A Fierce Battle at the Port Under Everyone's Gaze

"Duang!"

Inside an abandoned factory somewhere, Brian opened the weapons case Xiao Miao had brought back. The moment he saw the M240, his expression completely fell apart.

"Shit, don't tell me you're planning to use that thing. The Mafia isn't going to fight you in a positional war."

Xiao Miao did not waste his breath explaining. He grabbed Brian by the collar with his left hand and lightly lifted him.

Brian immediately felt immense force coming through his collar. His feet left the ground in an instant. Xiao Miao's hand was like a hydraulic clamp; no matter how Brian struggled, it would not budge.

Xiao Miao set Brian down. "So? Any more questions?"

Brian gasped for breath, rubbing his neck with a look of alarm. "What terrifying strength! Don't tell me you're some super soldier trained by the military, or a secret weapon from some laboratory!"

As usual, Xiao Miao spun a load of nonsense. "Neither. In that instant just now, my heartbeat exceeded four hundred beats per minute, and my blood was flooded with adrenaline. For a short time, I gained physical abilities beyond those of an ordinary person."

Brian immediately understood. "I see. You're actually from the Brotherhood!"

Xiao Miao: "..."

There was actually stuff from Wanted too?

This time, Xiao Miao was stunned. But after thinking it over, he quickly accepted it. In this mishmash of a world, nothing was strange. Even if John Wick turned into Neo and took off on the spot the next second, Xiao Miao would calmly accept it—and happily swallow the red pill.

After confirming Xiao Miao's combat strength, Brian got moving as well. Having spent years on the front lines, he knew the Mafia inside and out. He quickly devised a plan suited to their habits, then hurried off to put it into action.

With no one around, Xiao Miao summoned Saeko Busujima. He took out a katana and handed it to her. Worth one gold coin, it was the finest work produced by the French branch.

Saeko Busujima was delighted. Hugging the katana, she kept swinging it around, unable to put it down.

Unfortunately, the katana could not immediately be absorbed into Xiao Miao's body along with Saeko. It needed to be gradually assimilated using magic power. Fortunately, there was still plenty of time.

Early the next morning, several black cars stopped before the vermilion gates of the villa at 10 Paradise Road in Paris. A group of suited thugs got out and knocked on the door.

A few minutes later, the suited thugs left laughing. The Albanian guards wore ugly expressions, while furious shouts and the sound of a vase shattering came from inside the villa.

"Dog@#, go die, you suicidal ￥%#!!!"

Marco Hoxha, the Mafia's second-in-command, kicked over a stool. Standing amid the shattered pieces, his chest heaved violently while the underlings around him did not dare make a sound.

A videotape was playing on the television beside them, its contents bloody and violent.

The managers of two of the family's prostitution operations had been tied to chairs and tortured. In the end, they died miserably under electric shocks, their screams too horrific for the watching underlings to bear.

At the end of the recording, two men wearing brutal criminal masks issued threats. They declared that they would take half the family's business and invited the family's leader to negotiate at the docks that night.

Ordinarily, this was not a major matter. Since taking over the family business, Marco had encountered plenty of similar incidents.

France took in large numbers of refugees every year, and inevitably, some lawless individuals were mixed among them, dreaming of challenging the local Mafia's position.

In fact, the Albanian Mafia had risen in exactly the same way. At first, only five or six refugees had entered France. They then kept calling in friends and associates, went through several Mafia shootouts, swallowed a few local gangs, and only reached their current scale after seven years.

What truly made Marco fly into a rage was that these idiots trying to challenge them had gotten the address wrong. They had delivered the videotape to another major local gang. That gang's second-in-command had personally come to the door just now to remind Marco not to put down the wrong address when buying things.

Marco did not need to think to know that news of the family being challenged had surely spread throughout the city by now. Every Mafia group in Paris was waiting to watch them make fools of themselves.

If the family could not wipe out the challengers with overwhelming force, the other gangs would rush in like sharks that had smelled blood and tear chunks of fat from the family.

"Gather all the men and prepare for battle. Tonight, I'll personally cut off those idiots' heads!" Marco ordered.

At his command, the entire Mafia began moving. Ten minutes later, Marco's phone rang. Looking down, he saw that it was his father, Murad Hoxha—the true boss of the Albanian Mafia.

Murad said he had already received the news and was returning to Paris with more than a dozen of the family's elite. He told Marco not to act rashly.

"Don't worry, son. Our compatriots' blood will not be shed in vain. This is also a good opportunity to increase our influence. I'll show all of Paris the strength of the Albanian people!"

At ten that night, near Port of Gennevilliers, the large inland container port in Paris's northwestern suburbs, everything was quiet on the surface while undercurrents churned below.

A patrolling security guard swept his flashlight around, looking baffled. "Why are there so many cars parked by the road? What day is it today?"

"Don't ask. Run!" A well-informed colleague dragged the guard away, whispered a few words in his ear, and the two quickly fled.

The cars parked near the port did not belong to the Albanians. They were observers sent by Paris's other Mafia groups, there to obtain firsthand intelligence and determine their next moves.

Even the French Internal Intelligence Directorate had received word and dispatched agents to watch from the sidelines. The authorities had no intention of intervening in a Mafia battle. Letting them tear each other apart was precisely the outcome those in power liked to see.

"Vroom! Vroom! Vroooom!"

The roar of countless engines came from the end of the road. Every observer perked up and immediately reported through their phones:

"They're here!"

"There are a lot of cars. It should be those Albanians. I don't see the other side."

"Hehehe, the show's about to begin. Kill each other! It'd be best if they all died!"

Under everyone's watchful eyes, a convoy slowly approached, centered around a Mercedes-Benz S600 and made up of numerous Mercedes-Benz SUVs, Audi A6s, and Volkswagen Golfs.

The convoy stopped at the main entrance of Port of Gennevilliers. More than a dozen Volkswagen Golfs entered the port first, weaving through the steel forest formed by stacked containers. After confirming there was no ambush, the main force... still did not move closer.

Murad was no fool. The container yards inside the port were far too complicated. If the enemy truly wanted to play dirty, they could search for an entire day without finishing.

The Volkswagen Golfs made a circuit and returned to the entrance. An underling got out and shouted toward the Mercedes-Benz S600, "Boss, we don't see anyone! Did they stand us up?"

Whoosh!

Before Murad could answer, a rocket suddenly launched from the top of a container, streaking through the night in a brilliant arc and striking the Mercedes-Benz S600 with perfect accuracy!

Boom!

The rocket exploded, flames shooting into the sky. The massive shockwave hurled the Mercedes-Benz S600 into the air, where it spun once before crashing heavily to the ground.

The main body of the Mercedes-Benz S600 somehow remained intact. Its doors were badly warped but had not shattered. It was obviously a special blastproof, bulletproof model, but even so, the people inside could not possibly have had an easy time.

Murad stuck his head out from another car. "The enemy is on top of the containers! Kill them!"

"Got it, boss!"

"Kill!"

The Albanians showed no fear whatsoever. They drew their guns, raised them, and opened fire.

Their human trafficking and drug smuggling businesses could stretch across Europe only because they had a ruthless, violent streak in their bones.

Bullets rained down on the containers. After firing the rocket, Brian scrambled away with his head down, pinned beneath such terrifying firepower that he could not raise his head.

On top of a stack of containers five levels high, Xiao Miao held an M240B in one hand. Looking down at more than thirty cars and over a hundred Mafia members, a bloodthirsty smile spread across his lips as both hands pulled the trigger at once.

"Rat-a-tat-tat—rat-a-tat-tat—!"

Under the night sky, two streams of muzzle fire swept through the convoy and crowd like Death's scythes.

The bullets, traveling at nearly three times the speed of sound, were simply too fast for the Mafia members to react.

Holes suddenly appeared in the ground for no apparent reason, then spread through the crowd. Cars parked nearby were effortlessly torn apart. Then came a faint sting in their own bodies, as if someone had punched them, before all strength left them and they collapsed to the ground.

Huh, whose lower body is that? It looks familiar... Oh, it seems to be mine... That thought flashed through the mind of a Mafia member torn apart by bullets. Then the pain belatedly surged into his brain, and only then did the machine gun's roar reach him, drowning out his wail.