Hyper Focus

With the sheer number of people at his disposal. The vast number of new technology that had come to be since the last mutilation killings, it should have been easy as pie to find the new copycat, but there was nothing. Just more and more bodies piling up. 

The new corpses were not even hidden, they were put out on display. Public parks, schools, mosques, churches, synagogues, shops, anywhere there was guaranteed to be a large gathering of people, the bodies showed up.

The police still clueless, had yet to connect the killings to the serial murders from the past. And Gio was thankful for that. Different parties looking meant an increased risk of the person either running or hiding. Gio wanted them out and about where he had a higher chance of getting to them. Plus with just the families looking, there was less of a chance of them accidentally ruining leads.

But the person behind the killings was always one step ahead. They had nothing to go on. Their doctors unable to find anything that linked the victims. It almost seemed as though they were being farmed. Most organ thieves were specific. They got an order, they searched for someone who was a match and they harvested them. But this killer was taking random people. Most likely they were kept in captivity until a buyer was found and then they were killed and their body parts distributed to the buyers.

The human farming possibility was the most likely one. But that, like the more conventional methods of farming, needed space. A place to keep the people before their surgeries.

It was that thought that led Gio and his people on a search throughout the entire city. He barely saw Elle anymore, often coming home to find his food in the oven. Her coffee mug washed and put away. When he could he would join her in bed for an hour or two. Barely even getting to enjoy his sleep before he was up again. Moving quietly so as not to disturb her.

It was an awful way to spend the first few months of their marriage. But if there was a possibility that he could catch the new blood Rex, then Gio would keep at it.

From warehouses, abandoned apartment buildings, bakeries and butcheries. Gio visited all the places that had been his uncle's favorite haunts back in the day hoping to find something. Even if it was just a sliver of a lead, but there was nothing. Most of the warehouses had been turned into apartment buildings, the old apartment building torn down to make space for businesses, the parks long gone, the bakeries and butcheries turned into new businesses. All the horrid things that had gone on there buried under the city's development wave and forgotten.

Even when Gio moved from searching the old places to areas that could possibly house an organ harvesting organisation, there was nothing. He searched and searched, but he could not find a single trace. And the longer the search and the killings carried on, the more wary people were becoming. Not just the normal city folk either. His own people were becoming uneasy, beginning to doubt him. There were even rumors that Rex was not dead, that he had somehow survived and had come back for his place in the Romano family.

The Red Don.

As with all things horrible and nasty. People had put a shine on the awful things his uncle had done. Stories softening just how bad things had been. Details warped and twisted enough that they saw him as just a man clinging to the old ways when gun fights and stabbings were a way of life. An anti-hero, someone to look up to rather than to be feared. There was still many who knew that following someone with beliefs like his uncle's was a bad idea. But there were a few radicals crazy enough to really be buying into the idea of blood Rex.

It was spoken in hushed tones, when people thought Gio could not hear, but he did and their words added to his stress. He did not need the added pressure of worrying about whether or not his people were completely loyal.

Weeding out those with straying minds often led to more discontent and that was the last thing Gio needed. So he did what he had been doing in the first place, only this time, he re-doubled his efforts.

He barely went home anymore, barely stopping by for a quick shower a d never staying long enough to eat or see Elle. When he slept, it was a quick power nap caught in whatever safe house he happened to be closest to at the time. 

There were no longer any breaks for him, every single bit of energy focused on finding the new Red Don. He was going so hard at it, he was not even bothering with their legal fronts. In fact he had not seen the inside of the club in weeks. Content in knowing that since Elle was the manager now, the place was in good hands.

But despite all his sacrifice and focus, Gio did not feel closer to the truth, if anything the longer he went without even a lifeline of new information to cling to, the more Gio felt like he was losing the plot. Days of poor sleep and even poorer eating habits taking their toll. The only thing that would stop his spiral would be to get a solid lead, and the only way to get that would be to keep searching. So that was what Gio did, ignoring the worried looks he was getting, even from Big L, who normally did not care. He kept pushing and pushing. He would have kept going for as long as it took, but day hundred and something of his endless search, Gio woke up and ran into a brick wall that ended all his plans of a continued search.

A brick wall by the name of Elle Romano.