"You want entertainment?" Guvnor growled. I gulped down the medicine.

"There was a breakout in Romford yesterday. The petroleum refinery near our factory caught fire, and it affected our operations. Some workers were injured, and now others are asking to be relocated. They're concerned about the potential for more explosions with so many refineries around."

I took a deep breath of the cold air and looked at him. "They even said they're willing to drill or help with the construction of our new building in Croydon."

"Croydon? Absolutely not. We barely have any drug dealers there."

"We've got one."

"Yeah, and we don't deal with him anymore," I said, shaking my head.

Guvnor raised an eyebrow at me. "Why not?"

"He's Oracle's brother, Guvnor. I know you're not scared of him, and I'm not either, but we were responsible for his brother's death. If he finds out we're in his town, working under his nose and selling drugs—basically stealing his turf—it'll damage our operations. I don't want to jeopardize our empire like that." Guvnor has never been one to worry about losing the empire, he's always been bold enough to handle anything.

Guvnor smirked. "That was just bad luck on his part." He shrugged it off.

He fucking shrugged!

Guvnor always does that. He's a bigger bastard than I am. He doesn't care about people's feelings because he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, always calculating and never really caring. Just then, a knock sounded at the door.

"Come in," Guvnor barked. His secretary entered, looking every bit the intelligent nerd, adjusting his glasses as he walked. Without waiting for Guvnor to ask, he started speaking. Guvnor's eyes were on the computer, but his ears were fully tuned in, always aware of his surroundings.

Guvnor tossed something into my hand—a cold, wet cloth. It drew my attention to the deep crimson blood dried and crusted on my skin. My nails were filled with the still-liquid blood, just beginning to dry. The thick, dark color stung my eyes. Guvnor watched as I rubbed the cloth over my palms, trying to clean them, but it didn't help. The blood had already claimed my hands as its permanent home.

"We're holding a meeting for the workers," he said. I screwed my eyes shut and took a few sharp breaths. I glanced at my rings, which were now sinking to the bottom of a steel pot filled with alcohol, the blood washing away from them.

"We also need to issue a letter to Christian so he can pass the permission for recruitment at the factory." Christian, the chief of the police department, works for us.

"And after addressing their concerns in the meeting, we need to relocate the workers to other factories and arrange accommodations close to their new workplaces," I said. "Some of them are demanding exclusive access to the clubs, which should be free for them and closed to others, yet they aren't delivering the results we need to meet our targets."

We own not just a few, but many pubs worldwide. We have strong ties with other major drug cartels, and we've built an empire for distributing illegal drugs across various territories. Additionally, we conduct legitimate business operations, including running clothing manufacturing factories in most states, which helps conceal our smuggling activities. If the workers don't produce the results and profits we expect, we won't hesitate to deal with them harshly, even if it means crushing them in the machinery to make an example out of them.

"If we don't get the results we want, we can just take their lives." Great.

"Sir, removing their privileges should be enough," Mason interjected.

"And if the workers go to Croydon, we need to keep an eye on them. We don't have many connections there. Croydon isn't familiar territory, so we need to strengthen our network there." My eyes snapped to Mason as I glared, clearly understanding his implication. Oracle's brother is the biggest criminal in Croydon, known as a kingpin in the underworld, much like Guvnor Genovese. If we try to approach him, he'll likely pull our lungs out and display them in his weapons warehouse as a trophy, symbolizing the fall of another empire at his hands.

I looked at Guvnor, catching his eyes fixed on me. He never looked away, even as he dismissively waved off Mason. Mason's gaze shifted between me and Guvnor before he finally walked away. Guvnor then took the folded cloth from my hand, submerged it in a bowl of water, and, after wringing it out, cleaned the blood from my palm. This time, he left his hand on mine, a gesture both unsettling and supportive.

He tilted his head and looked deeply into my eyes, as if trying to see through me, searching for where my soul might be hiding inside my body. "Are you still looking for her?" he asked. A sudden urge to throw the bloodied towel at his face surged within me. Maybe then he'd understand how much the memory of that night still burns within me.

The image of the girl began to form in my mind—her beautiful, tear-filled eyes, her small, quivering cries. A sharp pain rose in my chest, almost physical. Finding her would mean acknowledging that my heart still beats. If I met her, she'd hate me, right? She'd never look at me the way I look at her—with desire and admiration.

"I'm not," I said, cutting off any further discussion. I'm not looking for her anymore. She'd only become my weakness, and the world I live in is no place for her. I've already ruined her life by killing her sister, I don't want anything more from her.

"Hmm." Guvnor's raspy chuckle filled the air, a smile playing at the corners of his lips.

I pinched my eyes shut, blinking several times. My gaze shifted to my toes, they started to twitch slightly as I applied pressure. Sensation was slowly returning to my legs. I clenched my fists, my body tensing as the pain surged through my leg like mocking fire. My nails dug into my palms, drawing more blood as I squeezed harder.

I lifted my head when I felt a hand touch the bare skin of my shoulder. A shiver ran through me, the familiar pain coursing through my body, mixed with a numbness fueled by anger. A thin sheen of sweat covered my forehead. The blood on my hands hadn't vanished, and neither had the pain searing through my body.

I closed my eyes tight and then opened them again. Guvnor, like a dark guardian, was there in front of me, holding my usual injection. He bent close, filling it with the chemical. "The doctor said you can use your regular injection. It will only help reduce the pain and won't affect the bullet wound. But use only half the amount," he murmured, then pushed the needle into my skin.

I leaned back against the soft cushion, my heavy body sinking into it, closing my eyes as I struggled with the lingering pain.

I lifted my bloody hand and traced the long scars on my chest, now thick and permanent. I tried to feel her presence as much as I could, reminding myself of when she fought against me. She had dug her nails into my chest in anger, scratching a deep line down to my upper stomach. This is my way of feeling her, my form of self-punishment. I don't know if it was the medicine or something else, but it calmed me down. Sometimes I think all of this is happening because I sinned by killing her innocent sister. But then, I remind myself—no one is truly innocent.

My mouth parted as I took a deep breath, gulping it down. This is my nightmare, my reality—a living nightmare. Whether I sleep or wake, I'm in hell. I couldn't even walk here on my own two feet. I have no right to ask the devil for any favors, no right to dream of having her in my life, no right to hope for anything good.

"I think I could get better by tomorrow," I said.

"I'm in no hurry to get you back on your feet, Adam," Guvnor replied. I stayed silent, knowing the silence spoke volumes. Guvnor followed my gaze to the electric wheelchair in the corner of the room, pressed against the wall. He sighed.

I hate using a wheelchair, it makes me feel weak, and Guvnor knows that. Sometimes he cancels all his meetings because of me and only handles business where his presence isn't needed. He leaves me alone, lying here. Sometimes it takes days for my legs to recover, and other times just a few hours.

Guvnor spun around and sprinted ahead, tossing the used needle wrapped in tissue as he walked out of the room. Staying near me can be deadly for anyone. His secretary told me that when I first started working for him, before things began to go wrong in his business. My fate is cursed. Everything about me is cursed, and people around me become victims of that curse.

"Die! You're a monster. Give me back my sister, you monster!"

The girl's words echo in my head, filling me with a deep sense of hate. I have the power to drag people back from the brink of death and throw them into a chokehold again, but I have no desire to silence those echoes in my mind.

How sadistic.

I slump my body low into the bed and feel nothing but the numbness in my body. I need to take some rest after today's exhausting meeting with the clients. To join Guvnor in Croydon tomorrow, I need to get some rest.