He Ordered His Vicious Pit Bull to Attack a Young Waitress — Then the Mafia Boss Witnessed Something No One Expected

CHAPTER 4

She should have let Sebastian send someone home with her.

Instead, on Thursday night, Nenah insisted on walking to her car alone — a small rebellion against the paranoia swallowing her independence whole. It felt, at the time, like the last piece of herself she was allowed to keep.

The decision turned catastrophic in the parking garage beneath her building. Rough hands seized her from behind. A cloth pressed to her mouth, chemical and sweet, and the world folded into black before she could scream.

She woke to rust and mildew — an abandoned warehouse, corrugated walls, grey dawn bleeding through broken skylights. Her wrists were zip-tied to a metal chair. Across from her, Victor Reigns sat on an overturned crate, cleaning his nails with a pocketknife like the morning belonged to him.

“He’ll come for you,” Victor said conversationally. “Sebastian’s always been predictable when he cares about something. Feels too much for a man in his position.” His shark eyes measured her fear. “Twelve men, all loyal to the old ways. All ready to remind the Reaper what happens when sentiment overrides survival.”

Her throat was dry, but she forced her voice steady. “You think killing me proves something?”

“It proves everything.” He circled her chair. “It proves he’s forgotten the first rule. Never love what you can’t afford to lose.” He smiled thinly. “When he walks through that door, desperate and off-balance, my men cut him down. The families remember the old guard doesn’t die. It endures.”

The warehouse door exploded inward thirty minutes later.

Sebastian entered like violence given a human shape — jacket gone, gun already raised, Cerberus a streak of muscle at his side. Victor’s men opened fire exactly as planned, but Sebastian had anticipated the ambush, moving with a precision that dropped three men before they finished aiming. Cerberus took two more, fast and terrible.

Then Victor grabbed her.

A knife pressed to her throat. “Stand down, Sebastian, or I open her up.”

Sebastian froze, gun still level, face carved from ice. This was the moment Victor had built — the Reaper neutered by sentiment, forced to choose between reputation and heart.

But Nenah had learned something in the weeks spent teaching a monster how to trust.

“Cerberus.” Her voice didn’t shake, even with the blade against her skin. “Hold.”

He hesitated — one heartbeat, muscles coiled, every instinct screaming at him to finish what he’d started — before he obeyed, stopping mid-stride, eyes fixed on her instead of the threat. Victor’s grip loosened, thrown by her composure.

“Good boy.” Her gaze found Sebastian’s. “Now protect.”

Cerberus moved — not toward Victor, but around him, giving Sebastian a clear line while blocking the last gunman’s aim. In the half-second of chaos, Sebastian fired.

The knife hit the concrete. Victor staggered back, clutching his shoulder, disbelief cracking through his composure. He’d prepared for rage. He hadn’t prepared for a weapon turned into a partner.

Sebastian closed the distance in three strides, kicking Victor’s fallen pistol out of reach before it stopped spinning. The last gunman, disarmed and bleeding from a graze along his ribs, dropped to his knees with his hands laced behind his head — Sebastian’s men already moving in to zip-tie him where he knelt. Cerberus circled once, low and watchful, making sure nothing on the ground still had teeth.