15. Leander #2
I close the six feet between us before his fingers can snap the leather strap on his holster.
My left hand shoots out like a piston, my thumb driving straight into the nerve bundle on the side of his neck.
Leo's eyes roll back instantly as his airway collapses.
Before his knees hit the floor, I catch his chin with my right hand, wrap my palm around his jawline, and execute a swift, brutal twist.
A sharp, sickening CRACK echoes through the subterranean room.
Leo's body goes completely limp, crashing onto the concrete floor like a sack of wet sand.
Silence falls over the room for one full second as eleven men stare at Leo's lifeless form, then scramble frantically for their sidearms.
"Shoot him!" someone screams from the back of the table.
In an enclosed, low-ceilinged concrete room, opening fire with heavy-caliber handguns creates chaos, ricochets and crossfire risk make them hesitate just long enough for me to dictate the space.
I pull the steel tire iron from my coat pocket and close the gap instantly, diving straight into the center of the room.
The second guard, a tall man with a scarred lip, manages to pull his 9mm pistol from his coat.
Before he can raise the barrel to sightline, I step into his guard, my left hand catching his gun wrist, driving the barrel upward toward the ceiling while my right hand drives the sharp, angled edge of the steel tire iron straight into his right eye socket.
The steel rod punches through the thin orbital bone with a wet, crunching thud.
The man lets out a breathless, gurgling scream as blood sprays hot and thick across my face and coat collar. I yank his 9mm from his spasming grip, drop the empty magazine to disable the weapon, and kick his knee backward until the joint shatters, sending him crashing face-first onto the concrete.
"Get him!" two more enforcers shout, drawing their weapons together from the left side of the table.
I grab the tall guard's collapsing body by the collar, dragging his frame up as a human shield. A deafening BANG rings out as one of the enforcers fires his weapon, the 9mm bullet tearing straight into his dead partner's back instead of me.
Before the shooter can adjust his sight line in the cramped space, I drive my boot into the side of his knee, folding the joint sideways. As he falls, I step inside his guard, catch his gun hand, and twist his arm backward until the elbow joint snaps outward with a wet CRACK.
I spin on my heel, drive the blunt end of the steel tire iron straight into the fourth man's windpipe, feeling the cartilage crush under my weight, and drop him onto the floor beside his partner.
Blood is pooling across the concrete now—thick, dark red, and steaming faintly in the cool basement air. The metallic smell of fresh copper and torn flesh fills the room, heavy enough to make an ordinary man gag.
Good thing I’m not an ordinary man.
The remaining seven guards back up against the far wall, their faces pale, their hands shaking violently as they realize that pulling a gun at point-blank range against a man who uses human bodies as shields is suicide.
"Stay back, Leander!" a capo named Marco screams, his hands trembling as he points a snub-nosed revolver straight at my chest from four feet away. "Stay the fuck back or I'll put holes in you!"
"Shoot," I dare him, my raspy voice devoid of any human emotion.
I step forward into his barrel.
Marco pulls the trigger in pure panic. The loud BANG of the revolver deafens the narrow room, the bullet grazing my left forearm, tearing through my coat sleeve and leaving a burning red line along my skin.
I bridge the distance before he can pull the hammer back a second time.
I catch Marco's wrist, twisting the joint backward until the arm snaps at the radius, forcing the revolver to clatter uselessly onto the floorboards.
I drive the steel bar straight into his ribcage—once, twice, three times, feeling his ribs shatter into jagged splinters that puncture his lungs.
Marco falls onto his knees, coughing up dark arterial blood, gasping for air that refuses to come.
The last six men panic completely. Seeing six of their own broken and bleeding in less than two minutes, they abandon their weapons, scrambling blindly for the iron exit door behind them.
I don't let them reach the handle.
I move through the back line like a cold, surgical storm. I break arms, I crush windpipes, I drive the iron bar into knees and collarbones until the concrete floor of the guards' lounge is covered in twelve broken, bleeding, and motionless bodies.
Silence returns to the basement in four minutes flat.
The only sound remaining in the room is the wet, shallow gurgling of Marco choking on his own blood, and the drip of red fluid running off the end of my steel tire iron onto the floorboards.
I stand in the center of the carnage. My dark suit is completely ruined, soaked through with dark blood, flecks of bone and skin sticking to my lapels. My dark hair is damp, plastered to my forehead, my face smeared with red.
I toss the bloody steel tire iron onto the table, where it clatters loudly against a bottle of whiskey.
I turn toward the reinforced door at the far end of the corridor, Vincenzo's private office.
I walk down the narrow hallway, my boots leaving dark, bloody footprints on the damp concrete floor. I raise my foot and kick the center panel right beside the brass lock.
The frame shatters inward with a loud CRACK, the door swinging wide open.
Vincenzo is sitting behind a desk, wearing a charcoal vest, a glass of double bourbon in his left hand. Sitting on the corner of the desk is a loaded snub-nosed revolver.
When he looks up and sees me standing in the doorway, covered from head to toe in blood, his face drains of color instantly. The glass of bourbon slips from his fingers, shattering on the hardwood floor.
"Leander..." Vincenzo whispers, his voice shaking violently, his dark eyes wide with pure, unadulterated horror. "What... what did you do?"