Steve Bows Out
The treacherous Steve genuinely didn't know exactly how he had managed to survive the past few grueling days.
The absolute beginning of his current downward spiral of misfortune had started on that chaotic night more than ten days ago, when Charlie Croker and his elite team had successfully slipped into his heavily fortified luxury villa.
Though Steve's cold, sociopathic heart still burned with a blinding, murderous desire to tear Charlie and the rest of the surviving crew to bloody pieces, his tactical mind had to grudgingly admit that the group had managed, in a terrifyingly short span of time, to flawlessly evade both his personal guard and the layers of military-grade surveillance inside his villa.
Not only had Charlie and his crew aggressively slipped into Steve's villa, but they had also miraculously walked off with two massive Worthington safes weighing several metric tons.
And to this very day, sitting in the shadows, Steve still had absolutely no logical idea exactly how they had pulled off that physical impossibility.
The lingering thought of it alone forced him to admit a dark, envious admiration for Charlie's world-famous thieving skills and meticulous planning.
But it was precisely that profound admiration that made Steve itch even more for the man's immediate, violent death.
Ever since that fateful night when the two heavy vaults holding the absolute vast majority of his fortune were flawlessly stolen by Charlie's gang, Steve's streak of catastrophic bad luck had truly begun.
After aggressively checking the high-definition footage supplied by his neighborhood security firm, he had flawlessly confirmed that Charlie's crew were indeed the ones who had robbed his safes.
Then, racking his paranoid brain for leverage, Steve recalled that the legendary lock-picking master he had murdered in cold blood a year ago, John Bridger, might have had a surviving daughter.
He aggressively pulled every single string he had in the underworld and launched a full-scale, relentless investigation.
In no time at all, he had zeroed in on the owner of Bridger Locksmith Company, a small but well-known technical outfit operating in downtown Los Angeles.
The stunningly beautiful lock-picking expert, Stella Bridger, was undeniably John Bridger's precious daughter.
So Steve had sent his most ruthless men to violently abduct Stella right off the streets.
Just exactly as his cold, calculating mind had expected.
Charlie Croker, who had long been hopelessly smitten with Stella, soon desperately reached out to her.
Steve then coldly informed Charlie that he held Stella hostage and aggressively demanded the return of every single gold brick stolen from the villa in exchange for her life.
Everything was playing out exactly as Steve had meticulously scripted his revenge.
But exactly what he never saw coming was Charlie bravely arriving that night with a heavy carload of fake gold bars.
With a ring of high-explosive ordnance securely strapped to his chest, Charlie had threatened to violently blow them all to hell unless Steve immediately released Stella.
While Steve hesitated, a phantom sniper fired a heavy crossbow bolt that violently pierced the villa's main power box, plunging the entire estate into a sudden, suffocating darkness.
Charlie had aggressively drawn their panicked gunfire toward the gate.
Meanwhile, Charlie's unknown partner had seized the chaotic chance to ruthlessly kill two of Steve's men inside the house and flawlessly slip away with Stella.
Right after that, Handsome Rob and Left Ear ,Steve's former comrades from the Alps ,had risked their lives, using heavy explosives to extract the bleeding Charlie.
Though Steve was absolutely sure he had shot Charlie at least twice, with one lethal round hitting square in the chest.
And that arrogant Playboy Rob had highly likely taken a bullet during the escape as well.
The undeniable fact remained: they had successfully, miraculously escaped his compound.
With massive, deafening explosions rocking the luxury villa and drawing attention, Steve realized the fortified place was absolutely no longer safe.
He aggressively ordered his rattled men to continue chasing Charlie, then smoothly slipped away through the chaos, driving off in the Volkswagen sedan filled with that heavy carload of "gold bricks."
At first, Steve had figured that if he could just successfully recover his lost fortune, letting Charlie live a little longer wasn't entirely out of the tactical question.
But once he finally reached a secure, remote safe house and meticulously examined the loot.
Steve had flown into a blinding, unhinged rage.
He quickly discovered that the "gold bricks" in Charlie's car, though physically identical to the ones they had violently lifted from the Italian Mafia in Venice, were absolutely nothing but worthless, gilded fakes.
In other words, Steve had been humiliated and duped once again.
Realizing he had been conned and played for a fool, his fury exploded with violent intensity.
After all of Charlie's games, Steve had now lost nearly every single ounce of his ill-gotten net worth.
On top of that financial ruin, both the local LAPD and the federal FBI had officially issued high-priority warrants for his immediate arrest.
With absolutely nothing left to lose, Steve became even vastly more dangerous and unpredictable.
For the immediate moment, he absolutely couldn't track down Charlie's untraceable hideout.
So he had chosen to aggressively stake out the area around Stella's locksmith company and her rented apartment building.
He knew perfectly well with absolute certainty that unless Stella was a complete, suicidal idiot, she wouldn't show her face anytime soon.
But his inflated ego simply couldn't swallow the massive humiliation of being robbed and tricked.
Steve had lost everything, and exactly after having tasted the lavish life of a super-rich tycoon.
He was firmly prepared to fight to the absolute death to reclaim what was rightfully his.
So Steve had decided to take one final, desperate gamble.
He bet his remaining life that the woman would eventually have to come back to her home.
What Steve absolutely didn't know.
Was that he would never physically lay eyes on Stella Bridger ever again.
Hidden carefully near Stella's quiet apartment complex, silently watching her building's entrance from the shadows, Steve.
Suddenly felt a violent surge of restless, cold unease wash over his skin.
He deeply trusted his biological sixth sense; that sharp, primal gut feeling had saved his life more times than he could count during his mercenary days.
In fact, on the freezing night his villa was originally robbed over ten days ago.
That exact same, prickly instinct had almost let him catch the phantom thieves who dared to steal his heavy safes.
But!
Clearly, this time his intuition was again a massive step too late to save him, just exactly like before.
As he slowly lifted his head and looked around the urban environment in sudden confusion.
Lethal danger arrived with a sharp, high-pitched whistle cutting through the sweltering afternoon air.
Whoosh!
Thud!
Amid the sudden tearing sound through the air, Steve suddenly felt exactly as if a massive, invisible fist had smashed hard into his body.
The absolute next moment, it felt like a titanic, mechanical force had slammed directly into his chest ,a dull, crushing, and stabbing physical sensation.
Staggering violently back from the surprise attack, Steve belatedly realized he seemed to have been shot.
Instinctively, he ducked behind the thick trunk of a nearby tree and looked down at the spot on his chest that was throbbing with white-hot impact.
There, a slender, dark alloy bolt quivered gently with every frantic movement he made.
This is,
A crossbow bolt?
Hot, dark blood began to gush from his chest as though a massive floodgate had been violently burst open.
Steve even felt the sticky, cloying warmth spreading rapidly across his broad back.
Agonizing pain screamed from every single part of his body.
His head began to grow incredibly heavy, and his vision started to flicker and turn darker with every passing second.
He knew at once with terrifying certainty that the heavy bolt had punched clean through his chest and out his back.
Pfft!
Bloody froth and pink bubbles began to spill uncontrollably from his nose and mouth.
He understood the medical reality instantly ,the armor-piercing quarrel had violently pierced directly through his lung.
His time in this world was rapidly running out.
How, how did, it come to this,
Steve opened his blood-filled mouth, his mind stubbornly unwilling to accept this pathetic end.
With the absolute last of his fading physical strength, he lifted his heavy head, trying to look toward the entrance of Stella's building.
But because he had already fallen into a heap on the concrete, all he could see was another tall apartment building dozens of meters away across the street.
On one of its upper floors, something small caught his dying eye.
A distant, dark figure seemed to meet his gaze through a high window for a fleeting instant.
Then, without a single moment of hesitation, the person turned and vanished into the shadows.
Charlie, is that finally you?
Steve muttered the name venomously with his final breath.
The agonizing thought that he had somehow failed to outdo his former comrade in the bitter end,
In his profound unwillingness to die, he let out a faint, barely audible whisper into the smoggy air.
Then his cold eyes rolled back and closed forever.