My Abusive Ex Tried To Kill Me Over A Stolen Ledger — Then The City’s Deadliest Mafia Boss Walked In

Part 1

My sweaty palms hovered over the cracked keyboard of my laptop.

I took a deep breath and hit the send button.

The sharp click of the plastic key was completely deafening in the dead silence of my apartment.

I only needed a fake passport and a cheap flight out of the city tonight.

It was supposed to be a simple, straightforward transaction with a black market fixer.

Ten minutes later, the screen glowed brightly with a single new message.

There was no price quote attached.

There was no secure meeting location provided.

There were just two terrifying words from an email address that made the bottom drop entirely out of my stomach.

“I am coming.”

I hadn’t emailed the mid-level fixer.

I had missed a single crucial vowel in the address field.

I had accidentally emailed the apex predator of the city.

The underside of the laptop burned intensely against my thighs.

The dull, insistent heat grounded me in the miserable, inescapable reality of the moment.

The clock had already passed two in the morning.

The digital clock on the stove blinked a neon green, a mocking reminder of time standing absolutely still.

The tiny apartment smelled heavily of boiled cabbage and the sharp chemical tang of cheap bleach.

I rubbed the heels of my hands into my eyes until bursts of static color flared in the darkness behind my eyelids.

My spine ached with a dull, constant throb.

A deep, dark bruise radiated agonizingly from my left rib cage.

It was a parting gift from Craig before I slipped out the back door of our shared townhouse earlier tonight.

I had left with nothing but a heavy canvas duffel bag and his meticulously kept stolen ledger.

I stared blankly at the laptop screen.

The low brightness cast a sickly, pale blue wash over my thoroughly exhausted face.

I desperately needed to disappear entirely.

Craig wasn’t just a bad ex-boyfriend with a heavy hand and a terrible temper.

He was a mid-level earner for the local syndicate.

His ego was far more fragile and dangerous than his bruised knuckles.

When he finally realized his ledger was gone, he wouldn’t just call the police to report a theft.

He would immediately call the men who buried people deeply in the foundations of new high-rises.

I forced my hands to stop their violent shaking.

I closed my eyes and visualized the scraps of restricted information I had gleaned over two years of playing the compliant, silent girlfriend.

Craig used a discrete fixer for his off-the-books problems.

I had frantically typed out the secure address I remembered seeing over his shoulder.

I had sent a desperate coded plea for immediate extraction.

But I had somehow typed the wrong name.

I had sent my exact location to Brian Costa.

Brian didn’t arrange passports for desperate runaways.

He arranged funerals for traitors.

He was a man who existed only in the terrifying peripheral vision of the city’s elite.

His name was whispered cautiously in back alleys with equal parts reverence and absolute terror.

Craig had once gotten drunk and slurred carelessly about him.

He had claimed the man didn’t have any blood in his veins, only ice water and pure battery acid.

And I had just blindly sent him my exact location.

Worse, from his perspective, I was a random nobody spamming a highly classified server with cryptic demands for an extraction.

He undoubtedly thought he was coming to intercept a rat in his organization.

I had ten minutes, maybe less.

Panic rapidly fragmented my already frayed senses.

The edges of the kitchen blurred into meaningless, distorted shapes as I scrambled towards the bedroom.

My foot caught heavily on the edge of the frayed rug.

I sprawled hard onto the bare floorboards.

Pain flared instantly in my bruised ribs, sharp and completely breathless.

I tasted the copper tang of fear in the back of my throat as I grabbed my canvas duffel bag.

My hands shook violently as I jammed a pair of jeans and a heavy sweater inside.

I shoved my bare feet into my heavy boots, breaking one of the leather laces in my frantic jerks.

I grabbed the bag tightly by the canvas straps.

The thick leather ledger bumped solidly against my hip.

I moved quickly toward the apartment door.

Then I heard it.

The heavy metallic groan of the building’s ancient elevator shrieked loudly in protest.

It slammed to a violent halt exactly on my floor.

The heavy iron gate rattled open with a terrifying clang.

I froze completely in place.

My hand hovered exactly an inch from the deadbolt.

The footsteps approaching my door were heavy, deliberate, and dragging.

They scuffed loudly against the threadbare carpet of the corridor.

I knew that walk intimately.

It wasn’t the smooth, expensive cadence of a mafia boss coming to clean house.

The man approaching was Craig.

He had somehow tracked me down to this miserable hole in the wall.

His slurred voice seeped ominously through the cheap plywood door, laced with venomous rage.

He ordered me to open the door immediately.

I backed away slowly, my breath trapped completely in my chest.

I looked frantically around the tiny, claustrophobic living space.

The only window was a straight four-story drop directly into a concrete alley.

Craig pounded heavily on the wood, making the door shiver violently in its frame.

He promised to break my legs if I simply gave back what I stole.

He promised to take my face entirely off if I made him come inside.

I dropped the heavy duffel bag to the floor.

I backed slowly into the kitchen and closed my hand tightly around the handle of a heavy ceramic mug.

It was a pathetic, useless weapon against him.

The door suddenly exploded inward.

The wood splintered violently around the cheap, broken deadbolt.

Craig stumbled clumsily through the ruin of the doorway, sweating and completely unhinged.

His bloodshot eyes locked onto me instantly.

A cruel, ugly smile stretched broadly across his flushed face.

I threw the mug with absolutely everything I had.

It grazed his broad shoulder and shattered violently against the wall behind him.

He barely even flinched.

He lunged forward with terrifying speed.

His strong fingers tangled brutally into the thick mass of my hair.

Blinding pain snapped my head back instantly.

I cried out loudly as he yanked me roughly backward.

He threw me hard onto the small, stained sofa.

Dust puffed up thickly from the worn cushions as I hit them.

He climbed aggressively over me, his knee pinning my bruised ribs down.

I gasped desperately as the air completely left my burning lungs.

Black spots danced wildly at the edges of my fading vision.

I fought back blindly, scratching fiercely at his face and drawing bright red blood.

He grunted in sudden pain and delivered a sharp backhanded slap directly across my face.

The impact cracked loudly like a whip.

My ears rang instantly with a high-pitched whine.

The metallic taste of fresh blood flooded my mouth.

His heavy hands went straight to my throat.

His thick thumbs pressed deeply into my windpipe as he screamed for the book.

I choked desperately, clawing uselessly at his thick, sweaty wrists.

My lungs burned agonizingly for air.

The room began to darken rapidly at the edges.

I was actually going to die right here on a cheap, dust-filled sofa.

I squeezed my eyes shut and waited for the final suffocating darkness.

But the crushing pressure on my chest suddenly vanished.