Jason had planned this down to the last, intimate detail, every move, every bullet, every scream and drop of blood that would soak into Gotham's underworld tonight like ink into a dying page.
The Bertinellis were his first stroke of violence, an opening act of terror. Weakened from within by bitter infighting and picked apart at the edges by the encroaching Falcone family, they were ripe. Vulnerable. Sloppy.
They wouldn't see him coming, and by the time they did, they'd be choking on their own blood, praying to gods that had long since abandoned Gotham.
He'd spent weeks preparing for this moment. Every lead, every supply run, every whisper on the street folded neatly into the plan. The arms store robbery had been clean, surgical, silent. No alarms, no witnesses, no evidence left behind. Just another ghost in a city that bred them.
Now, the weight of the .40 calibers on his thighs was reassuring, almost comforting.
The metal was cold, familiar. These weapons weren't just tools. they were extensions of himself, mechanical fangs forged for one purpose, to punish.
Grenades, explosives, steel wire coiled like a serpent inside his pack, each item with a job, each one picked with purpose.
The League of Assassins had drilled the concept into him, ruthlessness wasn't about emotion. It was about efficiency. Clean. Precise. Unapologetic. And tonight, he intended to honor that philosophy with fire and lead.
Midnight blanketed the city in a thin fog, and the Bertinelli stronghold loomed like a decaying monument to false wealth. A gaudy penthouse rotting atop a failed luxury development.
Jason moved like smoke, scaling the rusted fire escape with the ease of someone who'd done this a hundred times in worse weather.
His boots made no sound on the metal grates as he climbed higher, every muscle fluid and focused.
The first sentry never stood a chance.
A gloved hand wrapped around the man's mouth mid-yawn, jerking him back into the shadows.
The combat knife slid in under his ribcage, slicing through muscle and lung with a wet, grating sound. The man jerked violently, blood soaking through his shirt in thick, hot pulses.
Jason held him there, chest to back, until the body went limp. He let the corpse ease down gently, like lowering a heavy coat onto the ground.
The second guard stood by the rooftop door, a cigarette glowing in the dark like a tiny beacon of stupidity. Jason didn't bother with stealth this time.
One suppressed round.
The bullet punched through the man's temple, his skull bursting like a cracked egg against the brick. The cigarette slipped from his fingers and landed in a puddle of blood, sizzling faintly as the ember drowned.
Inside, it was even worse.
The Bertinelli enforcers lounged like they owned the world, boozing, betting, laughing over cards. The air inside stank of cheap liquor, body odor, and cigar smoke.
The furniture was worn, the wallpaper peeling, a mockery of sophistication now reduced to mold-stained corners and flickering lights.
They didn't notice the red-helmeted figure slip into the room, the soft clunk of metal boots muffled by the hum of their laughter.
Until the first grenade hit the floor.
"Fire in the hole," Jason muttered, voice low and casual, like he was announcing dinner.
The explosion tore through the room with a sound that cracked the walls and shattered the past.
A brutal symphony of flame and fragmentation. One enforcer was obliterated, just meat and heat and screaming remnants. Another staggered back, clutching the jagged edge of metal buried in his throat, blood pouring from his mouth as his legs buckled beneath him.
Then came the gunfire.
Jason was in motion before the smoke even cleared. His Twin Pistols roared with each pull of the trigger, muzzle flashes painting his armor in flickers of gold and red.
A bullet caught one thug mid-sentence, tearing his jaw clean off, teeth and gore spraying across the table in a pink mist.
Another shot struck home just above the brow, the man's head snapping back as the exit wound painted the wall behind him in a grotesque mural.
One tried to run. Didn't make it.
The last with any fight in him charged with a switchblade and a death wish. Jason sidestepped, fluid and fast, grabbing the man's wrist mid-swing. Bone cracked with a sickening crunch as Jason twisted.
The scream that followed was cut off when he drove the knife into the man's throat, steel sawing through cartilage and windpipe. He twisted the blade, then ripped it free. A geyser of blood sprayed across the wall like graffiti.
Silence fell.
Only one man remained, trembling behind an overturned table, curled in on himself like a rat in a trap. The bookkeeper.
Round face pale, eyes wide, his pants dark with piss. He looked up and found only the smooth, blank gaze of the red helmet staring back.
Jason reached over the table, grabbed the man by the collar, and hauled him to his feet.
"You live," he said, voice cold and guttural through the modulator. "You go to Sofia Falcone. You tell her the Red Hood owns this turf now. If she steps one toe across the line, she burns with the rest."
He shoved the man forward.
The bookkeeper stumbled over a corpse, nearly face-planting in a pool of blood, but kept going, slipping and scrambling, his panicked sobs echoing off the corridor walls until they disappeared into the night.
Jason stood amidst the carnage—shell casings littering the floor, smoke hanging in the air like a curtain, blood creeping across cracked tiles. He exhaled slowly, the sound barely audible beneath the soft hiss of his helmet's filters.
With smooth, practiced hands, he reloaded his pistols, each click and snap deliberate, methodical.
Phase one was done.
A message had been sent.
Gotham would learn.
And Gotham would fear the Red Hood.
- - -
The night air still hung heavy with the scent of smoke, gunpowder, and something else—something older, like rot buried under concrete, unearthed too suddenly. The silence that followed wrapped around the streets like a thick, suffocating oil slick, too dense to cut through.
Gotham didn't just fall quiet—it recoiled, as though the city itself was trying to forget what had just taken place. Word always traveled fast in Gotham, but this... this wasn't just another hit or turf war.
This was a statement. And the first poor soul burdened with carrying it was the Bertinelli bookkeeper—one of the few who staggered out of that slaughterhouse alive. Not spared by luck. Not by mercy. But by deliberate choice.
He reached the safehouse hours later, looking less like a man and more like a shell wearing human skin. His steps were jagged, mechanical, like each movement had to be forced through a wall of invisible resistance.
The blood on his clothes wasn't his, but the weight of it pressed down like guilt made tangible. He stank of death and panic, and when he opened his mouth to speak, his voice was paper-thin, brittle from too many screams swallowed whole.
"Red Hood," he said, more to the air than to Arturo, who sat across the table. "Red mask. There wasn't a warning—just shots. Screams. Bones. Blood everywhere. It—he didn't stop. Not once."
His hands trembled uncontrollably. The empty space between his fingers seemed to shake more than the flesh itself, as if even the air refused to stay still around him, almost shivering. Arturo said nothing.
The acting head of the fractured Bertinelli operation sat stiff-backed in a leather chair, arms crossed over a pressed shirt rolled at the sleeves.
His face was clean-shaven, square-jawed and prematurely weathered. He was young for the role he carried, but his eyes, had already buried more men than his age would suggest.
When the man finished his recount, Arturo didn't speak. Not immediately. He looked past the bookkeeper for a beat, his eyes hard and calculating. Then, without a word, he reached for the phone resting beside a spread of photos and tactical maps.
He dialed.
Miles away, beneath the dimmed glow of antique sconces and behind walls that had heard more secrets than prayers, Sofia Falcone sat at the far end of a long, polished oak table.
She held a porcelain espresso cup delicately between two fingers, her knuckles rough and calloused despite the manicured control in her movements.
Her presence filled the room before her voice ever did. Even seated, she radiated dominance—the type not taught, but bred.
The heavy velvet curtains behind her held back the city's cold light, casting the room in hues of amber and shadows. Somewhere in the background, a vinyl record played a low, melancholy jazz tune, something her father used to spin.
She answered the call.
"Arturo," she greeted flatly, no warmth, just recognition.
He spoke. Slowly, methodically, walking her through every detail, his voice low, but tense.
As he spoke, her expression didn't change, not at first. But her eyes… those eyes narrowed like a blade being drawn, their amber flecks flickering under the glow of the sconces. Not with surprise, but something deeper. Intrigue. Irritation. Thought.
When he was done, silence stretched across the line like a wire pulled taut.
Sofia set her espresso cup down with calm precision, the tiny click of porcelain against wood echoing like a punctuation mark. She leaned back slightly, resting her thick forearms on the carved arms of the chair.
"So…" she said at last, her voice smoky and low, like gravel soaked in whiskey. "This Red Hood decided to play butcher."
She reached across the table and retrieved a cigarette case, flipping it open with one thumb. The silver glinted, etched with the Falcone family crest—an heirloom of brutal legacy.
She lit the cigarette with a flick of her father's old lighter, its flame dancing briefly in the dimness before dying into a spiral of rising smoke.
"And he left the bookkeeper alive," she continued, exhaling through her nose like a dragon choosing not to incinerate. "How considerate."
The room shifted. Subtle, but palpable.
Two of her lieutenants, seated nearby in the low chairs, exchanged a glance—silent but bristling. One tapped the edge of his phone nervously against his leg. The other froze mid-scroll. No one dared to interject.
"You say they didn't stand a chance?" she murmured, though she already knew the answer. "Of course they didn't. Those men were on my orders. It was a hand-off. Peaceful. Bertinelli turf, but I let them hold their corner—out of respect."
She drew on her cigarette again, eyes never leaving the swirling smoke. Ash fell into a cut crystal tray like snowflakes landing on marble.
"And this masked dog storms in, guns down six of our people—our people, like they were nothing. Then leaves one breathing just long enough to whisper the tale into your ears."
Her tone never rose. That was the terrifying part. She didn't need to shout. Her anger was the kind that didn't burn—it crushed.
Sofia rose slowly from her chair. Every movement deliberate, echoing the silence of the estate. She was tall, built broad across the shoulders, shaped by years of training and war disguised as business. The kind of woman whose strength didn't have to be visible to be felt.
She walked to the nearest window, pulling back the curtain just enough to glimpse Gotham's twisted beauty in the distance. The city flickered in the night like a fire that refused to die, all glitter and menace.
"I doubt someone like that makes accidents," she said, almost thoughtfully. "He didn't spare that man for mercy. He left him alive so we'd know. So I'd know."
On the speakerphone, Arturo's voice buzzed in again, quieter now. "Currently, his whereabouts are unknown. Say the word and we would scatter across the city in search of this guy."
Sofia stood in stillness for a moment longer, then turned and crushed the cigarette into the tray.
"No," she said softly, but the finality in her tone sliced through the room in stillness.
Arturo hesitated. Even her lieutenants looked up, eyes narrowed in disbelief.
"We don't react," she said, walking slowly back to her seat. "Not like amateurs. That's exactly what he's baiting. Fury. Recklessness. And we don't give that. Not to ghosts with guns."
She picked up the receiver this time, resting her elbow on the table. Her tone shifted, colder, clearer, every word honed like steel against whetstone.
"I want eyes. Everywhere he's been in the last six months. Every port. Every contact. Every shithole bar that might remember his name. I want patterns. I want pressure points. Find out why he's targeting us now—what made him believe the Falcones were open for business."
She paused, then added with lethal softness: "And Arturo… keep the bookkeeper alive. I want him breathing, blinking, and surrounded. Document everything. Red Hood left him for a reason, and I want to know if he's just the messenger—or the fuse."
She hung up before he could respond.
The room stood frozen in her wake, the record having spun to silence, letting the soft, living hum of the city fill the space between breaths. One of her lieutenants finally dared to speak.
"You think it's personal?" he asked, voice pitched low, almost a whisper.
Sofia turned her gaze toward him. She didn't smile, but the ghost of one touched her lips—tight, humorless, and dangerous.
"In this city?" she murmured, her stare lingering in the shadows along the wall. "Everything's personal."
Then, without fanfare, she poured herself another espresso, steady as a heartbeat.
The massacre hadn't just taken lives—it had drawn a battle line across Gotham's underworld. And soon, Red Hood would learn that crossing the Falcones wasn't a challenge.
It was an invitation for his own demise.