.htaccess block wp-json - regex

Question

I have one normal Wordpress website on which I am trying to block requests to wp-json. I am aware that such requests go via the core of the Wordpress. My request looks like this:
[root#SV-CentOS-01 ~]# curl -i https://www.website.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users/1
When I add RewriteRule ^wp-json.*$ - [L,R=404] on top of my htaccess I get 404 server response and the API returns me the users of my website. Is there actually a way to achieve what I want via .htaccess or we need to make it the Wordpress way?
Example:
[root#SV-CentOS-01 ~]# curl -i https://www.website.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users/1
HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2021 14:14:13 GMT
Server: Apache
Vary: Accept-Encoding,Cookie,Origin
Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT
Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate
Pragma: no-cache
X-Robots-Tag: noindex
Link: <https://www.website.com/wp-json/>; rel="https://api.w.org/"
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
Access-Control-Expose-Headers: X-WP-Total, X-WP-TotalPages, Link
Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Authorization, X-WP-Nonce, Content-Disposition, Content-MD5, Content-Type
Allow: GET
Set-Cookie: PHPSESSID=5c07eaa455457ca0ef4b358d016c3b8d; path=/
Upgrade: h2,h2c
Connection: Upgrade
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Type: application/json; charset=UTF-8
{"id":1,"name":"User One","url":"","description":"","link":"https:\/\/www.website.com\/author\/admin\/","slug":"admin","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.website.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.website.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users"}]}}[root#SV-CentOS-01 ~]#