Regulus is going to kill Mulciber if it's the last thing he does.
Perhaps it's too heavy a thought to be thinking as he sits crouched in the back of an alleyway with a small orange tabby cat rubbing up against his leg, but Mulciber has yet to arrive and this cat was already here and meowing at him rather pathetically so you can't really blame the guy. The poor thing purrs as Regulus scritches it behind its left ear, avoiding the pretty sizable V-shaped cutout on the tip. The wound already seems to be healed over, but Reg is still wary about getting too close to it.
The lights on the rain-slick streets are bright against the asphalt, the roads seeming to glimmer in technicolor. It's almost fitting for Reg to be awaiting his victim in the dead of night still surrounded by color as if James himself was here at his shoulder.
Gods he wishes James were here. Hell, he'd even take Sirius at this point, but neither his partner nor his brother had shown up for the call as he'd expected them to after he sent his location confirmation, and with the fact that the coms went out only a few minutes after Regulus got on site, a part of him feels like something has gone wrong at headquarters. That thought alone is enough to make his stomach twist and clench with anxiety.
Here's the thing, Regulus could be alone and cornered by a whole slew of armed men and not even flinch before handling the situation with nothing less than pure finesse, but the very moment something or someone threatens the people he cares about, he gets anxious. And when Regulus gets anxious, he tends to act a little more... recklessly.
He takes a deep breath, closing his eyes and trying to calm himself enough to loosen that knot in his gut. Regulus feels tiny paws step up onto his knee and the orange tabby lets out a raspy meow. He opens his eyes to see the sweet thing sniffing up at him before reaching out one of those paws and stretching his little toes out at him. Regulus melts.
Successfully calmed down for the time being, he pushes the thoughts from his mind entirely to focus on the task at hand: Putting a bullet through Mulciber Sr.'s head before he has the chance to do the same to him. The bottom line is that one of them would be leaving this alleyway tonight and Regulus was determined to make sure that was him. No matter what it takes. Then he can go back to Headquarters and make sure that James and Sirius are okay. Oh, and this cat. He's taking the cat home too. He'll apologize to James once he finds him warm and alive. Besides, he isn't even here. It's really his own fault for leaving Regulus unsupervised so he'll have to forgive him. It's simply how it works.