"What happened here?" Sota asked, pushing open the heavy front door of the high-rise condo unit he shared with his cousins.
Inside the living room, Kenzii and Alas were both hunched over their laptops. Kenzii was grinding away at corporate papers for his department, while Alas was deep into compiling the intelligence profiles Kenzii had requested.
Both looked up as Sota stepped into the living room. Exhaustion was deeply etched into his face. He carried a heavy executive briefcase in one hand, while a leather business messenger bag hung slumped over his shoulder.
Sota unbuckled his watch, tossing his bag onto a chair before dropping heavily onto the single leather sofa opposite his cousins.
"What do you mean, 'what happened'?" Alas asked, pausing his typing. He stood up to head toward the kitchen nook to brew a fresh cup of coffee for his cousin.
"Grandfather summoned me to his top-floor office this afternoon," Sota explained, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "I wasn't even planning on coming back home here tonight because of the mountain of contract drafts on my desk. But grandfather told me to go home, sit down, and stop stressing over the board."
Alas paused mid-pour, the hot kettle hovering over a ceramic mug. He cleared his throat subtly, stirred the black liquid, and walked back over to place the steaming mug on the marble coffee table in front of Sota.
"Thanks..." Sota muttered, taking a slow sip before shooting a sharp, suspicious look between his two cousins. "So spill it. What's going on? Grandfather mentioned that you were already handling the situation, Kenzii."
"Hmm. Attempting to handle it," Kenzii corrected flatly, subtly slanting his eyes toward Alas—passing the torch of explanation.
Sota shifted his gaze to Alas, narrowing his eyes into a demanding stare. Alas let out a dramatic pout, cursing internally at Kenzii for throwing him under the bus again.
"Okay, look," Alas sighed, throwing his hands up in defense. "Kenzii and I were worried about you collapsing from a corporate stroke. So this guy over here..." Alas pointed an accusing thumb at Kenzii, prompting Sota to glance over before locking eyes back on Alas, "...actually went straight to granpa's office to ask for tactical advice on how to relieve your pressure."
Sota snapped his head back to Kenzii, his brow furrowing in utter disbelief. Kenzii? Going out of his way to seek guidance from the very man he loathes? Is this a joke?
"And what kind of 'advice' are we talking about?" Sota pressed, his tone dropping an octave.
"This," Alas said, snatching the Manila folder resting on the armrest and tossing it into Sota's lap.
Sota opened the dossier. The second his eyes swept across the header of the top page, his expression darkened. He rapidly flipped through the pages, scanning sensitive financial ledgers, international offshore accounts, and hidden syndicate networks.
"What is the meaning of—"
"Those are the primary targets Grandfather wants processed," Alas interrupted, leaning back and shrugging casually. "To be fair, Kenzii spearheaded the whole thing. He just called me in to act as his intelligence officer and cross-reference the underground networks."
"Ken, you don't need to do this," Sota said firmly, throwing the folder onto the table with a sharp slap. "You already carry an unbearable burden on your shoulders. You're shedding blood every single week for the family under that system's commands—I refuse to let you pile my corporate battles onto your conscience."
Alas, completely unfazed by the emotional heavy-lifting, picked the dossier back up and resumed hammering away at his keyboard, completely ignoring Sota's protest.
"That's precisely why I didn't hesitate," Kenzii replied calmly, his eyes unreadable. "I'm already taking lives week after week. What difference does it make if I add a few more sinners to my targets tally? My hands are already washed in blood, Sota. Adding more bodies changes nothing about my damnation—so why not maximize the bloodshed if it secures your position?"
Sota closed his eyes tightly, his jaw clenching until the muscle quivered. But seeing the absolute, unwavering resolve in Kenzii's eyes, he let out a long, defeated exhale, slumping back against the leather sofa.
"He's not wrong, you know," Alas butted in, taking a lazy sip from the coffee he had originally brewed for Sota. "It's efficient. Plus, it actually solves our problem."
Sota shot Alas a deadly glare, snatching the coffee mug out of his hands.
"Shut your mouth," Sota growled softly before turning back to Kenzii. "So... what exact operational plan did Grandfather lay out for you?"
Kenzii scratched the tip of his nose, looking away for a brief second.
"I don't know. I didn't ask."
Alas stopped typing mid-keystroke, staring at Kenzii in sheer dumbfounded silence.
"What do you mean you didn't ask?!" Alas burst out. "You called me in to compile high-level intelligence without an actual tactical plan?!"
"Will you let him finish first?!" Sota cut in, looking like he was five seconds away from slapping Alas across the room.
After a brief, petty bickering between the two, Sota gestured for Kenzii to continue.
"The old man simply told me to do what I'm best at, then handed me the documents," Kenzii explained smoothly. "I figured the message is simple: I dismantle their operations, confiscate their black-market leverage, and eliminate them just like I did with Garza. Once I complete every target on that list, I'll return to Grandfather and demand the next phase."
Sota nodded slowly. Typical Kenzii. He never bothered pitching grand, complex roadmaps to Don Hidalgo unless the preliminary phase was executed with flawless, absolute precision. He required a hundred percent completion rate before taking the next step.
Three Weeks Later — Deep Ranges of the Southern Alps, New Zealand
"How's the situation there, Cuz?"
The sharp voice of Alas crackled through Kenzii's encrypted earpiece, making him stop for a second.
Kenzii casually tose aside the bleeding corpse of a heavy-caliber mercenary—a private guard belonging to one of the high-value syndicate figures listed in Garza's ledger.
"The target is running for his life," Kenzii replied coldly, sweeping his gaze across the dense, moonlit forest terrain surrounding the target's secluded mountain compound. "But he's not getting away from me."
Movement at his feet caught his attention. A surviving cartel guard, gasping through a punctured lung, feebly reached out to grab Kenzii's tactical boot. Without missing a beat or blinking an eye, Kenzii pulled out his gun from his side, aimed downward, and pulled the trigger.
A silent bullet shattered the skull, silencing the forest once more.
Kenzii needed to intercept the target before his armored convoy breached the primary access highway. The first light of dawn was already peeking across the eastern ridge; if the target reached a populated civilian sector, tracking and eliminating him clean would become significantly more complicated.
Immediately after completing a brutal contract assigned by the Slaughter System in Cambodia, Kenzii had boarded a public plane transport using his forged passport straight to New Zealand—hunting down the third target identified in Garza's ledger.
For the past month, Kenzii's life had degenerated into a relentless cycle of tactical planning, long-haul travel, and systematic executions of high-tier cartel leaders. But as the bodies piled up, the targets were growing paranoid. The international underworld was whispering about a silent assassin systematically hunting down cartel lords, forcing the remaining targets deep into hiding.
Kenzii was operating on barely four hours of sleep a day. Whatever rare downtime he secured between hits was spent managing his corporate assignments at his office to maintain his cover and contribute to his department's upcoming projects.
To make matters worse, the Slaughter System was steadily ramping up the difficulty level of his mandatory targets. His physical body felt utterly broken, running on pure exhaustion. Yet, the moment the killing began—the second blood spilled—an unnatural, dark vitality flooded his veins. It was as if his entire organism was engineered solely to thrive in those precise, violent seconds of execution.
"Don't screw this up, cuz!" Alas's panicked voice echoed through the earpiece, accompanied by the distinct clattering of mechanical keyboards. "You know Sota isn't here to override the regional satellite protocols! The closed-loop tracking server he set up only covers the spots within that mountain sector! The second that bastard hits the public highway, his signal drops off our grid, and we lose him completely!"
Alas was pacing nervously back and forth inside Sota's room inside Kenzii's condo where they're staying, his eyes darting across multiple high-resolution monitors displaying Kenzii's chest-cam feed, real-time thermal topographical maps, and decrypted radio frequencies.
"Tsk. I know," Kenzii muttered dismissively.
He straddled a heavy dirt bike he had stolen from the city that he is using for this mission, kicked the engine into gear, and slammed the throttle. The rear tire tore through the damp ground, launching him down the steep, winding mountain trail in pursuit of the target's fleeing convoy.
He would tear through whatever stood in his path—he wouldn't let a single name on that ledger draw breath until he stripped them of everything they owned.