"Help me!"
Back in the warehouse, Olivia shouted as she turned her head at Jelana, who was still fucking screaming just like Gabbana, as if that would help them or something. They had zero survival instinct.
"Get up and help me! Vicente is going to die!" She shouted again, and well, the situation for him was truly… bad.
The amount of blood that came from his artery, from his stomach, was just unbelievable. He was bleeding out heavily but was still up. His whole face was pale, his pressure on the wound was almost non-existent as he was losing his consciousness, but he still tried to do something to survive.
While those two fuckers, with less blood loss and less fatal shots, were fucking screaming for nothing… well, it was hurting, but looking at the situation, they were truly blessed, one, that they didn't move, and two, Joseph shot them in a way that even if an hour passed, they would still be alive.
But Jelana didn't give a fuck about Olivia and just still screamed, so Oliva just turned to Gabbana, who was too panicking and was in shock, but somehow, he seemed more intact and well, only his knee was fucked up.
"Gabbana, help me or Vincente dies!" She shouted at him, and he actually heard it, actually looked at Vincente and what he saw was his dying childhood friend and business partner, trying with his last bit of power to help himself, to fight against death.
The only problem was that they were not Olivia, a trained agent who can stand the pain… and they weren't Joseph, who was just on a whole other level.
They were gangsters who had everything from the time they were born and from the time when they stepped into power. They had never been in a situation where they felt this much pain, where their bodies were slowly freezing and numbing.
They had never felt fear nor pain caused by someone else. Even the assassination attempt was nothing compared to it. They were never close to death. They never felt something like this, the sensation of it, the warmth and the coldness at the same time, with that ironic smell mixed with despair.
He was looking at it, the body of his friend, no somebody who is more than a friend, a family who he had grown up with, who shared the same pain of losing their family… he was looking at him as his blood was gushing out, as it was pooling beneath him… he was looking at his eye that was slowly closing down, that eye that was panicking, that wanted to live longer.
But Gabbana couldn't move, he was totally frozen in place as he looked at Vincente. He tried… or more like, he wanted to do it. The feeling inside him was rushing, the adrenaline was surging through his veins.
He knew he needed to move, to crawl to him and try something… anything. But he couldn't. His body refused, even though his mind was screaming at him to act, but fear… hesitation… something deeper held him in place.
Maybe it was the look in Vincente's eyes. Maybe it was the weight of everything they had been through.
Or maybe, just maybe, he wasn't ready for any of it… not just him, but all of them.
They weren't ready to face a real enemy. To face a guy they thought had gone crazy, someone who had lost his mind in that solidarity cell. They believed he had broken, that he could be easily killed, and then finally, their families could rest in peace.
But they fucked up.
They truly fucked up thinking Joseph had lost his mind, while in reality… he hadn't lost anything. In that darkness, in that cold, he didn't fall apart, he got familiar with himself. He accepted the silence and embraced it, and he came out as exactly what people feared he would become.
A man who had nothing left to fear, nothing left to love or weigh him down. A man who accepted the darkness and made it his own.
They were nothing compared to him and how funny is that?
Joseph, who left the family as soon as he could and started living his life on his own, going to school, learning skills to earn his own money. The exact same person who never wanted himself to be associated with his own blood of the Cassian family, was more powerful and dangerous than them… who all grew up close to their parents, wanting to be exactly like them.
But now on the ground, slowly bleeding out, it didn't really matter, their legacy, their money, the influence they had… it mattered nothing.
"Gabbana!" Olivia's voice came again. "Help me because—"
She stopped. Her voice suddenly cut off as she looked at Vincente.
He was already dead. His head slumped back, his eyes open, staring upward. There was no breath, no last scream or word… he died in silence… the exact fucking thing Oliva feared the most.
Right before her eyes, Vicente just died… the same fucking Vincente who was supplying 23 percent of the drug market, the same fucking Vicente whose family name carried enough weight to stabilize the criminal underworld for the last ten years.
This fucker just died, and with him, the whole criminal underworld will shake… No, it'll be worse than that it will fucking break free and thrive. Everybody will take the opportunity to fill that gap, and more importantly, everybody will finally realize that nobody is untouchable in this world especially once the news breaks that it wasn't just him, but Gabbana and Jelana too who were attacked…
A new era will start, an era where everyone will fight to get the chance to lay their hands on what he left behind, to take power and get the taste of what it feels like.
But the worst part of it, that it also meant… a new player was coming to the game…
Joseph Cassian.
----