**Chapter 18: The Devil's Smile**
The warehouse was supposed to be empty.
I knew it wouldn't be.
Still, I walked in with my hands in my coat pockets, past the rusted steel doors and the echoes of water dripping through the cracks in the ceiling. The air smelled like oil and dust and arrogance.
They were waiting for me.
At least fifteen of them. All armed. Gangsters in black coats and gold chains, hiding behind crates and steel beams, their fingers twitching near triggers. A few even smirked.
And in the center, sitting in a makeshift throne made from a broken office chair, was **Leon**, a man who had once been a ten-year-old boy when he asked me for a favor.
Now he was in his twenties. Hardened. Sharp. Dangerous.
And dumb enough to think he could outplay me.
---
"Tony Smitty," he said, sipping something dark from a crystal glass. "You're late."
I didn't reply. Just took a few more steps. The silence stretched.
He snapped his fingers.
"Do it."
Gunfire exploded in the warehouse.
Fifteen magazines emptied. Bullets tore through my coat, my ribs, my spine. Blood sprayed across the concrete. I stumbled once.
And then I straightened.
The silence afterward was louder than the shots.
I looked up, smile crooked. My coat smoked from the holes.
Every eye in the room widened.
Leon's glass slipped from his hand and shattered.
"W-what are you?!"
I stepped forward. Slowly. Steady.
One of the men tried to reload. I crossed the room before he could blink and broke his wrist with a crack. Another raised his shotgun — I drove my elbow into his throat.
They screamed. They ran. I didn't.
Bone cracked. Metal bent. Flesh broke.
They were men. Mortal. Cowards in shiny shoes.
I was older than their fear.
By the time it ended, the warehouse was a graveyard of groans and blood.
Only Leon remained.
Crouched behind his chair, shaking. A wet stain down his pants.
"Please," he whimpered. "I didn't mean to— I was scared, I thought—"
I pulled the Wheel from my coat. Blood dripped from my fingers onto its bone frame.
"You signed the contract, Leon. Everyone gets their spin."
"No! I was just a kid back then!"
"A kid who used his favor to get his father killed. So he could take over his business. So he could be king of a slum."
His tears were hot. But tears don't change contracts.
"You don't understand," he whispered.
"I do," I said. "That's why I brought the Wheel."
---
It spun fast.
Click. Click. Click.
Then stopped.
**Segment 12: Mute to All Emotion.**
Leon blinked.
Then he blinked again.
His face went flat. The fear vanished. The shaking stopped.
He stood slowly. Looked at the blood around him.
And felt… nothing.
No guilt.
No relief.
No fear.
Just silence.
"What did you do to me?" he asked. But the words were hollow.
"I didn't do anything," I said. "The Wheel did."
He nodded once.
And then walked past the bodies like they were furniture.
---
Outside, the rain had started.
I lit a cigarette. Watched the smoke drift.
Some punishments are loud.
Some are bloody.
But the worst ones?
Are quiet.
The kind that take something you never thought could be taken.
Like the ability to care.