The bulb overhead flickered once, then steadied. Nico froze mid-step, gun still holstered, eyes locked on the face in front of him.
The scar was the first thing he noticed. It sat along the left cheek, pale and jagged, exactly where the final blade had caught him.
"You—"
Nico’s reacted startlingly as he saw his face. Especially the scar that stood at his cheek side as evidence of his final struggles before he’d died.
"I don’t believe this." He continued. "How are you still alive?"
"Surprise, fear? Or the combination of both." Stefan asked with a snicker. "Afterall, your greatest nemesis somehow found his way to the land of the living."
Nico cocked his gun once and aimed it at Stefan.
"And if you don’t start talking, I wouldn’t hesitate to send you back to the realm of the dead."
"Oh, Nico. Nico Kael Ashford..." Stefan’s head dropped slightly. "Even after all these years, you’re still the same person I knew. Still demanding. Still overconfident. And if anything, that’s a relief for me."
Nico didn’t say anything. He watched Stefan raise his head to the flickering bulb lights, smile, and then snap his gaze back to him.
"You want to know how I’m back,. don’t you?" Stefan grinned. "You should know, all that won’t matter once you know why I am here. Or why your brother died in cold blood."
"What do you know about my brother?"
Nico asked, fingers tapping the trigger gently.
Now he was totally confused. Stefan had died months before Silas did. Unless he’d woken early and spent that time plotting revenge, there was no clean line between him and Silas’s death.
"An answer for an answer, friend. I’d rather we follow the negotiation books rather than become desperate and uncivilized."
"I don’t have time for this, Stefan."
"Of course you do."
Stefan’s smile lingered somewhere deep in Nico’s fueling anger. A mafia boss learned early that desperation had a smell, and he refused to wear it in front of a corpse.
He lowered the gun, adjusting his pose to a relaxed one, then looked Stefan in the eyes.
"What do you want to know?"
"Just one thing." Stefan’s voice dropped cold. "Why did you do it?"
Nico understood the question well enough. It circled back to the bullet he’d put in Stefan the first time, back when Stefan still had the decency to stay dead.
"I had tabs on you, Stefan." Nico replied him sharply. "I knew you were this close to selling us out to the Yakuzas. You would consider your death as mercy. If Silas had found out first, you, of all people know what he could’ve done to you."
"You took that shot without hesitation, Nico. Really, is that what friends are for now? Hunting each other down?" Stefan held a grudging frown. "I fucking called you my brother!"
"You killed fifteen of our men!"
Nico walked up hastily to him and leaned down.
"Fifteen guys died only because they heard whispers of your deal with the Yakuza boss. Those guys were my brothers too. And by all standards, they were yours also."
He straightened himself up.
"The organization has a code, Stefan. And we all know that by general knowledge. No betrayer should be kept alive, regardless of how explosive their actions were or weren’t. I only followed the code when I took that shot."
Stefan didn’t reply right away. His eyes stayed on Nico’s, and something behind them curdled a little more with every passing second.
"I answered your question. So, now, answer mine." Nico loosened the first two buttons of his shirt. "What do you know about my brother?"
"Only that your brother died protecting everything he loved." Stefan replied after a long while of deliberate silence. "And that you also are bound to meet the same fate-"
Nico struck a fist across Stefan’s face.
"Wrong answer. Try again."
Stefan laughed and sucked his lips. "You bastard—"
Another blow. Harder this time.
"I want answers, Stefan." Nico said, throwing another fist to his nose. "Answers."
"Did you really think you would last long on the assumed glory of your brother? That your wits and strategy would keep you alive for long? Know this Nico, as long as you sit on that throne, you, your organisation. Everything and everyone you love would always be in danger."
Nico crossed another punch to his face.
Stefan’s neck snapped sideways from the impact. He let out a dry chuckle anyway, as if the pain belonged to someone else entirely.
"We’ve been watching you, Nico. We know what you do. We know every last one of your stops. We see your movements. And even recently, we know that Silas’s ex-wives moved into your mansion. We see everything about you."
’We.’
That single word landed heavier than the punches had. Nico crouched down, close enough to search Stefan’s eyes for whatever truth might still be hiding there.
It wasn’t the old glint of red anymore. Something colder stared back now. Greener, and far too bright to belong to anything human.
"You’re not Stefan." He concluded. "You’re just a puppet."
"All points goes to the smart one."
Stefan—whoever the fuck he was, laughed wildly. He leaned forward to Nico with a horrifying gaze.
"But not for long. Your wives are going to die, and there’s nothing your wits can do to stop it. To stop us. And when we’re done with them, I’d be coming for you next—"
The gun came up before the sentence could finish itself. One shot, straight through the skull, and the words died with it.
Nico stood over the body. He let his arms fall to his sides and released a breath he hadn’t noticed holding.
No blood pooled beneath the wound. None at all, which meant the body really was Stefan’s, untouched by decay in the way it should have been.
But whatever had been steering him wasn’t Stefan, not for a long while now. Someone in this city had learned how to drag the dead back up and rewrite what was left of their minds.
The shape of it felt uncomfortably familiar.
"Lucas."
The locker room door swung open almost before the name had left his mouth. Lucas stepped in and came to a stop just behind him, waiting.
"This is the work of an occult." Nico explained. "If they could manipulate Stefan’s body, that means that they are in the city. Find them and kill them. After this little party trick they pulled, I’m no longer in the mood for a negotiation."
"Okay boss."
Nico turned around and handed the gun to him before walking toward the door. Halfway down the passageway, he stopped and glanced back over his shoulder.
"And Lucas?"
"Yes boss?"
"Burn the body."