Baccano! - Volume 9 - Chapter 1.1

Prologue VI—The Mafia Returns

An abandoned factory on the outskirts of Chicago

“Ah… Let me tell you a sad…sad story.”

As the automobile industry had developed, Chicago had become a center of production.

The whole city had been bristling with auto factories, demand for laborers had soared, and the number of people working in factories had ballooned. The progress certainly wasn’t trouble-free; discrimination was a problem between black and white workmen. Even so, the developing industry had buried the area around the skyscrapers in the vivid color of steel.

In a relic of that era, a factory where the smell of oil and rust hung in the air, a young man murmured quietly.

He seemed to be about twenty years old. He was sitting on an object that appeared to be part of a big machine, heaving sigh after melancholy sigh.

If all you looked at were his blue coveralls, you might think he was a former factory hand.

Such a bright blue could never have been used on ordinary work clothes, though, and if he’d walked around town dressed like that, he’d be as conspicuous as you could get.

The truly odd thing wasn’t that color, but the object the man was fiddling with.

It was an adjustable wrench, the sort used to tighten nuts.

By itself, the name would suggest it was a normal thing for a workman to have—but there were two abnormal things about it.

One was its size.

The man didn’t have a large build, and the silver baton-shaped object in his hands was clearly longer than a child’s arm. It felt more accurate to call it a mace from medieval warfare rather than a tool.

The other thing was…

The fact that the surface of the once-gleaming silver wrench was dull with caked red blood.

At first glance, the man seemed slender and mild-mannered. His muscles were unexpectedly solid, but shiny blond hair hung over his face, and the half-open, sleepy eyes behind it were striking.

If all you saw was his lustrous hair and his pale skin, you might have been able to call him a handsome young man, but the color in his eyes was both incredibly dull and terribly upsetting to people who saw them.

“I used to work here in this factory, way back when.”

Smack.

Flipping the wrench with his left hand and catching it in his right, the young man went on quietly.

“Definitely not an ideal work environment…and that’s enough to make it sad, right there. Oh, man… This is bad, real bad. Just remembering makes me sad. I’m tearing up here. The tears are already right behind my eyes. This is bad, bad, bad. I’m seriously gonna cry; what’ll I do? What is this? Huh? What are my memories doing, making me sadder than I already am? What do I have to gain from that now? Not good… What is this anyway? It’s terrifying. How come they’re doing something that gets me nothing, when they’re my memories? Not good; I’m losing confidence in myself, and man, that’s sad.”

Smack, smack.

The man toyed with the wrench like a rhythmic gymnast with his baton, passing it from hand to hand, back and forth.

The tempo seemed to have picked up slightly…

And the figures who were standing around him quietly took a step back.

At the same time, a man who stood right in front of him shook his head.

“Mr. Graham. You’re getting off topic.”

“Oh, sorry… Right: the sad story. I loved breaking down bum cars and test-assembled components. Anyway, my mind was a little unstable, and I was trying to hold myself together by taking things apart and wrecking cars, day after day. There’s a real knack to taking the pieces out without damaging them, see… But. The factory hit some hard times, and they picked up a side business that was much too sad.”

“Uh-huh…”

“They started piggybacking on the rights and interests of the Prohibition Act and bootlegging liquor. All you needed was a few tweaks to the factory machinery, see… Did they think they weren’t gonna get caught? I couldn’t just overlook it. Sad, huh? I let my man Ladd get away with killing people, but I couldn’t let illegal brewing slide. Yeah, I hadn’t liked the rotten air in this factory for ages, and I figured I’d bust it up, so I ratted the place out to the government.”

Smack, smack, smack, smack.

This spinning wrench accelerated, and Graham’s sorrow became more fervent. His eyes were terribly sad.

“Except… Sadly, I couldn’t be satisfied with that. ‘Rotten air,’ human malice, good intentions… That stuff has no shape, see? I wanted to feel like I’d really broken something.”

Smack-smack-smack-smack.

“Aah, aah, how sad… In the end, I turned into a thuggish mafia wannabe, wrecking people’s joints and cars and safes, and I’m tons worse than the bootlegging operation I destroyed! Except… Can you believe it?! When I—when I left good and evil out of it and just destroyed physical things…I felt so alive!”

Wff, wff, wff, wff, wff, wff, wff, wff, wff, wff, wff…

The smacks had stopped during his speech, and Graham’s spinning piece of iron picked up speed, like a martial artist’s club.

“Could there be anything else that sad?! What I really, really want to break is myself! I’m what I should be breaking! Every time I think it, the guy I am now makes me so very, very, very, very, very sad  Ultra-sad. So how the hell are you gonna fix that for me, huh?!”

Rising ominously to his feet, still spinning the wrench in his hands, Graham kicked a machine component up off the floor, into the air.

Although the lump of iron definitely wasn’t light, it soared like a soccer ball.

As the angular missile plummeted toward his head, the young man thrust the wrench he’d been spinning up at it.

There was a pleasant clang, and the hunk of iron reversed direction, rising slightly.

Naturally, gravity pulled it down again, and he shoved it back up with the exact same force.

“AaaaaAAAaaAAAAAaaaaaaAaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAaa! AaAaAAAAAaaAaaaaAAAAaaaaaaah! AAAAAaaaaAaaaAAAh!”

Creak, crack, clang, crunch, squick, crack, whunk, scree, scree…

The echoing screams in the abandoned factory were joined by rhythmic metallic groaning.

The men who’d been standing around him had already evacuated to safety, and they were nervously watching Graham’s strange juggling from behind pillars.

At some point, he’d taken a small wrench out of his blue coveralls, and he skillfully wielded both wrenches—one large, one small—keeping the hunk of iron dancing in the air.

From time to time, parts separated from the iron lump and fell to the ground, but they hadn’t been ripped off by force. Each part was being removed, whole and undamaged, in such good condition that it could probably be reused.

The screams went on for several more minutes, and then…

“Aaaah…ah… AAAaaaah…”

As if he’d grown tired of it, Graham stopped yelling.

There was no telling when it had happened, but the chunk of iron he’d been levitating had nearly disappeared.

As he fell silent, the young guy stuck the small wrench into his belt and used his now-free hand to snatch a falling piece of metal out of the air.

Steadying his breathing, he checked his palm. The only thing on it was a single bolt about the size of his thumb tip.

Slowly, Graham’s eyes scanned the various components that lay on the ground around him, making sure that each of them had been completely disassembled into a single part.

“…”

At some point, the sadness had disappeared from his expression, and in exchange, the grin of a crazed clown appeared from behind his bangs.

“………I broke it down.”

Once they were sure it was all over, the surrounding men cautiously approached Graham again. They looked nothing like him; Graham was the only one in coveralls, while the rest were dressed in the ordinary way, like the thugs who prowled around the town’s back alleys.

One of them checked on the man, who was breathing evenly by this point.

“U-um… Mr. Graham? Do you feel better now?”

It wasn’t clear whether Graham had heard his friend or not. He spun around on the spot, looking up at the factory ceiling, staggering unsteadily in his blue coveralls.

The roof was gone in places, and the night sky was visible through the holes.

On seeing the starlight, the man’s eyes grew so moist that tears seemed about to overflow, but those tears weren’t from the sadness he’d felt just a moment ago.

“I took that thing to pieces. Fantastic… I took it apart without letting it touch the floor once! Did you see that? Did you? Whoa, that was great! I feel way better; what do I do with this feeling? I knew it… I wasn’t wrong!”

Graham stretched his limbs as far as he could in every direction, then vigorously flung his enormous wrench.

The silver tool became a disc, powering toward a gap in the roof, and for just a moment, it disappeared from the factory.

“Life is… Life is fun!”

As he shouted, the wrench began to fall. Pirouetting once like a dancer, Graham passed an arm around behind his back and caught the spinning wrench.

After pulling off a stunt that was clearly superhuman, Graham whistled as if to show that it hadn’t been anything big, and his lips curved in genuine delight.

“Nnnn! I thought it would snag a star and bring it down, but no dice! If a star fell down here, though, I guess we’d be dead! Whoa, crap. That’s not safe; that’s real bad news! Maybe we were way, way, way, way lucky that a star didn’t come down, huh?! Now what, huh, now what?! Huh? Wait, is this one of those things? Heaven or the universe must want me to live, right?!”

His emotional pitch was just as high as it had been earlier. Only the direction of those emotions had changed.

Graham was so manic you’d almost wonder whether he was shot up on some kind of stimulant, but his friends looked at one another and exchanged wry smiles, as if this was business as usual.

Graham Specter: Chicago native and former auto factory worker.

In Chicago, he’d been a Russo Family flunky, but when the factory had failed, he’d moved to New York.

Over there, he’d been the leader of a band of hooligans, but when he’d kidnapped a woman named Chané, he’d come into contact with Jacuzzi Splot and the rest of his faction.

He had hit it off surprisingly well with the timid tattooed kid. As a relatively veteran resident of New York, he’d made things easier for them in various ways, and sometimes they’d helped him out as well.

He tended to find more pleasure in the act of destroying physical things than in anything else, and there were rumors that he and Nice had often come into conflict over the difference between blowing things up and taking them apart.

That said, what perplexed the people around him more than that tendency was the intensity of his emotions. One minute, he’d be so sad his life seemed to have hit rock bottom, and the next he was flying as high as someone who’d made a sudden killing in the stock market. He had an extraordinarily extreme personality, and his emotional highs and lows were always all or nothing.

It wasn’t clear whether he was doing it on purpose or unconsciously, but it wasn’t that he swung sharply between mania and depression. He was always manic, and the capricious shifts in his emotions only affected the direction.

From the looks of it, you’d think his personality would have made him difficult to approach, but for all his violence, he was good at looking after people. Maybe that was why a surprising number of them looked up to him.

One of those followers replied with a little applause.

“Wow, Mr. Graham, that was real impressive. Next time, don’t use your hands; catch the wrench with your head instead. If you manage it, we’ll put in an appearance at your funeral to congratulate you.”

Unlike the applause, the words held absolutely no respect, and the man was watching Graham with eyes that seemed to have given up on everything.

“Huh? Are you making fun of me? Damn, the idea of mockery just got me a little worked up. A masochist? Am I a masochist? That’s ridiculous! But here I am, thinking it might be its own kind of interesting. Man, this is way fun!”

“We’re the masochists, for hanging around with you. Well, if you say you’re a masochist, I’m not gonna stop you, so do you mind if I announce some big news that’s going to drive you into a corner, here and now?”

“Whoa, if you get me any more worked up, I might explode! Dammit… Still, I’m not gonna lose! Bring it! I’ll take everything you throw at me, then lob it right back, and if you’re unlucky, it’ll kill you! Aah, this is bad… I’m gonna kill you! Somebody—somebody stop me! My fight has only just begun!”

As Graham responded to his friend, who was shaking his head and sighing, he struck up a staccato rhythm with his feet. If left to his own devices, he seemed liable to break into a dance—But his friend didn’t get caught up in his mood. Looking at him with resignation, the man spoke indifferently.

“Well, it’s about Placido. He says he’s got business with you, so hurry up and get over there.”

Placido.

The moment that name was mentioned, Graham’s rhythmic tapping stopped dead.

“Huh…? When?”

“Just about thirty minutes ago. Right about the time you started talking, Mr. Graham.”

“…Huh? What? Hold it. Hold the phone. That’s weird. That’s really, really weird. Shaft, man, why didn’t you say that first?”

Shaft was probably a nickname. The young guy who owned it answered in a matter-of-fact voice, his expression calm.

“Well… It just didn’t seem like an okay time to talk to you.”

“I see. That makes sense… Well, whatever. We can get over the sadness by enjoying ourselves. Just like I did a minute ago!”

“One more thing, Mr. Graham.”

“Hmm? What? Is it something fun? If not, I’m sending it back.”

As they turned toward Placido’s mansion, Graham asked his underling a question, beaming.

“That story about the car factory going under. I’ve already heard about ten different versions, and I think I got the right to be sick of it. It’s about time you had some new experiences and got on with your life.”

“…You call that fun?”

“The inside of your head is a real gas, Mr. Graham, really-y-y-y eeg-eeg-eeg-eeg!”

“If it’s fun, then laugh, ’kay, Shaft? If you don’t laugh when things are fun, you’ll greet the hard times with tears instead of a smile. See, just like now. Hee-hee-hee-hee-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.”

Still smiling, Graham was holding a wrench tightly in each hand, forming a ring around Shaft’s neck, and squeezing hard.

It sure looked like attempted murder, but maybe because they knew he’d never actually kill him, the people around them were sighing and smiling with chagrin, and no one stopped him.

That said, the only one who was genuinely enjoying himself was Graham.

Chicago The Russo mansion

The palatial mansion on the outskirts of Chicago was just a little unusual among its neighbors.

Lots of tough men entered and left it after midnight, and everybody had figured out the occupation of its residents, but nobody said a word about it.

A car dealer. That was what they called Placido Russo, the mansion’s owner.

He also managed several restaurants and hotels, but all those titles were just for show.

Placido Russo was the don of a mafia syndicate that had once held midlevel power in Chicago.

However, starting a few years earlier, they’d found themselves in a run of bad luck that had left them looking jinxed. Their fame and power had dwindled rapidly, and at present, the rumors in the shadows said that their membership was all they had, and that the group was on the verge of breaking up.

Their misfortune had started with a couple of robbers.

A man and woman dressed as baseball players had waltzed off with the outfit’s takings for the month, marking the instant Placido’s destiny had begun to head downhill.

That same day, he’d lost a spy who had infiltrated a terrorist organization called the Lemures, while his subordinates had been rubbed out by a gang of urban delinquents. On top of that, his nephew Ladd Russo, his ultimate pawn when it came to the dirty work, had broken away from the family in what looked very much like betrayal.

Immediately after Ladd had set off with his pals to rob a train, he’d been collared by the cops, and he was now apparently under glass in Alcatraz.

At the time, Placido had bluffed and blustered about throwing away a pawn that had been hard to play, but that brave front hadn’t lasted a year.

His nephew had had a greater influence on their situation than he’d thought. No sooner had the neighboring organizations found out that Placido had lost Ladd than they had started to put overt pressure on him. At the same time, rumors about the robbery also got out to those syndicates.

Once they knew Ladd had cut ties with Placido, several of Ladd’s enthusiastic admirers in the lower ranks had begun to openly double-cross the group and go to other outfits.

The tide had clearly turned against him, and as if to finish him off, a dozen or so men he’d sent to make a deal with the Chinese mafia had been slaughtered en masse by persons unknown.

Since the responsible party had disposed of the corpses, the incident itself hadn’t gone public, but they had also treated the act as a favor and stripped them of the few interests they had left.

Naturally, he’d initially suspected the Chinese mafia itself— But even if he’d had solid proof, the difference in organizational strength was so great that it was clear his head would be off his shoulders before he could even pull the trigger, let alone successfully retaliate.

In the end, he hadn’t been able to turn the tide, and at last, even within the syndicate, rumors about Placido’s personal incompetence began to circulate.

The next washup waiting to happen.

The pitiful man that the mafiosi of Chicago talked about over their liquor brought low.

That was Placido Russo.

—Or it should have been. But…

“…You’re here, huh?”

When he saw Graham enter the room, Placido spoke solemnly.

From the strength in his voice, you’d never have thought he was pushing sixty, and there wasn’t a trace of the claustrophobia of the life he was rumored to have.

“You’re late.”

“Had to clean up a little trouble.”

“Hunh. You’d better not have been up to something stupid like robbing a train, the way you did when you first came here.”

“Nah, that time I was just tryin’ to outdo a pal of mine. He did somethin’ similar a while back.”

Desperately suppressing the urge to burst out laughing, Graham bowed with all the respect he could manage.

On his way to this city, Graham had attempted a train robbery.

That said, some journalists on the train had nipped it in the bud, and all he’d managed to do was steal some cash from a guy who looked like a pig with whiskers, so the take had been less than impressive.

As a result, he’d arrived late after a few days hiding from the police, which was disconcerting for the executives who’d asked him to come help out.

“Well, I’ll be a solid stand-in for my brother Ladd until he gets out.”

“Oho… By the way, why’s the fella behind you so purple?”

“Something fun happened, apparently.”

Shaft had come very close to suffocating, and his face was still congested with blood, but even as his gaze swam, he kept at attention. On the other hand, Graham had one knee bent slightly, and the adjustable wrench was still in his belt.

Such an attitude in the presence of a mafia don could have cost him his life, but he didn’t seem particularly concerned about Placido.

“So what did you need with us?”

Possibly because he didn’t like Placido much, Graham kept the pleasantries to a minimum and got straight to the point.

“I haven’t had anything to do for the past few days since you called me to Chicago, and I’m bored outta my skull. Thanks to that, I ended up telling my pals the same story ten times, and they just got done bawling me out for it.”

“Hmph… Don’t be so tetchy. Your group is our trump card. You keep those in your hand until the very end, see?”

“Well, sometimes you get jokers who attack like nobody’s business right from the start, too, so I’d be careful if I were you. I mean that.”

It wasn’t clear who he was visualizing, but Graham shook his head quietly, smiling wryly.

“And? What do you want us to do?”

“Oh, it’s real simple. I want you to bring some guests here.”

“?”

The comment was mystifying. Was he planning on having him act as a chauffeur? …No, apparently not.

His next words were a straightforward description of the job.

“The other party may come to kill us…but we’d prefer to welcome them courteously, and alive.”

“Well, how about that! So right off the bat, we’re cannon fodder for our first job? You’re saying you want us to bring over somebody with the power to kill us, but we can’t kill them, right?”

“Wear them down before you bring them to me.”

“…”

Well, I haven’t taken any jobs from them for close to five years, after all.

“Yeah, sure. Will do.”

“Mr. Graham?!” Shaft yelped, just after his face had finally reverted to its normal color.

Placido was right there with them, and Shaft hastily shut his mouth immediately afterward, but the glare he was sending Graham’s way was strongly questioning the wisdom of taking such a dicey-sounding job! At the same time, about half of that look was resignation.

“There are several candidates. You just have to capture one of them and bring them here… And I hear a couple of them are actually children.”

“…?”

Ignoring Graham’s growing confusion, Placido called toward a door at the back of the room.

“Hey, explain it to them.”

At that, the door opened with an audible click, and three men entered.

All three were clearly mafia types—and the one in the middle had a distinctive scar running across his cheek.

“So you’re Graham, huh?”

“…Who’re you?”

Graham pegged the man with the scarred cheek as the leader and spoke to him first, but Placido took care of the introductions before the other man could open his mouth.

“That’s Krieck. He keeps the family’s young guys in line.”

“…Hunh.”

Apparently, Krieck didn’t think much of an outsider like Graham. The look he directed at him was openly disdainful.

“Wow. I’m sensing some real contempt, here. Lemme guess: ‘What’s this incompetent outsider doing standing shoulder to shoulder with me in front of the boss? The worthless loser isn’t even mafia. Maybe I should shove that stupid giant wrench up his ass and retighten the screws in his brain, the pasty sea slug bastard.’ Does that sound about right? If it does, that’ll be fun. I bet we’ll have some real good fights.”

Graham made sure they could hear his comment.

The room instantly went tense.

For his part, Krieck scowled crossly, averting his eyes as he responded.

“…I didn’t think ‘pasty sea slug bastard.’ Just the rest of it.”

“Ha-ha! I can appreciate hard-asses like you, y’know. Oh, but you’d better watch out; I bet my man Ladd would hate you, so you’d probably get offed just for making eye contact with him. Ah—don’t get me wrong, I’m not hiding behind his name to threaten you. It’s a serious warning. Watch yourself!”

“Just shut your mouth.”

At Placido’s words, silence descended on the room.

His voice was brimming with confidence and intimidating pressure, not at all what one would expect from a man on the brink.

When Graham glanced at him, Krieck nodded slightly, then took a piece of paper from his jacket and held it out to Graham.

Graham skimmed it, and his pulse rate jumped.

It wasn’t because he’d seen the name of an acquaintance.

“Th-this looks like fun…! What? What are these guys? A circus? Man, oh man… Huh? What? What country is this troupe from?”

He was probably lost in his sheer curiosity. Eyes shining, Graham absorbed the notes from the wanted poster.

The notes described a child who was over six feet tall and shaped like a beer barrel, a boy with suture scars all over his body, an Asian who wore enormous iron claws on both hands, a dramatic storyteller who always wore a hat, and a beautiful blond woman who used a peculiar system of leg-based martial arts known as capoeira.

The people the notes described really did seem like a circus, and Graham’s normally half-lidded eyes were now wide open, sparkling like a child’s.

The “cannon fodder” was suddenly very enthusiastic, and Krieck gave him a mocking warning.

“I think you already know this, but— Your group ain’t associated with us. I don’t trust you anyway, but I’ll tell you, just so I can say ‘I warned you’ before I kill you.”

Eyes turning sadistic, Krieck adopted the ominous tone he normally used during torture. What he was about to say wasn’t an empty threat.

However—

“If you get caught by those guys instead, just you try mentioning the Russo Family name. I’ll grind you into such a nasty pulp you’ll wish you were a sea—”

“’Kay, I’m off.”

Graham hadn’t even been listening. Beaming, he crumpled the wanted poster in his hand, then headed briskly for the door.

“Hey… I’m having the young guys hunt up their location right now. You fellas can wait until after that.”

Placido tried to stop him, but Graham shook his head lightly, rejecting the proposal.

“If I don’t jump right in with something this interesting, I’ll be missing out.”

Graham left, smiling as if he was in the best mood ever. Behind him, as he watched him go, Placido snarled in annoyance, so low no one else could hear.

“Hunh… What else did I expect from his sworn kid brother? That part of him is just like that idiot Ladd.”

“Can we trust him, boss?”

After Graham was gone, Krieck spoke to Placido through gritted teeth, not bothering to hide his obvious irritation.

Krieck’s companions had left the room as well, and he was currently alone with the don.

For his part, Placido sounded perfectly calm, wearing an expression that said he truly couldn’t care less.

“No idea. He’s top-notch, does everything perfectly except for killing, but… Seems like his loyalty’s with Ladd, not me. I’ll be watching my back in case he decides to put a plug in it. Besides, the execs who called him over were close with Ladd, too. I doubt there’s much devotion to me or the family there.”

“…Well, I don’t mean to beef about your nephew, boss, but he did leave home.”

Krieck didn’t know about what had once happened between Ladd and Placido. He was aware that Placido wanted to get rid of his nephew, but when he spoke about Ladd, he did so with token respect.

Placido knew this as well, but he didn’t deny what Krieck had said.

“Right. For starters, hit ’em with those fellas and sound out some details about that freak show and their chain of command.”

At that point, Placido exhaled deeply, then continued in a voice that was slightly graver.

“The brass wanted that information in particular.”

Afterward, Krieck and Placido talked about this and that for a while, but suddenly, Krieck’s expression tensed, and he whispered a question to Placido.

“By the way, boss… You’re not going to give those punks a shot of the liquor?”

“They’re just pawns. Doesn’t matter how many foot soldiers we lose; it won’t hurt us.”

At the word liquor, Placido lowered his voice as well.

And then… He said something strange to Krieck.

“How was it, dying and coming back?”

Wearing an odd expression, Krieck shook his head, rubbing at his throat.

It was as if he was checking to make sure the lethal wound he’d given himself with Chi’s claw earlier in the day had healed completely.

“Not my favorite. Sure, it was quick, but I had to play dead; I had no choice. Although by the time we healed up, the other guys had already left the forest. That was a stroke of luck.”

As he spoke, Krieck remembered what had happened a short while earlier, and sweat broke out on his back again.

“The act worked fine when I stabbed my own throat on the spur of the moment, but if they’d checked us over carefully afterward, it would’ve been curtains for us.”

“Hey…the first time you get hurt bad, regenerating takes time. You knew that, right?”

“I couldn’t exactly sit down and think about that at the time. Either way, I don’t want to go up against monsters like them. There’s no telling how many times I’d die.”

“Oh, don’t be like that. True, too much pain is never a good thing, but—”

As he spoke, Placido picked up a pair of scissors that sat on the desk and jammed them into his own left hand.

Blood spurted out immediately, but the elderly man shook his head with a crooked smile.

“Once you get used to it, it’s addictive. That nasty bite instantly evaporates…”

The next moment—the blood from the gash stopped moving, and then, like a movie film rewinding, time rolled back for both the blood and the wound.

Like a swarm of insects with minds of their own, the spilled droplets scrambled to be absorbed back into Placido’s wound.

Krieck watched with a satisfied smile. Then, bowing deeply, he left his boss’s room.

“I’ll teach that fool Ladd, too.”

Alone, Placido gazed at his fully regenerated left hand, thinking of what Ladd had once done to him.

He was remembering the time his nephew had turned a rifle on him.

The crazed logic Ladd had used.

…And that overwhelming fear.

“The guys I kill, the guys that are fun to kill, are the ones who are completely relaxed. Get me? The type who are somewhere absolutely safe, without the tiiiiiniest suspicion they might die in the next second. Guys like that. Like, for example—

“Yeah, for example—

“—guys just like you right now, Uncle.”

As his mind vividly replayed the terror and humiliation he’d been subjected to by his nephew—a guy who wasn’t even half his age—an expression that could have passed for either anger or delight spread across Placido’s face.

“You’re right, Ladd. Now, I don’t have the slightest suspicion that I might die in the next second.”

Harboring a youthful hatred that didn’t suit his age, the elderly man spat words at his blood nephew.

“However… You can’t kill me now. Never. No matter what.”

With no one around to hear them, his words came back to nurse his confidence.

“Bwa-ha… Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha… Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

The sound of his own laughter resounding darkly in the room was another balm for his heart.

It was as if, through his mirth, he was reflecting on the magnificence of the power he’d been given.

“Come to think of it, Ladd gets out soon, right? Is the family going to meet him?”

“What about it, Krieck? Does the boss still want to get rid of him?”

The moment he emerged from the room, he was greeted by questions from the men who’d regenerated with him in the woods.

Krieck gave a brief smile, then answered them in order to set his own mind at ease.

“It’s fine either way. We’re not ordinary thugs anymore. You fellas felt that for yourselves today, didn’t you?”

“Yeah… Well, that’s true, but…”

“So did I. When I realized how incredible this body is… I could feel confidence flooding into me. And why shouldn’t I? As long as we’re like this, there’s no way we’ll ever lose a fight to the death.”

Krieck grinned, and there was far more confidence and ease in that smile than there had been before his death earlier that afternoon. Before, he might not have taken such a condescending attitude toward Graham.

Reassured by the changes in himself, Krieck spoke firmly to his comrades in a voice that was filled with irony and assurance.

“Well, either way, I doubt there’s any need to worry about Ladd. Maybe we’ll leave him alive and use him, or maybe we’ll just bump him off already. Either way, it’s all up to how the boss feels… You fellas know, too, don’t you?

“We’ve got a hostage, after all.”

The Russo mansion was more spacious than it appeared from the outside, and deep inside…

…a young voice came through a certain door.

“I brought you some soup.”

“Yes… Thank you.”

Inside the room, a woman responded to the speaker beyond the door. Her voice was very faint, but it held a gentle warmth.

It was an odd room. The interior was furnished rather sumptuously, with bookshelves, a bed, and a table with chairs, but a strange sense that something was wrong pervaded her surroundings, impossible to ignore.

The source of the odd feeling was the windows.

They were open slightly, but there were barred grates set into them. The grates looked less like interior decoration or a safety measure to prevent falls and more like genuine iron bars, making the room feel claustrophobic.

The gaps between them were only as wide as a human wrist, an overt and heavy reminder of the position the occupant was in.

…Of the fact that they were being held prisoner here.

However, they didn’t really bother the woman who currently lived there.

Whether she was imprisoned or not, it didn’t seem to have triggered anything unusual in her heart.

If there had been a change, it had taken place much, much earlier.

When someone she cherished had been hurt and gone far away, because of her…

It had left her absolutely unable to die.

In order to fulfill her promise.

In order to keep a vow to a man she’d realized she truly loved.

In order to die, brutally and cruelly, by his hands.

As she began to eat the soup brought to her, she let her thoughts run through nothingness, all alone.

The man—Ladd Russo—loved her, and because he loved her, he’d promised to kill her. As she remembered his face, she was enveloped by a strange uncertainty, unsure whether to be happy or sad that she was still alive.

The woman’s name was Lua Klein.

Ladd Russo’s fiancée let her mind go to her lover, whom she had been told was in a distant prison—and she dreamed obsessively of the day when he would kill her.

Happily, ever so happily…