“Let’s play a game.” Liam ultimately didn’t crush the guy’s throat.
Instead, he lifted his foot.
“It’s called: I ask, you answer.” The goon seized the opportunity.
In a game played with his life on the line, he was as focused and cooperative as a man could possibly be.
From him, Liam learned that their boss went by the moniker “Blood Pepper,” and their gang had taken the name as well.
The Blood Pepper Gang hadn’t been around long, but they had been making big waves recently because their boss placed high importance on networking with high society.
On top of that, their boss was currently competing with Kingpin for business.
To play it safe, the cunning mobster had moved the gang’s headquarters out to Long Island.
Normally, “Blood Pepper” lived in a massive villa in a wealthy Long Island neighborhood, directing his minions remotely to handle the dirty work.
In targeting Liam’s family this time, they were simply helping out a “big shot”—they just hadn’t expected to kick an iron wall.
The goon gave a very detailed account.
In reality, however, he was also subtly threading threats into his soft tone, hinting that Liam shouldn’t kill him, or else he would face an endless vendetta with the Blood Pepper Gang.
As it turned out, Liam seemed genuinely “frightened” by the threat and agreed to let him drive a car out of Hell’s Kitchen.
Even though the driving experience was utterly atrocious—not only was one of his hands crushed into a pulp, but that Cadillac Escalade had been packed like a tin can, holding a record number of bodies (Liam had tested it: between the trunk, the back seats, and the front passenger seat, you could stuff in a maximum of fourteen “people”)—he had nevertheless survived.
Once behind the wheel, he slammed on the gas and fled Hell’s Kitchen like his life depended on it.
Calling the police was out of the question.
Driving this Escalade packed to the brim with his “dear brothers,” he gritted his teeth against the searing agony of his mangled hand, driving all the way from Manhattan to Long Island, pulling straight into his boss’s courtyard.
The villa was crawling with bodyguards.
Seeing him stumble out of the car dragging a ruined hand, they rushed over immediately.
Even their boss, “Blood Pepper” Brad Pepper—who had been playing cards with a beautiful woman inside—pulled up his pants and ran out of the villa.
Brad Pepper took one look at his trusted lieutenant’s pathetic state, then glanced at the “fully loaded” Escalade, where several bodyguards were clutching their mouths and dry-heaving by the open doors.
He immediately demanded, “How the hell did you end up like this?” “B-Boss…
bad news…” Before he could finish his sentence, his vision suddenly blurred.
The next second, he realized his boss had vanished into thin air!
A moment later, a single energy blast plummeted from the sky, and a luxury mansion with a sprawling courtyard permanently vanished from the Long Island neighborhood.
That night, the NYPD’s emergency hotline was flooded with calls.
One luxury car after another lined the highway heading from Long Island back into Manhattan.
It was fucking terrifying!
In the prestigious Long Island estate district, an entire mansion had been leveled by some unknown massive bomb!
Oddly enough, most of the wealthy elite fleeing Long Island for Manhattan didn’t head straight to their other properties or hotels.
Instead, they frantically called their real estate agents, demanding emergency midnight meetings to unload their Long Island mansions as fast as humanly possible.
Meanwhile, Liam—the man who had inadvertently caused this sleepless night for so many and sent Long Island property values plummeting—had no idea about any of it.
At that moment, he was standing at the very top of New York’s iconic landmark, the Empire State Building, looking down at the concrete jungle beneath his feet.
“Since you’re awake, stop pretending to sleep.
Open your eyes.” Liam turned his head and gave the shivering mob boss in pajamas a light kick to the rear, nearly giving the man a heart attack.
“Oh, Jesus!
What the fuck, are you the devil?!” Brad Pepper was clinging frantically to the “ground.” The two of them were currently standing right on top of the eagle sculpture at the peak of the Empire State Building, roughly fourteen hundred feet above the pavement.
If a man fell from this height, he wouldn’t just break a bone—he’d splat into a purple smudge on the sidewalk!
When Liam had snatched him from his Long Island mansion, he hadn’t controlled his speed well while using the Sky-Dance Technique.
The sudden surge of dozens of Gs had knocked the mob boss out cold in zero frames flat.
Fortunately, Liam flew fast enough that they reached their destination in seconds, saving Brad Pepper from dying of acceleration right then and there.
Still, Brad felt like he wasn’t far from death right now.
“I have fucking acrophobia!
Get me down from here…
wait, no, put me somewhere safe!” Hearing this, Liam chuckled.
“What the *fuck* does you having a fear of heights have to do with *me*?” As he spoke, he maliciously kicked the fat boss’s rear a few more times, scaring Brad Pepper so badly that a suspicious liquid immediately leaked from his lower half.
Seeing that the terror tactic was effective, Liam saved himself the trouble of a full interrogation setup.
Truth be told, he didn’t really know how to torture people for information anyway.
Otherwise, he wouldn’t have brought the man up here.
He just hadn’t expected to hit the jackpot with a guy terrified of heights.
“What kind of garbage name is BLOOD PEPPER anyway?
A non-spicy pepper?
Does that mean you’re only good for a cold side dish?” Ignoring Brad Pepper’s bewildered expression, Liam continued, “If you want relief, it’s not impossible.
Just answer two questions for me.
First: Why did you send people to my home, and who gave you the order?
A friendly tip—I only came looking for you because your bear-like goon didn’t have the answer.
Don’t try to pretend it didn’t happen.
Second: Can you tell me why there were so many bloodsucking beasts in your home?
Aside from your goons, why were your chef and maids all vampires?” Hearing Liam’s first question, Brad Pepper wanted nothing more than to strangle his goon himself and throw the corpse into a pigpen.
When he heard the second question, however, he instantly realized he was in deep trouble.
If this guy knew about the existence of vampires, he was definitely no ordinary man!
If he didn’t spill the truth to Liam, he might really get to experience a cordless bungee jump off the Empire State Building.
If he *did* tell Liam, he might have a chance to walk away alive, though he would inevitably face horrific retaliation from his “financial backers.” Originally, Brad Pepper was just a small-time mob boss in Brooklyn whose primary gig was human trafficking.
Gang leaders of his caliber were dime a dozen in the Big Apple—there were at least fifty, if not a hundred.
Through his smuggling operations, however, he had been in the right place at the right time to cross paths with some vampires a while back!
Though terrified at first, the vampires thought his name was amusing, so they offered to back him as their proxy agent.
The Blood Pepper Gang’s rapid rise—to the point where it had recently begun flexing its muscles against Kingpin—was entirely thanks to the vampires pulling strings behind the scenes.
As a pledge of loyalty, vampires were stationed by Brad Pepper’s side.
Nominally, they were there for protection and service, but in reality, they were monitoring him.
He had been annoyed by it at first.
Yet after engaging in a few extra-curricular activities with a beautiful vampire maid, securing connections to previously unreachable “big shots” through the network the vampires provided, and receiving a firm promise that they would perform a “Turning ceremony” for him in the future…
Brad Pepper’s mindset had gradually shifted.
He started thinking that being a puppet proxy for vampires wasn’t such a bad stroke of luck after all.
Today, however, his “luck” had officially expired.
Under Liam’s silent threat, after hesitating for a few seconds, he finally made a choice between “dying right this second” and “possibly getting killed in a few days.” It wasn’t a difficult decision.
“There are actually two parties looking for you,” Brad confessed.
Either say nothing, or lay out the whole truth.
“One of them is Ward Meachum, the CEO of Rand Enterprises.
I have logistics partnerships with him.
He told me to send guys tonight to drive you and your family out of New York before morning.
Supposedly, it’s because you made contact with someone he dislikes, so he wanted to give your family a stern warning.
The other party that asked me to find you is high-level leadership from the Vampire Council.
They told me to send armed men to have a ‘chat’ with you, specifically to ask if you knew anything about what happened around your house a few weeks ago.
I swear to God, I have no idea what those vampires were driving at!
I was just following orders!
I thought your family was just unlucky enough to piss off both Ward and the vampires at the same time, so I…” “I believe you,” Liam interrupted before the man could ramble on.
Holding up a single finger against his lips, he made a shushing gesture, signaling the mob boss to stop talking.
“It’s just a shame you prayed to the wrong god.
I’m not God…
All I can do is send you to meet Him.”