He saw the Flaming Skull wrapped in heavy black chains.
I watched the exact moment the cartel boss’s soul left his body.
Marcus Vance stopped breathing. The blood completely vanished from his face, leaving his tanned skin a sickly, pale gray. His jaw went slack. The confident, ruthless swagger of a billionaire trafficker dissolved in a microsecond, replaced by the instinctual, crippling terror of a man staring directly at the devil.
"Oh my god," Marcus whispered. His legs literally gave out. The great cartel boss collapsed to his knees on the asphalt, perfectly mirroring Gage's posture.
"Dad!" Julian yelled, entirely confused. "Dad, get up! Tell your guys to shoot them! He’s just some old trash, dad! Tell them!"
"Shut your mouth!" Marcus screamed at his son, his voice laced with absolute panic. Marcus frantically threw his own handgun far away across the pavement, violently shoving his own bodyguards down so they wouldn't appear as a threat. Marcus crawled on his hands and knees over the rough gravel, stopping three feet away from me. He pressed his forehead directly against the dirt.
"Arthur," Marcus sobbed. The cartel boss was actually crying. "Lord Arthur... I didn't know. I swear to god I didn't know he was in your territory. Please. Please cancel the Code 50. Please don't erase my family."
I slowly pushed myself up from the ground. Two of my men immediately stepped forward, gently supporting my right arm to help me stand, being careful of my shattered left shoulder. The pain was still a blinding fire, but I ignored it. I stood tall, the cold wind blowing against my exposed chest, looking down at the groveling trafficker and his terrified son.
"Your son hit my motorcycle," I said, my voice cutting through the silence like a razor blade.
"I'll buy you ten of them! I'll buy you the factory!" Marcus begged into the dirt.
"Your son broke my shoulder," I continued, my tone completely devoid of emotion.
Marcus let out a pathetic, whimpering sound. "Arthur... he's an idiot. He's a spoiled child. I'll punish him. I'll do whatever you want."
I slowly turned my eyes toward the tinted window of the neon-green Lamborghini. One of my men, a towering biker with a crowbar, walked to the car, smashed the rear window into a thousand pieces, reached in, and unlocked the door. He gently lifted little Leo out of the backseat. The boy was trembling, crying silently. The biker set him down gently near my legs.
I reached out with my good right hand and placed it on Leo’s head. The boy hugged my leg, burying his face in my jeans, finally feeling safe.
I looked back down at Marcus Vance.
"Your son touched a child," I said. The temperature in the parking lot seemed to drop to freezing. The fifty armed men surrounding us simultaneously tightened the grips on their rifles. "He steals children, Marcus. And you profit from it."
Marcus Vance looked up at me, his eyes wide with desperate survival instinct. He knew the laws of the Iron Skulls. He knew that human trafficking, especially of children, was an automatic death sentence in the underworld I had built. He knew that if I didn't get justice right here, right now, every single member of the Vance cartel—his lieutenants, his bankers, his entire family line—would be violently erased by morning.
Marcus looked at his son. Julian was shaking uncontrollably, finally understanding the reality of the nightmare he had caused.
"Dad?" Julian whispered, stepping backward. "Dad... what are you doing?"
Marcus stood up slowly. He didn't look at his son. He walked over to his armored Escalade. He opened the rear cargo door and reached inside. When he turned back around, Marcus Vance was holding a heavy, long-handled steel sledgehammer.