The streets pulse like open veins, black tar slick, the night a slow bleeding thing. Neon hums. Buzzing flies. A dealer on the corner licking his lips, pulling at his collar like he knows. Like he smells it. The reek of old grief turned to something else. Something with teeth.
I move through the alleyways, pockets heavy with ghosts, fingers tapping the weight of the thing inside my coat. Not a gun. No. Something older. Something sharper. A father’s rage honed to the edge.
And then there’s the voice in my head, Del Toro-cool, a slow drawl:
Jack is gone.
Jack is gone.
Jack is gone.
And someone has to pay.
I remember the last time I saw his hands—calloused, taped up, always ready for a fight. But he never saw this one coming. Didn’t know the rules. Didn’t know the game was rigged before he even stepped in the ring.
He was a fighter.
This dead city made him a corpse.
I light a cigarette, let the smoke coil in my lungs. The dealer sees me now. A flicker of something in his eyes. Recognition? No, not yet. But he will.
He shifts his weight, sniffs. He thinks I’m just another buyer. Another lost man looking to fill the hole in his chest with powder and promises.
But I’m not here to buy.
I’m here to collect.
I step forward, slow, deliberate, the way a lion moves before the pounce. He starts to speak—some rehearsed pitch, some poison-laced gospel—but I cut him off.
“Shut your mouth. You’ve already said enough.”
And then I show him.
The steel. The weight. The cold certainty of a father who has nothing left to lose.
His hands go up. Shaking. Sweat pools in the hollow of his throat. A scared animal now. His mouth moves faster than his brain, words tumbling out, desperate, sloppy.
“I—I didn’t know, man, I didn’t know, I swear! I just—It wasn’t personal.”
And then there’s the voice in my head, Del Toro-cool, a slow drawl:
“For me, it is personal.”
I press the blade against his ribs, just enough for him to feel the promise behind it. I lean in close, my voice low, steady.
Miranda, pleading like an 8-year-old, who’s lost his blanket and thinks crying will bring it back.
“I didn’t know!”
I’m somewhere between uncontrollable rage and elation, but 100% locked in the moment.
“Well, now you do.”
His breath stutters. A whimper caught in his throat.
I exhale smoke in his face, watch the fear seep into his bones.
No prayers.
No deals.
No mercy.
Only the reckoning.
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