Chapter 274
Wesley
They poured out of every conceivable hiding spot. Behind machinery. Inside shipping containers. One guy literally dropped from a ceiling beam like some kind of deranged spider. Another crawled out of a drainage grate in the floor, covered in filth and murder.
It was an ambush. A perfectly coordinated ambush.
And just like that, we were fucked.
"Ambush!" I screamed, but it was too late. The Syndicate hit us from behind, from the sides, from angles we hadn't even considered. My men started dropping. Not one or two—dozens. The screams were immediate and horrible.
Elijah appeared at my side, blood streaming from a cut above his eye. "Boss! We're surrounded! If we stay here, we're all dead! Even if we win, we'll lose everyone!"
He was right. I could see it playing out. The Italians in front, the Syndicate behind. We were being crushed in a vice, and every second we stayed was another man dead.
But retreat meant running. Again. And I was so fucking tired of running.
I looked at the Syndicate fighters—these cowardly pieces of shit who'd hidden while their friends died, who only came out when they thought they had the advantage—and something in me snapped.
"No," I said. "We're not running."
"Wesley—"
"Kill the Syndicate first!" I roared, loud enough that half the warehouse could probably hear me. "Ignore the Italians! Focus fire on the Syndicate! Once they're down, we leave!"
It was barely a plan. More like a prayer. But my men heard it, and desperate people will cling to anything that sounds like hope.
The shift was immediate. My guys stopped trying to fight on two fronts and instead turned all their attention to the Syndicate fighters. Let the Italians shoot at them if they wanted—we'd deal with that later. Right now, we had rats to exterminate.
And exterminate them we did.
The Syndicate had made a fatal mistake. They'd revealed their positions all at once, thinking they'd overwhelm us with shock and numbers. Instead, they'd just painted targets on themselves. My men cut through them with brutal efficiency, driven by hours of pent-up rage and the knowledge that this was literally life or death.
One by one, the Syndicate fighters fell. The ones who tried to retreat found no cover—we'd already cleared those areas. The ones who tried to fight got swarmed. Within ten minutes, the last of them was dead, his body sprawled across a pool of oil and blood.
But the cost...
I looked around at my men. Half were wounded. Maybe a quarter were dead or dying. The ones still standing looked like they'd aged ten years in the last hour. Shell-shocked. Traumatized.
And the Italians were still there. Still armed. Still organized.
We'd won the battle but lost the war.
I stumbled to the nearest support pillar and leaned against it, gasping for breath. My hands were shaking again, worse than before. I'd used up everything—every ounce of strength, every drop of adrenaline—and now I was running on fumes.
That's when I saw him.
The bearded Italian. The leader. He was standing in the center of his formation, maybe thirty yards away, and he was smiling. Not a cruel smile. Not even a particularly triumphant one. Just... amused.
Like this was all some kind of game.
I stared at him—really looked at him this time. The thick beard streaked with gray. The way he stood with his weight slightly forward, like a boxer ready to move. The old-school aviator sunglasses that probably cost more than most people's cars. And suddenly, my brain made a connection I should've made the second I saw those red armbands.
I'd seen this face before. Not in person, but on Marcello's phone.
It had been late one night, maybe three weeks ago, back when I was still trying to prove I belonged in the Brotherhood. Marcello had been showing me photos—a crash course in "people who can end you with a phone call," as he'd put it. Most of the faces had blurred together. Russian mob bosses. Cartel leaders. Corrupt politicians.
But this one had stuck with me.
"Salvatore Mancini," Marcello had said, zooming in on the image. "Philadelphia's last real don. Been running that city since before you were born, kid. They call him 'Il Patriarca'—The Patriarch. Old school doesn't even begin to cover it. This guy still goes to confession every Sunday, kisses his mother's ring, the whole nine yards."
Salvatore Mancini.
I didn't know if the bearded bastard was Mancini, but he had that energy. That old-world gravitas.
And if Marcello was right—if someone could rise to that level, could hold an entire city for decades, could earn a title like Il Patriarca—then honor wasn't just something he valued.
It was the foundation of everything he'd built.
I pushed off the pillar, legs wobbling but holding. Raised my hands—not in surrender, but in a gesture of parley. My gun was still in one hand, but I kept it pointed at the ground.
"Hey!" My voice cracked, hoarse from shouting. I tried again, louder. "Italian!"
The bearded man's head turned toward me. Slowly. Deliberately.
I could feel every eye in the warehouse on me. My men. His men. Everyone waiting to see what happened next.
"You want a fight?" I called out, injecting as much contempt into my voice as I could manage. "Fine. But give us a fucking minute to catch our breath. Or are you so scared you need to kick us while we're down?"
The warehouse went dead silent.
The Italian removed his sunglasses. Folded them carefully. Tucked them into his jacket pocket.
Then he started walking toward me.
Not fast. Not slow. Just... inevitable.
Every one of my men tensed, weapons coming up. But I held up my hand, stopping them. This wasn't about shooting. Not yet.
He stopped about ten feet away. Close enough to talk. Close enough to kill.
Up close, he was even more intimidating. Not just big—solid. Like he'd been carved from granite. His eyes were dark, almost black, and they studied me with an intensity that made my skin crawl.
"You've got balls, kid," he said finally. His English was perfect, barely accented. "Stupid balls, but balls."
"Balls are all I've got left," I shot back. "You wiped out most of my men. Congratulations. Want a fucking medal?"
His expression didn't change. "You know who I am?"
"I can guess. Salvatore Mancini. Philly mob. Thomas Lawson's lapdog."
That got a reaction. His jaw tightened, and for a second I thought he was going to shoot me right there.
Instead, he laughed.
It was a deep, rumbling sound that seemed to come from somewhere in his chest. "Lapdog. That's good. I'll have to tell Thomas you said that."