The air in the underground shooting range reeked of metal and oil.
Leon fired the last bullet with precision. The paper target—shaped like a man—snapped back from the force. Dead center. Right between the eyes. He lowered the gun, jaw tight, hands steady.
"You never miss," Nico said from behind the glass. "You know that's not normal, right?"
Leon removed his ear protection slowly. "That's the point."
He didn't kill for fun. He killed to keep the machine running. The Moretti name sat on top of a kingdom built with blood—fathers, brothers, friends. All sacrificed for the sake of control.
Emotion had no place in his world.
⸻
Later, in the dark leather-wrapped silence of his car, Leon stared out the window as the city blurred past. A thousand lights. A thousand sins. He didn't belong to any of them, yet every shadow bowed to him.
He was headed to Club Eden.
Not for pleasure. Never for pleasure.
That place was a front—clean money, easy eyes, and silence where it mattered. The kind of place you sent messages through without speaking a word. One girl smiles the wrong way, a shipment goes missing, someone ends up face-down in a river.
But something felt… off lately.
Nico noticed it too. Staff changing too often. New faces without proper background. Whispers about someone skimming from the bar sales. Small things. But small things grew into corpses if you didn't clip them early.
⸻
Leon stepped into the club through the back entrance, ignoring the trail of men who straightened as he passed. His suit was dark, tailored, and dangerous. He didn't smile, didn't nod. He didn't have to.
The music was low tonight—some slow, haunting beat vibrating through velvet-lined walls.
From the balcony above, he scanned the crowd.
His eyes caught nothing special. Just people pretending not to be broken.
And yet, something flickered in his chest—like smoke warning of fire.
He brushed it off.
There were no flames left in him.