Chapter 5 - The Eviction Notice
Henderson’s jaw went slack. The keys in his hand stopped jingling.
He wasn't a brave man. He was the kind of petty tyrant who preyed on single mothers, undocumented dishwashers, and desperate families who couldn't hire lawyers. But even an idiot could sense when he had stepped into the cage of an apex predator.
“Who… who are you?” Henderson squeaked, clutching his clipboard against his stomach like a shield. “This is private property. Unauthorized guests violate the lease agreement! I can have the police—”
Alessandro stood up.
He didn't rush. He didn't raise his hands. He simply uncoiled his massive frame from the chair, rising to his full, towering height. His broad shoulders blocked out the light from the kitchen window. The raw, violent aura radiating off him made the small apartment feel like a compression chamber.
Henderson took an instinctive step backward, his back hitting the doorframe.
“You knocked without waiting for an answer,” Alessandro said. His voice was silky, low, and laced with cyanide. “You walked into a home where a woman and a child reside with a master key. In my country, a man who does that is buried up to his neck at the tide line.”
“I’m the landlord!” Henderson squealed, his face turning the color of wet dough. “She’s delinquent! She owes back rent!”
“How much?” Alessandro asked, taking a single, measured step forward.
Henderson flinched as if struck. “S-six hundred! Plus late fees! And a cleaning deposit!”
Alessandro reached into his ruined charcoal suit jacket hanging over the back of the dining chair. From the hidden inner breast pocket—which Dante’s goons had miraculously failed to check—he pulled out a slim, gold-embossed leather cardholder.
Inside was a single folded stack of crisp, hundred-dollar bills wrapped in a black band. He slipped off the band and pulled out ten bills.
He tossed them at Henderson’s chest.
The green paper fluttered through the air, slapping against Henderson’s greasy jacket before scattering onto the dirty linoleum.
“One thousand dollars,” Alessandro said coldly. “For this month. And for the inconvenience of looking at your face.”
Henderson stared at the money on the floor, then looked up at Alessandro’s hollow, scarred cheeks, and the neon-pink princess band-aid still stuck firmly to his cheekbone. Greed warred with terror in the landlord’s piggy little eyes.
He bent down to snatch the bills with trembling fingers. “Okay… okay. We’re square for November. But next month—”
Alessandro closed the distance between them in half a heartbeat.
Before Henderson could stand up, Alessandro’s hand shot out, wrapping like an iron vise around the back of the landlord’s thick neck. He yanked the two-hundred-pound man upward as effortlessly as a sack of flour, slamming him against the wall beside the front door.
The picture of Elena’s late husband on the side table rattled.
“Listen to me very carefully, signor Henderson,” Alessandro whispered directly into the man’s ear, his voice so terrifyingly quiet that Elena felt the hair on her arms stand up. “You will tear up that notice. You will tell anyone who asks that Mrs. Carter paid her lease through the end of the year and left for Ohio to visit family. If I hear that you spoke to a single detective, a single stranger in a black SUV, or a single city official about what you saw in this apartment today… I will send men who will dismantle your life brick by brick. They will find every building you own, every tax document you forged, and every dark corner you hide in. Do you understand my English?”
Henderson couldn't speak. He could only nod frantically, tears of sheer terror leaking down his flabby cheeks.
Alessandro released him.
Henderson hit the floor on his knees, scrambled backward through the doorway like a frightened crab, and took off down the hallway at a dead run, dropping his clipboard in the stairwell.
The front door stood open to the drafty corridor.
Alessandro stood there for a moment, breathing heavily, pressing a hand against his injured flank where the blood was starting to seep again. He turned toward Elena.
Elena was staring at him, her chest rising and falling, a mixture of shock, awe, and primal fear burning in her eyes.
For two years, Henderson had terrorized her. He had threatened to throw her belongings in the rain. He had demanded cash under the table. He had made crude, disgusting comments about her late husband.
And in less than ninety seconds, this wounded, bleeding stranger had dismantled him with ten words and a handful of cash.
“You shouldn't have done that,” Elena whispered.
“A man who bullies women and children is not a man,” Alessandro said simply, turning back toward the kitchen. “He is vermin. And vermin must be shown the boot.”
Before Elena could answer, three sharp honks sounded from the alley behind the building.
Alessandro looked toward the window.
“Marco is here,” he said. “Pack one bag for the child. Nothing else. Everything you leave behind will be replaced tenfold.”
Mila poked her head out of the bedroom, clutching her one-eared rabbit. “Mama? Did the bad man leave?”
Elena looked from her innocent daughter to the giant mafia Don standing in her tiny, broken kitchen.
She took a deep breath, steeling her spine.
May you like
“Yes, baby,” Elena said softly. “The bad man left. Pack your rabbit. We’re going on a trip.”
***
