Chapter 192: Drake’s New Victim? [FIXED!][16/10!]

The alley stank of wet cardboard and old grease from the restaurant dumpsters lined up along one wall. Somewhere above, a broken gutter dripped steadily onto the pavement, and the only light came from a single sodium lamp at the far end, buzzing and flickering like it was about to give up.

Drake walked through it with his hands in his jacket pockets and a cigarette burning between his lips.

It was nearly two in the morning. The city had gone quiet in that particular way it only did at this hour: no traffic, no voices, just the hum of distant highways and the occasional siren too far away to matter.

He took a long drag and let the smoke curl out of his nose.

He was broke.

Not a little short. Properly broke. The crew he’d done the job for had cut him off the moment the clerk’s face showed up on the evening news. No more envelopes, no more favors, no more answering his calls. *Lay low until it blows over,* they’d said, like they were doing him a kindness. What they meant was: *you’re a liability now, and we don’t know you.*

Fine.

Drake had survived on nothing before. He knew how to make money appear when it needed to, and he’d never needed anyone’s permission to take what he wanted.

His fingers brushed the handle tucked inside his jacket. It wasn’t his gun. He’d left that buried somewhere safe after the job, because getting caught with it now would be the end of him. But the butcher’s knife was heavy and long, and the blade had been sharpened until it could split paper. It was more than enough to make most people empty their pockets without arguing.

He reached the mouth of the alley and stopped in the shadows.

Across the street, a man was walking alone.

Drake watched him the way he watched everything: quietly, completely still, the cigarette forgotten between his fingers.

The man wore a dark hooded sweatshirt with the hood pulled up, so Drake couldn’t see his face. Hands in the front pocket. Average height, maybe a little lean. No backpack, no bags. He was walking down the empty sidewalk at an even, steady pace, alone at two in the morning in a part of town nobody walked through alone.

Wallet. Phone. Maybe a watch. Drake ran the math automatically. *Enough to get through the week.*

He flicked his cigarette into a puddle, where it hissed and died, and stepped out after him.

He kept his distance at first, half a block back, hugging the shadows where the streetlights didn’t quite reach. The man didn’t look back. Didn’t glance at the windows of parked cars to check his reflection. Didn’t speed up.

Drake drew a little closer.

Still nothing.

He knew how people moved when they felt someone behind them. Their shoulders went tight. They walked faster or slower, crossed the street suddenly, reached for their phones and pretended to text. Even people who weren’t sure they were being followed did something, some small change in rhythm their bodies made without asking permission.

This man did none of it.

He walked at exactly the same pace. Same length of stride. Same loose set to his shoulders. Like a metronome.

Something about that prickled at the back of Drake’s neck, but he pushed it away. The guy was probably drunk, or high, or wearing earbuds under that hood. Either way, he was oblivious, and oblivious was perfect.

Drake slipped the knife from his jacket and held it low against his thigh.

He couldn’t kill this one. He knew that much. Another body in the news, especially this close to the last one, and every cop in the district would be knocking on doors and pulling camera footage for weeks.

Enrique’s face was already all over the city. Drake couldn’t afford to put his own up there next to it.

So: fast and loud. Grab him from behind, blade to the throat, let him feel the cold of it, and take everything. In and out in thirty seconds.

The man would be too scared to remember anything but the knife.

The street ahead narrowed between two buildings. No windows facing it. No cameras that Drake could see.

This was the perfect location to attack in all honesty.

He closed the distance in four long, silent strides and lunged.

The man moved.

Drake didn’t see him turn. One moment there was a broad back in a dark hoodie in front of him, and the next the world simply wasn’t where it was supposed to be. Something hard swept through his ankles with impossible speed, and his legs went out from under him entirely.

He hit the pavement shoulder-first with a sickening thud that knocked the air from his lungs.

The knife jolted from his hand on impact, skittered across the wet concrete with a long metallic scrape, and spun to a stop somewhere in the dark.

Drake lay on the wet concrete for a second, gasping, the back of his skull ringing.

The hooded man hadn’t moved.

He stood exactly where he’d been, hands back in the front pocket of his sweatshirt, looking down at Drake with no expression at all. From somewhere under the hood came the tinny, pounding beat of music bleeding out of his headphones, loud enough that Drake could hear the bass from the ground.

"He couldn’t have heard me."

That was what made Drake’s stomach turn. The music was too loud. Drake had been silent. There was no way this man had known he was coming. And yet he’d moved like he’d been waiting for it.

Now he just watched. Not angry. Not scared. He watched Drake the way someone might watch a dog that had wandered into the road.

Drake’s jaw tightened.

He’d taken lives. He’d stood over men begging and felt nothing. Whoever this was, he’d gotten lucky once. That was all.

Drake rolled, snatched the butcher’s knife from the puddle where it had landed, and came up swinging.

The blade cut a hard, flat arc toward the man’s neck, fast enough to whistle through the air.

The man leaned back.

Barely. A few inches. The steel passed so close to his throat that it should have nicked him, and Drake felt nothing but empty air at the end of the swing.

Drake reversed the blade and slashed back the other way. The man stepped half a pace to the side, unhurried, like he was making room for someone on a crowded sidewalk.

Drake roared and lunged forward, stabbing straight at his chest. The man turned his shoulder and the knife went past his ribs.

"Stand still, damn you."

Drake switched hands, faked high, and threw a vicious left hook at the man’s jaw with everything he had behind it.

The man’s head tipped back just enough. Drake’s fist brushed the edge of his hood.

Another hook. A jab. A wild uppercut that should have caught his chin.

Nothing landed. Every punch met air. Every slash cut through the space where the man had been a heartbeat earlier. He wasn’t blocking. He wasn’t even really fighting. He was just *not there* whenever Drake arrived.

Drake was panting now, sweat stinging his eyes, the blade feeling heavier with every swing.

He gathered himself and went for the kill one last time, a full overhand slash aimed straight at the side of the man’s neck.

This time the man moved forward instead of away.

His hand came out of his pocket and closed around Drake’s wrist mid-swing. There was a sharp twist, a flare of white-hot pain up Drake’s forearm, and his fingers opened on their own. The knife clattered to the pavement.

Drake didn’t even see the punch.

It landed flush against his temple with a dull, heavy crack, and the alley flipped sideways. Sound disappeared. The streetlight smeared into a long yellow streak, and for a moment there was nothing at all.

"Huh?" Drake whispered, from somewhere very far away.

His knees buckled. His body tipped toward the curb, head first.

A hand caught the back of his neck before he hit.

The man lowered him slowly, carefully, until Drake was lying flat on the cold concrete. It was almost gentle, the way someone would lay down a sleeping child.

"Don’t move," the man said. His voice was low and calm, barely louder than the music in his headphones. "You’ve got a concussion. Try to get up and you’ll fall and split your skull open."

Drake blinked hard, trying to bring the world back into focus.

The man crouched beside him, and the hood slipped back.

Silver hoops glinted in both ears. Tattoos curled up the side of his neck. His hair was buzzed short and shaved in precise sections so it looked almost like tight braids running back across his skull.

And his eyes.

Drake had looked into a lot of eyes. Men who’d killed for money, killed for pride, killed because they enjoyed it. They all carried something with them, a kind of smell that clung to them no matter how clean they looked. Drake knew that smell. He carried it himself.

This man reeked of it. It was thicker than anything Drake had ever been near.

There was nothing behind those eyes. No anger, no fear, no thrill.

Drake understood, with a cold certainty that cut through the fog in his head, that he would never beat this man.