The Renovation Comes to His Door

Viggo slowly lowered his phone.

The laughter and conversation inside suddenly became grating. He turned to face the night sky, letting the cold wind slip through his suit collar.

The neon lights of this city that never slept gradually faded in his eyes. All its splendor came crashing down, finally shattering on the asphalt a hundred meters below.

"Viggo?" The lawyer's voice pulled him back to reality. "We've agreed on all the terms. They accepted everything."

Viggo pressed his tongue against his cheek. "How many people do we have right now?"

"You mean..."

"Everyone who can carry a gun," Viggo interrupted.

The lawyer adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses. "About a hundred and twenty reliable men."

Viggo said, "Tell that stupid, idiotic, bastard Iosef to get his ass over to the Red Circle Club. Send everyone there to protect him."

"What's going on, Viggo?" the lawyer asked.

Viggo looked at the lawyer, his face expressionless. "The Night Demon is coming."

"The Night Demon?" The lawyer didn't understand.

Viggo walked over to the safe in the corner. The metal dial clicked sharply. He took out a leather address book. On its yellowed front page, a single number stood alone.

John Wick's number.

Viggo dialed and waited a long time before the call was answered.

"John, it's Viggo." He tried to sound sincere. "I'm sorry about Helen. I heard your son came back from overseas. How's his business doing? And about last night..."

John Wick cut him off. "Viggo, where's your son?"

Viggo tried to ease the tension. "Listen, John, maybe we can sit down and talk this through calmly. We can resolve this..."

Before Viggo could finish, a sharp whistling sound tore through the conversations in the office.

A .50-caliber armor-piercing round came screaming in, instantly punching through the floor-to-ceiling tempered glass between the top-floor conference room and the terrace. The moment the glass shattered, the bullet pierced the head of a New York mob associate seated beside the conference table.

"Bang!"

His head burst like an overripe watermelon, spraying bone fragments, brains, and blood in every direction.

Several mob bosses seated behind him had no time to react before a thick spray of blood mixed with white brain matter drenched them. The hot, foul liquid ran down their suit collars and pooled on the conference table in a vivid scarlet slick.

Viggo ducked sharply and rolled behind the solid wood conference table.

On the phone, John Wick's voice remained ice-cold. "Don't move."

The conference room had already descended into chaos.

The mob bosses who normally cut such imposing figures scattered like startled cockroaches. Someone knocked over a leather chair, someone else tipped over a crystal ashtray, and expensive Cuban cigars smoldered in the pool of blood.

"Crack!"

The second bullet punched through the double-pane laminated tempered glass, opening another perfect circle beside the first bullet hole.

This time, it struck Carlo, who ran the casinos in Brooklyn.

.

The .50-caliber bullet tore a small hole in his waist, but as it exited, it took his entire lower half with it. His spine snapped. His upper body still held the posture of someone running, while his lower half lay twitching on the carpet.

"Don't fucking move!" Viggo roared, his voice hoarse.

But fear had already swallowed everyone's reason. Someone drew a pistol and fired blindly. Someone else tried to crawl toward the elevator, while another person crashed straight into the liquor cabinet.

No one was following Viggo's order to stay still.

Of the five mob bosses who had been sitting around the conference table, two had fallen in just a few seconds. The remaining three were still trying to flee, and that only hastened their deaths.

The third bullet tore through the air, precisely predicting its prey's trajectory.

The moment the short, heavyset Black boss slipped behind the wall beside the floor-to-ceiling window, the bullet came screaming toward him like the Grim Reaper.

With a dull thud, the .50-caliber armor-piercing round tore through the concrete block wall with ease, blasting a huge bloody hole in the big man's chest. His organs and blood splattered onto the carpet in front of him. He stared down at the sudden emptiness in his chest, then fell to his knees in disbelief.

Crouched behind the oak conference table, Viggo roared hoarsely, "Don't fucking move! Anyone who moves is dead!"

Victor, who ran the club's drug business, froze in place with both hands raised over his head and his legs trembling uncontrollably.

He stood facing the conference room's closed door, his back completely exposed to the direction the bullets were coming from. This mob boss, usually so arrogant and domineering, was now like an insect pinned to a specimen board, too afraid to so much as breathe. Cold sweat ran down his temples, soaking the collar of his tailored suit.

When the first bullet shattered the glass, the lawyer had already dashed to the corner of the conference room. He crouched behind a potted tropical broadleaf plant nearly two meters tall, its wide monstera leaves perfectly concealing his trembling form.

Viggo's roar came from beneath the oak table. He clutched his phone tightly. "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! John Wick! You're declaring war on the entire Tarasov family!"

John Wick's voice remained calm. "Viggo, where's your son?"

"Go fuck yourself!" Viggo screamed hysterically into the phone.

Before he'd even finished speaking, the fourth armor-piercing round struck the wall in front of the potted plant.

The concrete block wall burst with a thud, and flying chunks swept across the conference room like buckshot. Viggo barely managed to raise his hands to shield himself, but his face was still plastered with stone dust.

He rubbed furiously at his stinging eyes. When his vision cleared, he saw the tropical plant, its broad leaves swaying gently in the wind blowing through the bullet hole. Dust-coated leaf edges still trembled slightly.

And the lawyer who had been hiding behind it...

Viggo's gaze followed the trail of scattered entrails sprayed across the carpet all the way to the Picasso on the opposite wall, now spattered with blood.

There was no need to check. The fragments stuck to the painting said it all.

Viggo struggled to swallow a mouthful of blood-tinged saliva, then softened his voice. "John, listen. We can resolve this misunderstanding in a more civilized way. I'll have someone fill up your classic car, give it a thorough cleaning inside and out, and return it to your garage exactly as it was. And I swear I'll cover all the damage to your house, including every single broken dish—"

"Bang!"

Victor, standing in front of the conference room door, suddenly pitched forward as if struck by an invisible giant's hand, his back bent at a ninety-degree angle. His chest pressed against the bulletproof door, his raised hands still in a gesture of surrender. Around the new fist-sized bullet hole in the door, splintered wood slowly dripped blood mixed with bone marrow.

"Fuck! John Wick!" Viggo's roar trembled as he curled almost into a fetal position. "I'm fucking trying to negotiate with you! You fucking—"

His curses suddenly caught in his throat. The fifth bullet skimmed past his scalp and blasted a bowl-sized splinter from the mahogany conference table.

A reader left a comment asking why all kinds of assassins kept showing up in this book.

This book is categorized as Infinite Worlds, so characters from all kinds of movies and TV shows are bound to appear.