Chapter 117: I Don’t Like Being High-Profile

"Is that all you've got? And you call yourself the Bulldozer?"

Leo slowly raised his head. A flash of savage red flickered through his deep, dark eyes.

"This... this can't be!" For the first time, genuine terror crossed Carlo's wide, bell-like eyes.

He desperately tried to yank his fist back, but the monstrous strength he'd always been so proud of was completely useless against this seemingly lean young man — like a baby throwing punches.

Leo's fingers snapped shut.

A sickening crack of shattering bone exploded through the air.

"AHHH!"

Carlo let out a bloodcurdling scream. Leo had literally crushed his massive fist out of shape with his bare hand.

But Leo wasn't done.

He stepped forward, and his right leg whipped through the air like a black steel cable, tearing through the space between them with devastating force — and slammed into Carlo's ribs with a sound like a wrecking ball hitting a load-bearing wall.

Carlo, all three hundred plus pounds of him, flew off his feet like a ragdoll, spraying a mouthful of blood into the air as he went airborne.

He crashed into an old rusted machine tool on the far side of the room, caving in the multi-ton steel frame on impact.

Carlo twitched twice, his eyes rolled back, and he dropped to the ground like a sack of wet cement. Dead or alive — impossible to tell.

One move.

Just one move.

The most feared enforcer in all of Sicily — taken out in a single exchange.

The cold storage warehouse went dead silent. The only sound was the howl of sea wind pushing through the broken windows.

Andre's mouth hung open wide enough to fit a fist inside. Every trace of smugness drained from his face, replaced by raw, bottomless fear.

Marco sucked in a sharp breath. He'd known Leo was dangerous — but not like this. Not something that didn't even seem human.

Leo calmly pulled his leg back, tapped the ash off his cigar, and swept his gaze across the stunned mob gunmen surrounding him.

"So this is what the Italian Mafia can do?"

His voice dripped with undisguised contempt. "What a disappointment."

The words landed like a slap across the face of the entire Berlusconi family.

"The fuck did you just say?! You've got some nerve!"

Andre snapped back to reality and exploded, jumping up like a dog that'd been stepped on, his face twisting with rage and fear. "You think dropping one dumb brute means you walk out of here alive? We've got hundreds of guns in this room!"

The mob enforcers shook themselves out of their shock. Leo's contempt had pushed them past their limit. Bolts racked back all around him, and a wall of gun barrels swung back toward Leo.

"Kill him! Blow this bastard apart!"

Serafina watched them all lose their minds and let out a cold, dismissive laugh.

She took one step forward on her heels, her long, sharp eyes full of mockery. "I thought the Italian Mafia was supposed to be something. Turns out you're just a bunch of nobodies hiding behind headcount. At my underground fighting circuit back in New York, people like you wouldn't even qualify to carry someone's shoes."

Hearing a woman talk to them like that nearly blew the top off Andre's head.

"Shut your mouth, you little bitch!"

He jabbed a finger at Serafina, snarling. "Once I'm done with him, every man in this building is going to take turns with you. I'll sell both of you to the cheapest brothel in Naples!"

"My, you really do have a temper."

Ivy stepped forward, dressed in red, with a sweet little laugh.

She ran her scarlet tongue slowly across her lips — playful on the surface, but her eyes were cold as a viper's. "You want to play with us? Honey, with that crippled body of yours — one hand and all — are you sure you've still got anything left that works?"

"You're DEAD!!"

That hit a nerve no one should have touched. Andre's last thread of self-control snapped.

"SHOOT THEM! Break both those bitches' legs first!" he screamed.

But just as the gunmen's fingers tightened on the triggers —

A red blur ghosted through the air like a phantom.

Ivy wasn't just Leo's girl. She was a "Rose" — heir to the Drake family's ultimate combat training. In front of Leo, she might play the part of a delicate beauty, but to everyone else, she was a cold-blooded top-tier assassin.

Everyone blinked.

The next second.

"Don't move. Or that artery of yours is going to start spraying."

A voice — sweet as honey and twice as chilling — whispered right next to Andre's ear.

Somehow, in the span of a heartbeat, Ivy had covered the entire distance across the room and materialized behind Andre like a ghost.

In her slender hand was a curved dark-red claw blade that seemed to appear from nowhere. The ice-cold edge was pressed hard against Andre's carotid artery — hard enough that a thin line of blood was already beading up along the cut.

The bodyguards froze in a panic, guns swinging toward her — but not one of them dared pull the trigger.

"Nobody move!"

With the blade biting into his neck, every bit of Andre's bravado evaporated instantly. His legs shook like they couldn't hold him up, and a dark, rank stain spread down his pant leg.

He'd literally been scared into wetting himself.

"DAD! Help me! HELP ME!"

He shrieked like a child.

"Stand down! Everyone lower your weapons!"

Silvio, who had been sitting back on the couch the entire time running things from a distance, finally couldn't stay seated. He shot to his feet, face pale with fury — and something else flickering behind his eyes. Genuine wariness.

He finally understood. These people weren't ordinary trouble.

"Young man. You win. I'll admit it — I completely underestimated you."

Silvio took a long pull from his cigar and forced his anger down, trying to sound like a man still in control. "Let my son go. We'll consider this settled. You and your people walk out of Genoa, no interference. Take your women, take your captain — I'll even let the cruise ship go. I'll throw in a ten million euro Swiss bank draft on top of that. Call it a goodwill gesture between friends."

He fixed Leo with a hard stare. "But that's as far as I go. If you kill my son, I swear — the Berlusconi family will burn every resource we have to make sure you never take another comfortable step on this continent."

Leo said nothing.

He just took one long, slow drag from his cigar.

The pale grey smoke drifted and curled through the dim warehouse air.

His cold eyes cut straight through it and settled on Silvio.

"Walk away? Friends?"

The corner of Leo's mouth pulled into a smile that had nothing warm in it — just something dark and brutal. "You still haven't figured out who you're actually dealing with, have you?"

He took one step forward. The sound of his shoe on broken concrete was perfectly clear in the silence.

"Remember this name."

"Leo Ashford."

The name hit the room like a bomb going off.

Silvio's face — which had been holding steady until that moment — went the color of chalk. The ruby-topped cane slipped from his fingers and clattered to the floor. It was like someone had pulled all the bones out of him. He dropped back onto the couch.

"Leo... Ashford?"

"You're the one who destroyed the Romano family and the Drake family in New York... the Reaper?"

All around the room, the Berlusconi family's best men — men who'd been holding their guns steady — felt their hands start to shake at the sound of that name. A name that had been whispered across every corner of the European underworld like a ghost story. Like a death sentence.

The monster who had gone toe to toe with one of the most powerful criminal empires in the world — and won — was standing right in front of them.

"I don't like making a scene."

Leo flicked the nearly-finished cigar away. The glowing ember traced an arc through the air and landed at Andre's feet.

"I came to Europe hoping to keep things quiet for a while."

His eyes went glacial. Something shifted in the air around him — a pressure that made it hard to breathe, a killing intent so heavy it felt like it had physical weight.

"But unfortunately..."

"None of you are worth keeping alive."