Chapter 103: Red Skulls

Manhattan. Lower East Side.

One of New York's oldest immigrant neighborhoods -- and a gray zone where all kinds of underground powers make their home.

Leo's Maybach rolled to a stop in front of what looked like an ordinary Italian restaurant.

"Boss, you sure you want to meet these people?"

Olivia asked, a hint of worry in her voice. "Red Skulls have some connections in Europe, but these guys are all desperados. Hard to keep in line."

"That's exactly why they're useful."

Leo pushed open the door, shoved both hands into his trench coat pockets, and walked toward the docks with long, steady strides.

There was a restaurant at the waterfront called Vittorio -- Red Skulls' headquarters in New York.

Red Skulls was a transnational crime organization, born in Sicily and now with branches spread across multiple European countries.

They ran guns, trafficked people, the whole dirty business.

Not as powerful as the Nightfall organization, but they had their footing in Europe's underworld.

Getting Leo on a flight to Vienna was easy enough.

But the exoskeleton combat systems and EMP weapons the Pentagon was about to hand over -- those could never go through official customs into Austria.

He needed a smuggling route. One that was completely off the books.

And in New York, the outfit that controlled the biggest overseas smuggling network was Red Skulls, which had been dug into Brooklyn for years.

They had bases in Austria and Germany. Perfect.

Leo was here today to have a little talk with their boss.

"Stop right there! Hey, I said, stop the fuck there!"

The sound of heavy, scrambling footsteps broke the quiet. A heavyset white man with a gut hanging over his belt came charging out from behind a row of shipping containers, a crowd of men at his back.

He was moving too fast. He caught his bad back -- the one he'd hurt falling down the stairs earlier -- and winced.

"That's him! Box him in! Today I'm putting this punk at the bottom of the river!"

The fat man's name was Marlon. He was a low-level Red Skulls captain who ran the docks.

Earlier, outside the underground fight club, he'd tried to mess with Serafina. Leo had frozen him in place with a single cold look. Then Marlon had stumbled and fallen down the stairs on his way out.

Marlon knew Serafina was a serious player in the underworld. But Leo was a stranger to him -- just some pretty-boy bodyguard riding a woman's coattails, as far as he could tell.

He was a Red Skulls captain. He couldn't just let this slide.

So he'd rounded up a few dozen dock thugs armed with baseball bats and cleavers, and followed Leo all the way here.

"You've got some nerve, boy. You really think you can just act like you own New York?" Marlon waddled forward, grinning, watching Leo standing there surrounded on all sides. He figured the guy was already dead. "I went easy on you yesterday. Guess that was a mistake."

Leo was dressed in a fitted black custom suit, his signature black trench coat over it, a freshly lit cigar held between two fingers.

He didn't even glance at Marlon. Just exhaled a slow breath of smoke.

"You're with Red Skulls?" Leo asked, his voice flat.

"Oh, so you do know who we are. Good." Marlon sneered. "Thought maybe you were some out-of-town nobody who'd never even heard the name."

"Now here's how this goes -- you apologize, you let me break your arms and legs, and maybe I let you live. Otherwise, I put a bullet in you, chop you up, and stuff you in an oil drum."

Marlon looked at Leo the way you look at a corpse that just doesn't know it's dead yet.

On these docks, anyone who crossed Marlon and didn't have the muscle to back it up got destroyed. Every single time.

"If Red Skulls is full of idiots like you, there's no point in it existing." Leo's voice didn't waver.

"The fuck did you just say?!" Marlon's face twisted. "No point in existing?! Are you out of your mind?! Red Skulls runs the entire East Coast smuggling network! Who the hell do you think you are?!"

"Get him! Cut him apart! Teach this bastard how things work around here!"

On Marlon's order, the thugs surged forward -- bats raised, blades out, going straight for the kill. No holding back. Every strike aimed to do real damage.

But then.

The moment those men thought they were about to cave Leo's skull in, a streak of cold black steel cut through the air.

The ones in front didn't even see it coming. They just felt a sudden, vicious pain in their wrists and ankles. Cleavers and bats clattered to the ground. Blood sprayed.

That's when everyone noticed the woman who had appeared in front of Leo.

Olivia had drawn the custom tactical claw blade strapped to her outer thigh -- no one had seen her move.

"Boss," she said, holding the blood-dripping blade in a reverse grip, eyes fixed on Marlon and his men like she was looking at furniture. "Do you want any of them left functional?"

"Cripple them. Don't make a mess of the docks." Leo bit down on his cigar.

"Understood."

The words had barely left her mouth before Olivia vanished into the crowd like a ghost.

No flashy moves. Pure, efficient military close-quarters combat.

"Aah--!"

"My hand--!"

"Fuck, my leg--!"

In seconds, every last one of those thugs was on the ground, screaming, clutching their wrists and ankles.

Olivia's cuts were precise and shallow -- but they had severed every tendon in exactly the right place. Hands and feet. Even the best surgeons in the country couldn't fix that kind of damage. These men would never grip a weapon or run again.

"Stay back! Stay the hell back!" Marlon stumbled away from her, watching his men writhing on the ground. His voice came out loud, but his legs were shaking. "My boss is nearby! You touch me, and Red Skulls will tear you to pieces!"

"Hold on," Leo spoke up, exhaling another slow breath of smoke. "Let him make the call."

Marlon looked like he'd just been handed a lifeline. His hands trembling, he pulled out his phone.

"Mr. Rossi! It's Marlon! I've got a situation at Dock Three! Someone's hitting our turf -- this one's serious!"

He hung up and wiped the sweat off his forehead, glaring at Leo with what was left of his nerve. "You told me to call. Don't cry about who shows up. Enzo Rossi is ex-mob -- a top-tier cleaner. You just signed your own death warrant."

Leo didn't respond. He'd told Marlon to make the call specifically to draw out Red Skulls' leadership. Saved him the trouble of hunting them down one by one.

A few minutes later, tires screamed against pavement. Five black Cadillac Escalades pulled up at the end of the passage.

A dozen men in black suits -- cold-eyed, professional -- stepped out and flanked a middle-aged Italian man with his hair slicked straight back. He walked fast.

"Where is he?" The slicked-back man's voice was rough, carrying a quiet authority that didn't need to be loud.

"Mr. Rossi! Right there!" Marlon pointed at Leo as he'd just spotted dry land.

The man called Enzo Rossi lit a cigarette and studied Leo and Olivia through narrowed eyes.

"Just the two of them?" He looked at the bodies scattered across the dock -- hands and feet all wrong --, and something shifted in his expression. "You know whose turf this is, friend?"

"Yeah," Leo said. "That's why I hit it."

"Huh. Gutsy." Enzo dropped his cigarette and ground it out under his shoe.

The men behind him drew their Glocks.

These weren't street thugs like Marlon's crew. These were trained killers.

"I'm Enzo. Senior cleaner for the Syndicate. I handle people who don't know how things work." He shrugged off his jacket and rolled his neck. His joints cracked. "I've seen plenty of guys with a little skill who thought that made them untouchable. Every one of those ended up in concrete at the bottom of the Hudson."

He hadn't ordered his men to open fire yet. He'd clocked Olivia's CQC -- that was military-grade, top tier. But he had absolute confidence in his own hands.

"You talk too much." Leo tapped the ash off his cigar. His eyes were bored.

That did it.

"You want to die that badly? Fine by me."

Enzo roared and exploded forward. He was fast -- a savage Muay Thai roundhouse, the kind that could snap a baseball bat in half, screaming toward Leo's temple.

Leo didn't move.

But before the kick could land, Olivia was already there.

She cut inside Enzo's guard like a panther, and drove a heavy, perfectly-timed check kick straight into the knee of his planted leg.