Chapter 15 Blood and Business
Alexander’s POV
After the night I saw her tattoo, I sent her away.
I told myself it was strategy.
Distance.
Control.
But the truth was less convenient.
The woman I had planned to use… was the same girl who had once saved my life.
Ten years.
Ten years, and I hadn’t recognized her until the ink on her skin dragged me back into that dark shipping container and the terrified girl who refused to leave me there to die.
I still needed her.
The board required a wife.
The empire required stability.
My legacy required an heir.
But now the situation had become… complicated.
Did I want to reward her for what she had done for me?
Or punish her for the blood in her veins?
A quiet knock sounded against the study door before James pushed it open and leaned against the mahogany frame.
He wasn’t smirking the way he usually did whenever Isabella’s name came up.
No teasing remarks.
No knowing looks.
His expression was sharp. Focused.
Urgent.
“The wedding needs to wait,” he said.
I didn’t look up from the report on my desk.
“I don’t remember asking for a postponement.”
“You don’t get to ask.”
That made me lift my gaze.
“One of Moretti’s crews hit the docks an hour ago,” James continued. “They didn’t just take the containers. They executed four of our men. Sector Seven warehouse is gone.”
My mind shifted instantly.
Isabella.
The tattoo.
The past.
All of it faded into silence.
Business replaced it.
Cold.
Focused.
Precise.
“Moretti thinks I’m distracted,” I said calmly. “He thinks a board vote and a wedding announcement have softened me.”
James’s jaw tightened.
“If we don’t respond quickly, every family in the city will smell weakness.”
He paused.
“The board can wait. The girl can wait. This can’t.”
The girl.
My eyes drifted briefly to the phone sitting on my desk.
The last message I’d sent Isabella had been deliberate.
Calculated.
I knew it would sit in her mind like a splinter.
I wanted her unsettled.
But blood always came before desire.
Always.
“Put the marriage on hold,” I said evenly.
James’s brow lifted slightly.
“No contact. Let her sit in her apartment and wonder why I haven’t come to collect her.”
“The suspense will sharpen her,” I added. “Fear has a way of clarifying loyalty.”
Two hours later, the air at the Jersey pier smelled of salt and diesel.
The warehouse wasn’t abandoned.
It was ours.
Steel beams.
Concrete floors.
Strategic lighting.
Security cameras placed exactly where they needed to be.
To the outside world, it was just another logistics facility.
Tonight, it was something else.
My men were laid out near the loading bay doors.
Four of them.
Execution style.
Clean.
Intentional.
Disrespectful.
No chaos.
No mess.
That was what made it personal.
I crouched beside the first body, studying the wound.
Close range.
Professional.
Moretti hadn’t acted out of anger.
He’d acted with calculation.
He was testing me.
“Where is he?” I asked.
“He is inside “James said
In the center of the room, tied to a rusted metal chair, was Moretti’s right-hand man, a cockroach named Enzo. He was already unrecognizable, his face a swollen map of purple and red, but he hadn’t talked yet.
I stepped out of the shadows, the heels of my Italian leather boots clicking a slow, rhythmic tempo against the concrete. I’d discarded my blazer and rolled up my sleeves. I didn’t want the silk getting stained. “Enzo,” I purred, my voice a silken thread of a threat.
“You’re thinking about the end,” I whispered, my voice a silk ribbon tightening around his throat. “You’re hoping for a bullet. But we haven’t even finished the introduction.”
I reached into the leather kit James held open. I bypassed the heavier blades, selecting instead a thin, surgical scalpel.
“The human body is remarkably resilient, Enzo. It wants to live, even when the mind is screaming for it to stop.”
I took his left hand , the one with the broken finger hanging limp , and pinned it to the wooden armrest.
With a sudden, jarring motion, I drove a heavy masonry nail through the center of his palm.
The steel crunched through the metacarpal bones, the sound like dry kindling snapping, before biting deep into the reinforced wood.
Enzo’s scream wasn’t human; it was the high-pitched whistle of a teakettle boiling over. His body convulsed, his heels drumming a frantic, useless rhythm against the concrete.
“Breathe,” I commanded, watching the crimson bloom spread across the grain.
I held the scalpel up to his eye level. “Moretti thinks he’s hidden those containers. But you’re going to give me the coordinates. Because every time you say ‘I don’t know,’ I’m going to show you exactly how many layers of skin the human face actually has.”
I rested the cold tip of the blade just below his lower eyelid.
“Let’s try again. The docks? Jersey? Where is he keeping them?”
His jaw worked, spit and blood bubbling at his lips. “I… I can’t…”
I sighed, a sound of genuine disappointment. “Wrong answer.”
I didn’t just slice; I hooked the blade. I pressed it in until I felt the resistance of the orbital bone, then carved a slow, agonizingly precise crescent downward, peeling the cheek away from the muscle like fruit skin. The raw, red meat of his face quivered, exposed to the air.
I nodded to James. He stepped forward and drove a weighted baton into Enzo’s shattered knee. The sound of the patella disintegrating into a dozen shards was sickeningly wet. Enzo’s head snapped back, his eyes rolling into his skull.
“Don’t you dare go to sleep,” I hissed, grabbing a handful of coarse salt from the tray and grinding it directly into the raw, exposed nerves of his flayed cheek.
He shrieked, a jagged, broken sound that tore through the warehouse.
“I have a wedding to get back to,” I said coolly, reaching for a pair of industrial pliers. “You are delaying my honeymoon. That irritates me.”
I clamped the pliers onto his pinky finger. I didn’t pull. I squeezed, slowly, until the bone turned to a pulp of marrow and splinters inside the skin. Then, I twisted. The skin gave way first, tearing in a jagged spiral before the tendons snapped like overstretched rubber bands.
I tossed the severed digit onto his lap.
“One last time,” I murmured, grabbing his hair and forcing his head back until his neck strained tight. “Where are the containers?”
His resistance shattered before the rest of his bones could.
“The old shipyard!” he choked, blood spraying with every syllable. “Sector four , Pier nineteen! Please , kill me , just kill me , ”
Silence fell. I held his gaze, watching the light of his soul retreat into a corner of pure, unadulterated agony.
Then I let him go. His head dropped forward, a ruined mess of leaked fluids and broken parts.
“See?” I said to James, adjusting my jacket. “He was cooperative all along.”
James stepped closer, looking at the heap in the chair. “What do we do with him?”
I turned toward the door, stepping over a smear of blood without breaking stride. “Take your time finishing up,” I said simply. “I want him to feel the rest of the kit before he stops breathing.”
I checked my watch.
“Get the cars ready. We’re going to Sector Four. By the time I’m finished with Moretti, he’ll be a rumor.”
I checked my watch.
I’ll still be back in time to see whether my little cat misses me.
She’s still necessary,
Necessary.
Not spared.
Not forgiven.
Necessary.
Because blood might come first.
But business never sleeps.
And Isabella was both.