Chapter 24
The firefight lasted barely four minutes. The Falcone strike force was entirely annihilated, reduced to bleeding heaps among the rusted train cars. Alessandro walked slowly across the gravel, his polished leather boots crunching heavily. He stopped beside a wounded Falcone lieutenant attempting to crawl away in the dark. "You stepped into my city," Alessandro stated, his volume incredibly low but echoing with terrifying absolute dominance. He pressed the hot barrel of his rifle against the man's spine. "Who gave you the transport schedules?" "Go to hell, Rizzano!" the lieutenant spat, coughing blood onto the freezing dirt. "Your empire is rotting from the inside!" Alessandro didn't flinch. He holstered his rifle and drew a sleek, sharp tactical blade. With a sudden, vicious motion, he drove the blade through the man's hand, pinning it to a wooden railway tie. The lieutenant let out a horrifying, breathless shriek. "I do not ask questions twice," Alessandro murmured, his cold, intimidating eyes narrowing into lethal slits. "Give me the name of your rat." "It's Vargas!" the man sobbed hysterically, completely broken by the excruciating pain. "Vargas, your perimeter commander! He sold us the routes for a million dollars!" Alessandro’s sharply defined jawline tightened. The treason was internal. He pulled the blade free and walked away, signaling Dante to finish the job.
