Chapter 505: The Dust Settles, Great Harvest, Return to New York

Chapter 505 -330: The Dust Settles, Great Harvest, Return to New York

He was incredibly frustrated. Some mysterious force had appeared out of nowhere, first destroying his transport routes, then demolishing his warehouses. To top it all off, they had called him at dawn today, threatening to come to his manor and kill him.

He was still fuming when this Carlos character showed up, buzzing around like a fly. If it weren’t an inconvenient time for another killing, he probably would have already had Carlos dragged off and fed to the dogs.

“Neither,” Carlos said. “I’m here to discuss a deal with you.”

Kuluoqi looked up impatiently.

“Let me play a game with Raphael. Let him kill me,” Carlos said. “I’m responsible for a death in his family. That gives you leverage over him, and you won’t have to kill him yourself.”

Kuluoqi was stunned for a few seconds, then a sadistic smile spread across his face.

“So you came here to die?” He saw right through Carlos’s intentions. “You’re in agony, aren’t you? You want to die by his hand, to let him have his revenge on you.”

Carlos was silent for a moment.

“It’s what I owe his family,” he said, finally speaking. “I deserve this.”

He looked up. “Even if he has to get blood on his hands, it should be the blood of his father’s killer he spills, not the blood of an innocent person.”

“HAHAHAHAHA!”

Kuluoqi roared with laughter, laughing so hard that tears welled up in his eyes.

“Oh, Carlos, Carlos,” he said, wiping away tears and shaking his head. “My friend, how have you grown more naive with age?”

He stared at Carlos and rebuked him loudly, “You think he’s just some innocent, good kid, but do you really know him? What do you think the chances are that he’s just like you were back then? Willing to sacrifice an innocent person to save his own life?”

“There’s no need to speculate,” Carlos said, shaking his head. “I’ll tell him everything and let him kill me. You’ll have your leverage, and you won’t have to go find someone else to use.”

Kuchilo stared at Carlos, studying the expression on his face as if he were savoring an interesting new dish.

Suddenly, his eyes lit up.

“Fine,” he said.

Carlos’s head snapped up.

“But I have one condition,” Kuchilo said. “You can’t tell him you’re the one who gave me his letter, and you can’t tell him you killed his father.”

“Make up some excuse. Spin a story that makes him think you’re a victim too,” he said with a wave of his hand. “Then the two of you, one gun each. Only one gets to live.”

The blood rushed to Carlos’s head.

‘What a vicious plan. If Raphael doesn’t know the truth, then as far as he’s concerned, I’m just his good old Uncle Carlos.’

‘If Raphael kills me to survive, he’ll spend the rest of his life wracked with guilt over killing ‘Uncle Carlos.”

Kuchilo didn’t give a damn about some small-time cop. What he wanted was to torture them, to savor their pain.

“You’re…” Carlos’s voice trembled.

“What? Not willing?” Kuchilo picked up his tequila. “If you don’t want to, then get lost. Go back to doing what you’re told.”

“Besides,” he took a sip of tequila and sneered, “you say this little cop is a good kid, but I don’t buy it. I believe that human nature is fundamentally evil. Don’t you think that, just like you, he’d shoot you down to save his own skin, even if you are his ‘good uncle’?”

Carlos was too furious to speak. Kuchilo was surrounded by nothing but betrayal and backstabbing, so he instinctively believed no one could be a good person.

The more Carlos pleaded for Raphael’s life on the grounds of his innocence, the more Kuchilo wanted to drag him into the abyss.

“If he really does shoot you,” Kuchilo said leisurely, “will you regret it? Sacrificing your own life, only to find you’ve saved someone who’s just like you?”

Carlos stood frozen, trapped in an impossible dilemma.

‘Was he willing to die? Yes. He was willing to die for Hector, willing to die for Raphael, because this was the debt he owed Hector.’

‘But what if Raphael really was just like him? What if he was nothing like Hector at all?’

‘Would that mean his decade of suffering would be wiped away?’

‘That he had simply… made a mistake anyone would make?’

“Fine…” he heard his own voice say.

Kuchilo slapped his thigh and roared with laughter again.

“Go on,” he said. “Put on a good show.”

He was in a foul mood, but at least now he had a decent show to amuse himself with.

…

A volley of footsteps pulled Carlos from his thoughts.

It wasn’t just one person’s footsteps, but many.

Heavy, rhythmic footsteps, pressing in uniformly from the end of the hallway, accompanied by the clank of metal and the occasional crackle of static from a walkie-talkie.

His heart suddenly began to pound.

“Raphael,” he said in a low voice. “Wake up.”

Raphael lifted his head from a half-conscious state. Hunger had slowed his reflexes considerably. He blinked blankly, then he too heard the approaching footsteps.

The iron door was opened from the outside.

This time, no one was thrown in. Instead, three armed men stood in the doorway. The light from the hallway streamed in from behind them, so bright that it forced both prisoners to squeeze their eyes shut.

“Out.”

Raphael was yanked up from the floor, and Carlos was hauled out of the basement by his arms.

They were led down a stretch of hallway, then down a few steps into another room in the manor’s basement.

This room was much larger than the cell where they had been held, maybe forty or fifty square meters. A few lights were embedded in the ceiling, the floor was concrete, and there was a drain in the corner.

In the very center of the room was a table with two chairs. The tabletop was bare.