob.
Mirage produced a larger blade—his midnight Delta Dart—and threw it over Grace’s shoulder. It cut through the air and slammed into the wood, pinning the man’s hand with a solid thunk. The scream stalled in his throat, his eyes going wide at the sleek cobalt handle protruding from his palm.
“Anyone else wanna be stupid?” Meridian asked.
No one volunteered.
Guns clattered quietly to the floor. Rough men backed up, hands raised, tattoos over their throats flexing as they shook their heads.
Then the smell hit.
Fear that thick had a sharp scent, acidic from the sour reek of urine.
Meridian let Whisper drip blood onto the legless man’s shirt before he yanked the bandanna off his head to wipe her blade clean—did it in a movement as casual as flicking ash from a cigarette, and resheathed it.
The only sounds for a moment were the wheezes of dying men and the ragged moans of the injured, until the bartender found his tongue.
He stood behind the scarred plank of wood, rag still in his hand, jaw tight under a salt-and-pepper beard. “What do you want?” he demanded.
His voice was composed, but his eyes kept glancing to the bodies and the blood staining his floors.
“Finally.” Meridian smiled faintly, walking toward the bar. “Someone with intelligence.”
Ex ghosted his shoulder, a step behind and to the side, returning to their defensive formation.
Grace and Mirage held their position at the center of the room. Grace’s presence kept the men’s backs pressed hard against the walls.
Mirage tapped his lethal batwing throwing knife against his thigh, as if it was begging for the opportunity to taste flesh.
Meridian propped his hip against a stool as if he was a paying customer.
“I assume you don’t have Beauté du Sièclem, or a Gautier Cognac,” he asked.
The bartender stared at him as if he had horns. “You assume right,” he said snidely.
As Meridian eyed the bottles of liquor. The plastic-handled gallon of vodka, generic brand whiskey, boxed wine, and rotgut tequila, it made his palate recoil.
Movement to the left snagged his attention.
A woman—short and curvy in a red crop top, with a South Side crown tattooed on her left breast—slid her phone from her skirt pocket. Her thumbs flew over the screen, eyes flicking up, then back down.
Meridian raised his gun and aimed it at the phone.
“Bitch,” he gritted, “my rule is to never harm a female. But if you’re stupid enough to hit send on that text, I’m willing to make an exception.”
She froze as the rest of the room held its breath.
Slowly, she let the phone slip from her fingers onto the floor and raised both hands.
“Good girl,” he murmured.
He turned back to the bartender. “We’re looking for a man who calls himself Scar.”
Eyes darted around, but no one spoke up.
Grace walked slowly, silently, through the cluster of gangsters, his gaze sliding over each face. Men shrank away from the intimidating weight of his attention.
Three-quarters down the line, he stopped.
The guy he’d settled on was barely past puberty. He hadn’t moved or said a word, but his welling tears gave away that he knew something, but too afraid to speak up.
Grace just stared, not saying a word, which felt more threatening than his marksman skills.
Meridian went to the kid. “Thank you for being so forthcoming. And you are…?”
“They call me Lil’ Havoc.” He snarled, looking like a puppy baring his teeth at a wolf. “ ’Cause I be wrecking shit.”
Meridian shot his hand out and clamped it under the boy’s chin. His grip was iron, as he dug his fingers into the hinges of his jaw until he felt bone.
“That’s the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard,” he said, squeezing tighter. “Little boy, I’m a killer that doesn’t like to repeat himself. And now that you know that, I’ll ask one last time… What is your fuckin’ name?”
“Frank—Franklin Johnson.”
The kid’s groan was strangled and sad.
“Okay, Frank-Franklin Johnson. Where can I find the man who calls himself Scar?”
Sweat broke out on the boy’s forehead despite the cold.
Meridian loosened his fingers around the punk’s mouth enough for him to speak. But, before Frank could answer, another voice cut in from near the pool tables.
“There’s no fuckin’ Scar anymore,” a taller man said, then spat on the floor.
He stepped forward, chest puffed out, blood spattered across his white tee from one of his fallen homies.
“You muthafuckas are three life sentences too late. So you can get the fuck out now. Do you have any idea who you’re messin’ with? We’re the—”
Something long and silver flashed by Meridian’s peripheral vision.
Mirage’s hand was still out, as the room stared in horror at the blade buried deep inside the man’s gaping mouth. He made a stomach-churning, gargling sound as he toppled sideways, clawing at the leather handle protruding between his broken teeth.
A chorus of “holy shit” and “Jesus Christ” rippled through the room.
Meridian gestured lazily at the man’s convulsing body.
“You see that. That was completely avoidable, but that’s what happens when you say stupid shit. Understand?”
Frank nodded as much as his clutched jaw and panic would allow.
“Good,” Meridian said. “Now, answer the question.”
Meridian’s gun appeared in his other hand like a magic trick. One second, it was empty, and the next, a custom Smith & Wesson was clutched in his grip, all black angles and a ghost-quiet suppressor.
He shoved it under Frank’s trembling chin, forcing his head back until he had no choice but to stare into his eyes.
“Is your silence worth your life?” he asked softly.
“H-he popped up at The Crown Room yesterday,” the kid blurted, his words tumbling over each other in a rush. “He was supposed to be locked up for good, then he just walks back onto the block as if nothing happened. King didn’t trust Scar hadn’t flipped, so he told him to leave Chicago.”
“Did he leave with anyone?”
“His old enforcer Pun, Drea, and Pun’s little brother, Smoke.” Frank did his best to swallow. “King already put a hit on him. If he stays in Chicago, he’ll be dead by the end of the week.”
Meridian wasn’t surprised Scar had been exiled.
“Where’d he go?” he asked.
“I-I don’t know,” Frank stuttered. “Find Drea. That’s his girl. That’s all I know, I swear.”
Meridian studied him for a heartbeat longer. He could feel the room’s attention on them, everyone waiting to see if Frank’s cooperation had earned him mercy.
Meridian released his jaw.
Relief flickered across the kid’s face, brief, foolish, and premature.
Meridian struck without warning and backhanded Frank across the right side of his face. A ringing crack that echoed like a whip snapping.
Frank hollered, stunned, his hand flying to his cheek.
Meridian grabbed a fistful of the boy’s shirt, yanking him upright, and delivered another harder slap.
“That’s for your stupidity and joining a gang, instead of being at home doing homework or studying or some shit.”
“But I told you everything I know,” he wailed, tears flowing like a broken faucet.
A third slap snapped Frank’s head sideways as brilliant red humiliation bloomed across his ivory, pimpled skin.
Meridian jerked him close, lowering his voice to a cold hiss, “If you keep playing the devil’s game, Frank…eventually…he’ll want his turn.”
The bar was silent.
“I’m sorry.” Frank cried louder.
Sirens blared in the distance.
“Time to go,” Corvo said.
He shoved the kid away in disgust.
“On your knees.”
Frank sobbed and collapsed to the floor, trembling, clutching his burning cheek.
Meridian leveled his glare on the ones in the room that were still alive.
“Do I have to repeat myself?” he growled.
One by one, every man and woman went down like puppets with cut strings.
Even the bartender vanished behind the counter.
A few lifted their hands in surrender.
Some were mouthing silent prayers.
The hardest-looking thugs—with their tattoos, fake gold teeth, and muscles thick as coiled ropes—were shaking, shoulders jerking, eyes glassed over with fear.
All of them waited, breathless, wondering if they were seconds away from a mass execution.
Meridian casually adjusted the cuffs on his midnight Dior dress shirt as he spoke.
“Stop mistaking your bullshit neighborhood torment for power. What you see now. This is power.”
Mirage backed toward the door first, his light eyes concealed beneath his hood, but never leaving the room. Grace reversed with him, his big body like a moving shield.
Ex followed slowly, slipping through the door as the cold rushed in.
Meridian stepped over broken glass, coagulating blood, and men with life draining from their eyes.
None of it fazed him. It was just another day at the office.
He was almost out of the door when he heard shuffling behind him.
He paused.
“If you stand up, black’ll be the last thing you see.”
No one moved.
Meridian climbed into the backseat of their Navigator idling at the curb and tapped the roof for the driver to peel off.
When they were a few blocks away and clear of the first responders, Meridian lit one of his cigarettes before he spoke again.
“Talk to me.”
Corvo didn’t waste time. “We hacked into the outside security cameras from a corner store across from The Crown Room. Scar went in at twenty forty-seven hours and exited with a group of three at twenty-one-oh-five.”
Eighteen minutes.
Sure didn’t take long for Scar’s so-called family to banish him.
“Traffic cams tracked this Drea’s vehicle to a suburb in Palos Hills. Our data points converged on one house owned by a Jessica Ventura…no gang affiliation. Address has already been uploaded.”
The mission had shifted from a manhunt to a targeted strike.
As their transport headed north, Ex asked, “Any update on the Greens?”