The Lone Knight (Under The Cowl Book #1)

CHAPTER 19

Parked by the loading bay all alone, the delivery man exited his truck and walked around back to open its doors.

Tonight felt no different compared to past nights while looking to make his final delivery. 

Inside his trunk he revealed the cooler and the fog of condensation quick to expel and rise from the kegs he came here to deliver.

"Wow" he said to himself after lifting the first keg and dropping it onto his metal hand truck.

It wasn't the weight of the keg putting him in near disbelief; it was the sight of the Gotham high rise apartment he stood in front of. Not one of his regular routes, the wealthy were not on his list of the usual clientele he'd come here to deliver a keg. Likely a party hosted by some sobbing rich college kid looking to get plastered with the order of six Slim Quarter barrels they think they want. When instead it was how cool it sounded to have an actual keg at their party than actually having to drink it.

"Kids these days." he said to himself with his head buried in his clipboard marking down the number of kegs he's about to deliver.

"Tell me about it." a deep and ominous voice replied behind him, forcing the deliveryman to look up and find a man wearing a dark jacket and a black baseball cap before grabbed by the collar and slammed against the stone wall.

The delivery man dropped his clipboard on the ground. His eyes widen at the strength of the man holding him up with one hand. With forearms like wide metal beams, the deliveryman knew there was no way of fighting off this man who had him in his clutches. "I'm not looking for any trouble, the money is the glove compartment, take it, it's yours!" the deliveryman began to plead for his life.

"I don't want your money."

"I don't have anything else to give you."

"Yes, you do."

What the hell could that possibly be? The deliveryman thought to himself. He owed no debts, wronged no men or women, he's lived a simple and boring life. "What do you want from me?" the deliveryman wanted to cry like a baby and show he is not threat. But he held back the tears. The last thing he wanted was to shame himself by crying in front of a stranger at the risk of this being his final moments alive.

"You can start by telling me where you planned on delivering those kegs."

"Huh?

~

The elevator ride up to the penthouse suite was tightly pack with more of Gotham University's ale guzzling youth ready to party.

With their constant selfie taking and eyes glue to their phone every other second uploading to whatever social media page they called their second home. They ignored their surroundings with gossip about who posted what or if he or she liked who, what, or it. Because standing in the corner of the elevator was a man not dressed to party.

Normally a man of his considerably menacing frame would draw all eyes. Wearing a dark baseball cap and a dark jacket with a clipboard in one hand and the handle of a hand truck carrying a keg in the other, did not see the tucked away shotgun under his coat and large hunting knife seen beside his belt buckle.

Out the elevator the students went, dancing to the tune of the music heard out in the hallway.

They knew exactly where to go, whereas the face of a man once known as one of Gotham's wealthiest philanthropist stood heavily disfigured and no longer recognizable to those who once knew him as he lifted his head to stare out into the hallway.

Bruce Wayne.

The corner of Bruce's eyes, they've become filled with coagulated blood and a stain of yellow-gold across the center.

He exited the elevator leaving behind the clipboard and keg. Two things he knew he will not need for what he came here to do.