Chapter 502: Wait For Me to Kill You

Chapter 502 -329: Wait For Me to Kill You

Carlos was silent.

“So what if I let you talk me into releasing him?” Kuchilo continued. “When he grows up and learns the truth, do you think he’ll hate you more, or be grateful you pleaded for him?”

“Get lost, Carlos.” His gaze returned to the television. “I’m in a bad enough mood today. I’m not interested in being your therapist.”

Carlos Hernandez remained kneeling, mumbling, “Please, Mr. Kuchilo, he’s no threat to you.”

“I’ll make it clear to him,” he continued, his head bowed. “He’s still young. He doesn’t know how the world works. He’ll never think of opposing you again.”

Kuchilo turned back around and stared intently at Carlos.

A few seconds passed.

“Fine,” he said, his tone suddenly shifting. “He is indeed young, and still useful.”

Carlos’s head snapped up.

“He’s the descendant of a hero. Young, but in a low position, with plenty of potential for growth,” Kuchilo said, stroking his chin. “Once the heat dies down, why don’t you transfer him under your command? Aren’t you close to retirement? Perfect. Let him take your place.”

Carlos shot to his feet, his eyes wide with fury.

“He’s just a boy!” he said.

“So what if he’s a boy?” Kuchilo spread his hands. “I can’t just let him go for nothing, can I? I need to have some kind of leverage.”

He chuckled. “It’s the perfect way to have him follow in your footsteps. What do you think? Aren’t you looking forward to his future development?”

Carlos froze.

Years ago, Kuchilo had captured both him and Raphael’s father, Hector, and made a perverse demand: only one of the two could live.

With a camera recording, Carlos killed Hector.

He had assumed Hector would do the same to him, but he was horrified to discover afterward that Hector had been aiming his own gun at himself.

For the next decade and more, Carlos lived in torment.

He hated himself, and he hated Hector even more.

He hated himself for his cowardice and hated Hector for his selflessness.

And now, Kuchilo was about to pull the same trick on Raphael.

“You see,” Kuchilo said with a smile, the smoke swirling around his face, making him look even more monstrous. “What a perfect arrangement. You get a successor, I get a new pawn, and he gets to live. He’ll have a job, be on the payroll… it’s great.”

Carlos opened his mouth, but said nothing.

Kuchilo nodded in satisfaction and took another swig of tequila.

Carlos hated his own cowardice all over again.

…

「Late that night.」

The industrial district on the west side of Monterey.

Amid a cluster of dusty, gray factory buildings stood a metal warehouse that looked no different from its surroundings.

Corrugated iron walls, a roll-up door, a few rusty ventilation ducts on the roof. Seven or eight pickups and SUVs were parked out front, where two armed sentries leaned against the wall, smoking.

If not for the two sentries at the entrance, any passerby would have assumed it was just an ordinary industrial warehouse.

But it wasn’t.

According to the tattooed man named Diego—who’d talked after getting high out of his mind—this was Kuchilo’s central drug distribution warehouse in Monterey. All raw materials shipped up from the south were processed and repackaged here before being sent to the US-Mexico border through various channels.

This was Kuchilo’s heart.

And his estate was the brain.

‘Destroy the heart tonight, destroy the brain tomorrow.’

Li Wei stood outside the chain-link fence and activated [Vision Obscuration], melting into the darkness.

He didn’t go through the main entrance. Instead, he circled around to the side, found a section of the chain-link fence, and ripped it open with his bare hands as if it were made of noodles.

After slipping through, he crouched in the shadow of a pickup truck and observed for about three minutes.

He was mainly looking for infrared cameras while also getting a lay of the land.

The warehouse interior was brightly lit, and he could see silhouettes bustling about through the gaps in the roll-up door. There were four roving sentries outside: two at the main entrance and two near the loading dock on the side. They completed their patrol circuit in alternating rounds about every five minutes.

The rest were inside the warehouse.

The Jester’s Skull flew back to him:

[48 skulls. Double the number from yesterday. This is going to be a tough fight. Are you sure you want to go in alone?]

Li Wei didn’t answer it. Instead, he crept along the warehouse’s outer wall to the back of the building and found the electrical box.

Li Wei opened the cabinet door. He stared at the dense maze of circuit breakers and wires inside, not that he understood any of it. He simply grabbed the main switch and yanked it down.

CLANG!

In an instant, all the lights inside and outside the warehouse went out.

Darkness, like a giant hand, seized the entire building in its grip.

“What happened?”

“Power outage?”

“Who the fuck turned off the lights?”

“Where’s the breaker box?”

Flashlight beams sliced wildly through the dark. Li Wei walked over to the loading area next to the roll-up door. He didn’t get in the forklift there. Instead, he gripped the vehicle’s metal frame with both hands and, with a massive effort, shoved the one-ton-plus machine directly in front of the roll-up door, barricading the warehouse entrance.

Hearing the noise, the people inside the warehouse panicked even more.

“What was that noise outside?”

“The door’s blocked!”

“There’s someone out there!”

Then, he used a steel pipe twisted like a pretzel to bar the fire exit on the side.

The entire warehouse had become a sealed can.

Li Wei climbed into a ventilation duct on the roof.

He emerged from a vent in the ceiling, his feet sticking to the surface as if glued there, and hung upside down, looking down on the chaos below.