Jason finished putting on his body armor.
Two grenades hung from his chest, spare magazines were tucked into his tactical belt, and every firearm had been loaded, chambered, and made ready.
He unzipped the bulging black duffel bag.
It was stuffed to the brim with greenbacks, $530,000 in total.
Like most gangsters, Jason preferred keeping his money in cash rather than putting it in a bank.
First, all his money was dirty.
There was no way it would survive an IRS audit.
Second, if the cops ever got onto him and froze his accounts, all the hard earned money he’d spent years accumulating would end up becoming someone else’s little slush fund.
Trying to escape while lugging around such a massive bag would obviously be a nuisance.
Jason hesitated for only a moment before opening the system interface and converting all the cash into Credits.
[Ding! Credit exchange successful. Remaining Credits: 53!]
Jason casually tossed the now-empty duffel bag aside, picked up the several dozen pounds of rappelling rope, and stepped onto the balcony.
He fastened the rope’s carabiner around the thickest section of the balcony railing, then threw the rest over the edge.
Jason had calculated the apartment’s height beforehand.
An eighty meter rope was just enough to get him safely to the ground, not a foot too long or too short.
BOOM!
A tremendous crash came from outside the bedroom.
The Russians were breaking in.
Jason hurried to the bedroom door, crouched down, and pulled it open just a crack.
Another thunderous impact shook the apartment.
Plaster fell from the wall around the front door, filling the air with dust.
On the third hit, the reinforced apartment door finally gave way, splintering apart.
Seven or eight masked Russian mobsters rushed inside with automatic rifles in hand.
Jason pulled the pin from one of his grenades, tossed it straight into the middle of the group, and shouted,
“FIRE IN THE HOLE!”
The grenade rolled neatly to their feet.
“Oh, shit!”
BOOM!
A burst of fire erupted through the living room.
Several Russians were hurled through the air.
Severed limbs and blood splattered across the room, instantly staining the living area red.
The smoke alarm went off, and sprinklers began pouring water from the ceiling.
Within seconds, the entire apartment had become a wreck.
[Ding! Three mobsters killed. You have earned 300 Villain Points. Current progress: 320/1,000.]
[Ding! Two mobsters wounded. You have earned 100 Villain Points. Current progress: 420/1,000.]
Three dead and two wounded from a single grenade.
Not bad at all.
Still, killing someone only earned a hundred Villain Points?
Since when did a human life become this cheap?
“Jason! You can’t get away! Surrender!”
The heavily accented English from outside sounded familiar.
It was Vladimir, the older of the Ranskahov brothers.
“I’ll make you a bet!” Jason shouted back through the door without slowing his hands.
“I’m definitely getting out of here tonight!”
He took his remaining grenade and rigged it into a booby trap at the bedroom entrance, then left the door slightly ajar to lure some unlucky bastard inside.
“FUCK YOU, JASON! YOU’RE DEAD TODAY!” That was Anatoly, Vladimir’s younger brother.
A year earlier, the two brothers had crossed the Atlantic with a gang of Russian killers and arrived in Hell’s Kitchen.
New to the city, they had no territory, connections, or resources.
Their only choice had been to pay their respects to the local power and temporarily place themselves under Kingpin’s protection, making a living by handling murders, robberies, and other dirty work for him.
The Russians weren’t particularly capable, but they certainly had tempers.
Give them half a liter of vodka, and they’d start calling Kingpin by his real name.
Give them a liter, and they’d be drunk enough to put a gun against Jason’s head.
Of all Kingpin’s many partners, the Russian Mafia was by far the most unruly.
Kingpin had wanted them gone for a long time.
Sending the Ranskahov brothers after Jason was obviously his way of killing two birds with one stone.
If they succeeded, Jason would be eliminated.
Even if they failed, the Russians would suffer heavy losses.
That fat bastard really is cunning.
Outside the bedroom, Anatoly had already been driven half-insane by Jason’s taunts.
He hoisted an RPG onto his shoulder and prepared to storm inside.
“Brother, let me blow that son of a bitch straight to hell!”
Vladimir immediately grabbed him.
“No! Kingpin said he’ll only give us the territory if we bring Jason back alive.”
Then Vladimir shouted through the doorway again.
“Jason! Put down your weapons and come out! I swear to God we won’t kill you!”
He waited.
No response came from inside.
“Jason, did you hear me?”
“Jason!”
“Jason!”
…
Half a minute earlier, as soon as Jason finished rigging the booby trap, he’d pulled on tactical gloves and a black balaclava, climbed over the balcony railing, and begun rappelling down the side of the building.
The explosion from the apartment sounded especially loud in the middle of the night, drawing plenty of pedestrians to stop and stare.
At first, most assumed a gas leak had caused an explosion somewhere inside the building.
Then they saw a masked man rappelling down from an apartment balcony with a shotgun and carbine strapped across his back.
That was when they realized something much more serious was happening.
“Oh my God!”
“Jesus! What the hell is going on?”
“Call 911!”
The growing crowd immediately descended into chaos.
Some people instinctively backed away from the building.
Others hurriedly pulled out their phones and called the police.
Still others raised cameras and camcorders, eager to record the heart pounding scene unfolding before them.
About half a minute later, another explosion thundered from the apartment.
Apparently, some unlucky bastard had triggered the booby trap at the bedroom door.
[Ding! One mobster killed. You have earned 100 Villain Points. Current progress: 520/1,000.]
“Tch. Only one?” Jason frowned, clearly dissatisfied with the trap’s lethality.
Still, he didn’t care all that much.
The purpose of the booby trap hadn’t been purely to kill people.
More importantly, it was supposed to buy him enough time to rappel safely to the ground.
The trap had already bought him a full minute.
By now, Jason was less than forty meters above the street.
But forty meters was still far too high to jump safely.
He needed to stall them a little longer.
With that thought, Jason freed one hand and drew a Beretta M9 from its holster.
Continuing his descent, he aimed the pistol upward at the apartment balcony.
Several dozen seconds later, a dark silhouette finally appeared above, cautiously sticking its head over the railing to look down.
Jason immediately stopped descending.
His left hand locked tightly around the rope while his right snapped the pistol onto target.
He squeezed the trigger three times in quick succession.
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
After the third shot, a scream came from the balcony.
The figure vanished from sight.
[Ding! One mobster wounded. You have earned 20 Villain Points. Current progress: 540/1,000.]
Only twenty Villain Points?
Was he barely injured?
Jason found that a little disappointing, but didn’t dwell on it.
Holding onto a rappelling rope with one hand caused his entire body to sway, making him far less stable than if he’d been standing on solid ground.
On top of that, he’d been firing one-handed, upward, at a target forty meters away.
Landing three shots at all was already impressive.
It wasn’t like he was some legendary marksman.
And judging by the result, those three shots had done their job.
At the very least, nobody else dared stick their head over the balcony.
Jason seized the opportunity and accelerated his descent.
He was now less than twenty meters from the ground.