Prologue
“Give me one fucking reason not to kill you.” Goosebumps rose on their skin from the sheer terror in his voice. This wasn’t the first time Helios had done something like this, but they had never stopped being terrified. They had lost count of how many times they had witnessed him kill, yet it always felt like the first time.
“Fuck you!” Damn it, another life was about to end here. Hopefully, the Boss would show him some mercy, but from what the three of them could see, the Mafia Boss wouldn’t pity even a single strand of his hair.
“Wrong answer, fucker!” A deafening gunshot echoed inside the house. Helios had no reason to hold back, especially since he knew every room in the mansion was soundproof.
It was designed to give his subordinates their privacy. Jax saw the man’s hand bleeding. Just moments ago, it was perfectly fine; now, his left hand had a bullet hole right through it.
“I won’t ask again, bullshit. Let me tell you a story,” Helios snarled.
“Can I just sit this one out? I’ll definitely be having nightmares about this every single night,” Jax muttered to himself. Behind that stunning facade named Lev Helios Sokolov lay a monster that needed to be chained whenever he was angry.
“Once upon a time, there were these four horrible little pigs who entered the Devil’s den.” Should they even listen to his storytelling?
They always knew how his stories ended. “Wait, isn’t it the three little pigs?” asked the idiot Leo beside Jax. He asked it right in the middle of Helios’s storytelling, and the one who answered him was just as stupid.
“No, bro, it’s Little Red Riding Hood and the seven dwarfs.” Jax mentally slapped himself because of the two morons beside him. Neither of them had even a fraction of his intelligence, considering they were both completely wrong.
It was Snow White and the Wolf that Helios was telling, just with a twist, Jax told himself. Good thing they were the only ones who could hear their whispering, because their Boss would have definitely killed them otherwise.
“They tried to hurt the Devil’s Queen; they tried to kill his Queen.” The men in front of the Boss gulped, trembling uncontrollably. It was as if the fear they had been feeling all along was only just now truly hitting them.
The Boss stared out the wide-open window in the living room, which offered a clear view of the backyard of the Sokolov Estate. In the dead of night, under a perfectly full moon, the only sound was the chirping of insects. The men were so terrified they barely even dared to breathe.
“Do you know what happened next?” He turned back to the audacious prisoner and asked. If this were a zombie apocalypse, Jax’s heart would have sprinted away first just to survive.
They saw the pure evil in his eyes—those dark orbs that stared right through a person’s soul. “Answer me!” Kolai nearly fell over from shock when Helios roared.
The fucker didn’t answer the devil. For the second time, a gunshot echoed through the room. It was as if even the insects understood what was happening and fell dead silent.
The bullet struck the fucker right in the eye. This one seemed tough; he didn’t even scream. His fear must have been fleeting, because he actually dared to look Helios in the eyes again.
No one could hold Helios’s gaze for that long. He was just lucky that Helios still wanted to play with him. The prisoner didn’t even seem to notice the corpses beside him. His comrades’ bodies were already turning cold, yet here he was, still acting tough.
“The four little pigs died. They were eaten alive.” Helios ended his custom-made story. They all thought the bastard would finally beg for mercy, but instead, he made a grave mistake. He laughed. He laughed right in the face of the devil, the monster himself.
“I don’t give a shit about your story! Even if you kill me now, many more will come to kill your weakness! They will enjoy playing with her!” The fucker’s voice echoed throughout the entire room, his manic laughter almost deafening them.
Jax rolled his eyes. If they played with the Boss’s weakness, the Boss would play with them, too. He would bury every person who dared to touch his weakness, because his weakness was also his strength. Helios ruthlessly kicked the man’s balls, breaking his bones as well. He did it without an ounce of sympathy or pity. No, there was absolutely no pity.
He deserved it. Helios approached the man. He forced the man’s mouth open and shot him right inside. The man screamed in agony. Helios unloaded several more bullets into his throat, continuing to fire even after the man stopped breathing. Then, he kicked the useless corpse.
The monster looked into the dead man’s eyes once more, his own completely devoid of fear or hesitation. The next thing they knew, the rat lay completely dead in front of them, with both eyes gone and a bullet planted right in the middle of his forehead.
He was the most feared Mafia Boss, after all—a ruthless monster and a cold-hearted fucker. Call him whatever you want, just don’t block his way, step on his business, or touch his precious property. Because the moment someone entered his dangerous fucking world, they had already signed their own death certificate.
Helios’s most trusted men let out a collective sigh of relief. But it was also a warning to them all.
“My Queen is not my weakness; she is my solidity among my property.”
