The Ghost Consigliere

Chapter 10: Birth of the Ghost

The acid rain began to ease, leaving behind a gray drizzle that washed away dust and the smell of blood from the rooftop of The Apex. The guard’s corpse that had just crushed Dante’s throat stood motionless, frozen on the concrete landing pad. Vancroft’s lieutenant’s blood pooled beneath its boots.

Inside the wrecked van stranded in the ground-floor lobby, Elias drew a long breath and slowly severed the connection. This time, he did not hold it until the final second. He pulled his consciousness back in a controlled withdrawal.

Zzzzt, click.

The corpse on the roof instantly lost all support and collapsed forward, falling beside Dante’s body.

Mission complete.

On the modified bed inside the van, Elias opened his eyes. There were no violent convulsions. No black blood spraying from his mouth. But the exhaustion he felt was beyond anything he had ever endured. Every muscle in his face twitched. His left hand still could not move, while the black veins in his neck burned fiercely, as if they had sunk deeper into his nerves.

“It’s done,” Elias whispered hoarsely.

Sloane emerged from behind the driver’s seat, his face smeared with oil and dust from the exploded airbag. He pressed a wound on his left thigh that had started bleeding again, then limped toward the back of the van.

“You still breathing, Boss?” Sloane asked, his voice edged with restrained relief. He glanced at Elias’s EKG monitor, which showed a slow but stable heartbeat.

“He’s dead,” Elias replied softly, staring at the dented ceiling of the van. “Dante’s a corpse on the roof, and I positioned it to make it look like the two of them killed each other in the final seconds. No proof of who attacked.”

Sloane snorted harshly. “Killed each other? El, there are dozens of bodies scattered through that club with broken necks and holes blown through their chests. Nobody’s gonna think this was some mafia fistfight. This was a tactical massacre.”

“But they won’t find the killer. More importantly, they won’t find me.” Elias turned his head to look at Sloane. The crippled man’s red eyes carried an aura far darker than before. His humanity was slowly being eroded by Ghost Rot. “My father lost his eyes and ears in the Lower Sector tonight. His kingdom’s already starting to crack.”

“Good. Then we leave now before the cops really show up,” Sloane cut in practically. He checked the van’s external camera panel. “I can still start the engine and back this thing out of the lobby. We disappear through the rat roads of Sector Three. In half an hour, Vancroft reinforcements will swarm this place like flies.”

Sloane returned to the driver’s seat and twisted the ignition roughly. The van’s diesel engine groaned in protest, coughed several times, then finally roared to life. The vehicle crawled backward out of the shattered lobby and slowly vanished into the darkness of Saint-Bastian’s alleyways.

Leaving the elite nightclub behind as a mass grave.

The Next Morning

Six o’clock.

The sky over Saint-Bastian was a filthy gray. Sunlight could barely penetrate the heavy pollution.

Elias sat in his new wheelchair inside an abandoned old garage in Sector Three, their new headquarters. In his hand was a cup of black coffee he had not touched. He stared intently at a small tube television perched atop a stack of used tires.

The morning news was broadcasting live.

“A brutal massacre occurred last night at The Apex, an elite nightclub reportedly tied to the business network of the Vancroft Family. Police have discovered at least twenty-seven bodies, including Dante Vancroft, who is believed to have fallen or been thrown from the rooftop. Authorities are still investigating the motive behind the attack, which, strangely, shows minimal evidence of outside gunfire.”

Elias did not smile. There was no euphoria of victory on his face.

Only cold satisfaction.

A thin, lethal smile slowly formed at the corner of his lips.

He raised his left hand, now able to move slightly, though the numbness had not fully faded. The black veins at his wrist stood stark beneath the garage light.

That was the price he had paid.

A medal of death engraved into his skin.

He had officially declared open war on the man who cast him aside.

His own father.

Sloane emerged from beneath the van, wiping his hands with a filthy rag. “You look real satisfied, Boss. Ready for the next round? Your body still strong enough to handle the ‘price’ of that voodoo toy of yours?”

“I’m only getting started, Sloane,” Elias answered quietly, his eyes never leaving the TV screen. “As long as I’ve got one hundred meters, Vancroft will never sleep peacefully again.”

Three Hours Later, Rooftop of The Apex

Yellow police tape reading DO NOT CROSS stretched across pools of blood on the helipad. The morning wind blew cold, carrying the scent of death not yet fully faded.

Standing silently inside the cordon was a man in a neat suit. He wore black leather gloves and held a small notebook.

His name was Inspector Kael Thorne.

A special detective from Saint-Bastian Central Police, famous for being a man no mafia could buy.

Thorne lit a cigarette slowly, then flicked the spent match to the ground. His hawk-sharp eyes swept over Dante’s rigid body, then shifted to the dead guard beside him, the guard who had killed Dante the night before.

“What does the report say, Sergeant?” Thorne asked without turning around. His voice was heavy, full of authority.

A young uniformed officer approached hesitantly, tablet in hand. “Uh, according to the preliminary forensic team, this guard strangled and crushed the victim’s throat, sir. But... there’s an anomaly.”

“What anomaly?”

The young sergeant swallowed. “This guard has three close-range gunshot wounds in the chest, sir. And from the condition of the wounds, his blood had already coagulated before he... strangled the victim. Medically speaking, this guard had been dead for about ten minutes before Dante was killed.”

Thorne stopped mid-motion before flicking ash from his cigarette. He turned to stare blankly at the sergeant, then walked toward the corpse.

Thorne knelt down.

Using his steel pen, he lifted the collar of the guard’s uniform.

There, at the back of the corpse’s neck, he saw something deeply strange.

The blood vessels around the base of the brain had blackened as if burned from within.

Not burns caused by bullets.

Burns caused by an electrical load beyond human biological limits.

Thorne rose slowly. His eyes lowered toward the ruined club lobby below, where the van had crashed through the night before. From that angle, from a distance just under one hundred meters, everything made sense.

This had not been a random fight.

“Cancel every theory about gang warfare or betrayal,” Thorne said coldly, taking a deep drag from his cigarette.

“But, Inspector, who could do this? Dead people killing each other?”

Thorne smiled crookedly, a smile mixed with tactical admiration and rational fear. His eyes moved to the pile of bodies being zipped into body bags below.

A synchronization of murder too perfect.

Too clean.

“This wasn’t a mafia brawl, Sergeant,” Thorne murmured, exhaling smoke into the cold morning air. “This was someone’s masterpiece. A chain-killing tactic by someone who doesn’t need to pull the trigger. We’re not looking for a rival gang anymore.”

Thorne dropped the cigarette and crushed it beneath his shoe.

“We’re looking for a Ghost.”