Chapter Eight

Gabriel

 

“And stay down,” I tell her, holding my pistol at my side as the bastards fire more rounds into the downstairs window. “No—get under the bed. Hide. Don’t fucking move.”

 

I leave her there, running from the bedroom into the adjacent bathroom and then opening the window a sliver. Immediately, ice-cold air rushes in, but I ignore it and glance down into the sleety, glistening garden. A white van is parked at the end of the driveway, three men standing just below me with shotguns and pistols. They’re all wearing masks, gloves, and long-sleeved sweaters. They could be anybody.

 

“He’s up there!” one of them roars, making to fire up at me.

 

I react without thinking: shoot down at him, my bullet carving through the top of his skull cleanly, chunks of blood and the fabric from his mask falling away as he collapses to the ground. I fire another shot, catching the second one in the upper thigh. He curses and stumbles to the ground, but then fires back up at me. I duck down just in time, covering my face on instinct. Which is a damn good thing, because glass lashes against my hand; it would’ve been my eye had I not covered up. I check my hand quickly: small cuts, nothing to worry about.

 

Then I leave the bathroom and run into the next room—another bedroom—and fire from that window. I miss because the injured bastard shoots up at me, giving the other man enough time to run back toward the van. He opens up the back and takes out a heavy machine gun, the sort which will completely destroy the house and everything in it. I run again, this time returning to the bathroom, and then duck down just long enough to make them wonder. Then I jump up and fire—the man’s wrist explodes bloodily just as he’s about to start firing the machine gun. He lets out a roar and drops the weapon, and then makes as if to grab his friend from the lawn.

 

I fire twice at him, hitting him again in the knee and narrowly missing his head, and then I duck down and sprint downstairs, taking the last four steps in a giant leap. I kick open the front door and fire at the man on the ground, catching him in the arm and making him drop his gun. I run to him quickly and stamp my foot down on his bloody arm, stopping him from picking up his weapon, and then aim my gun at the man near the vehicle. I fire, but he’s quick; he darts inside and closes the van door, my bullets thumping against the metal. I pick up the fallen man’s pistol and fire more rounds into the van, and then it growls to life and screeches away, leaving one dead bastard and one half-dead bastard.

 

I watch the driveway for a long time, foot crushing into the man’s arm. Then, when I’m sure the prick isn’t returning, I kneel down and bring the gun to the man’s head.

 

“The fuck’s wrong with you?” I growl. “Do you have any fucking idea who I am? Do you have any fucking idea who I work for, you stupid fuck?” I slam him across the chin with the butt of the pistol and then grab his mask and wrench it from his head.

 

A plain-looking man stares up at me, around forty or maybe fifty, with a bald head and a squashed face. His eyes are wet from the pain, and his lips tremble like a woman’s. He glances at his fallen friend, swallows, and then stares up at me. “I don’t want no trouble.”

 

I push the barrel of the pistol into the soft part of his chin. “Doesn’t that seem like a fucking stupid thing to say after what you just did, eh? You don’t want no trouble? How the fuck can you say a thing like that when you just rolled up three-deep to ambush a man?” I press with the barrel even harder, digging the metal into his skin. “Now listen here, you can either tell me who you work for or I’m going to have to make you tell me.”

 

“You think I’ll talk?” The man laughs hoarsely. “You’re crazy!”

 

His accent is New York, which doesn’t tell me much, and I can’t tell if he’s Italian or Irish or Polish or what. He could even be working for one of the African American gangs as a hired goon.

 

“I’m not the crazy one, you dumb fuck. You’re the one bleeding out in the freezing cold, telling me you’re not going to talk. But we both know you will, eventually. If you’re in this game, then you know that much.”

 

The man curls his upper lip and then spits. Or at least tries to spit. But because of the angle, he ends up dribbling down his cheek. “I’m not saying a fucking word!” he growls, spit flying everywhere now.

 

“For fuck’s sake.” I sigh and holster my pistol, and then grab him under the armpits and drag him across the lawn inside the house. I take him into the kitchen and sit him down, and then cuff his hands behind his back and his feet together underneath the chair. He looks like a trussed-up Christmas turkey.

 

Then I go outside and bring the corpse around the side of the house, out of view of the street, not that there’s anybody on this street to give a damn. Thank fuck this safehouse is so isolated.

 

Returning to the man, I level my gun at him. “Who do you work for?” I ask simply.

 

He shakes his head, but even that movement weakens him. Blood pours continuously from his wounds. “No,” he says. “No fucking way.”

 

I smack him across the face with the back of my free hand and then grab him and set him upright when he almost falls over. I bring my face close to his, my voice far grimmer and angrier than I realized I was. Three men, coming to kill me … but that’s nothing new when you get right down to it. All my life, men’ve been coming to kill me. Then it hits me: Colleen. These men can gun for me all they want. That’s the life; that’s business. But gunning for an innocent woman who’s never hurt a fly in her life? That’s some fucking bullshit right there. I smack him again, this time letting him fall to the floor.

 

He coughs blood and stares up at me with the eyes of a man who thinks he’s going to kill me one day.

 

“Men always think they’re going to get revenge when they’re in your position,” I tell him, righting him again. “You’ve always got revenge, so there it is; you think you’re going to somehow get out of here, heal up, and pay me back for this. But this is the end of the line for you unless you start talking.”

 

“You’ll kill me anyway,” the man whispers.

 

Holding the gun to his head, I pat his pockets down. There’s nothing in there except for a small butterfly knife. I toss it across the room and take a step back. “If you tell me what I want to know, I’ll let you go. You have my word. If you know who I am, then you know that people say plenty about me, but they’ll never say I’m not a man of my word.”

 

“What do you think happens to me I talk?” He coughs, low, as more blood stains his clothes. “What then? Do you think my employer will be as—ha—as understanding as you?”

 

“I don’t give a fuck about you or your employer. I give a fuck about men trying to kill me. That’s all. Now, you might think you’ve got all day to talk and talk and say nothing at all, but that’s not the way this is going down. You’re going to say something I want to hear in the next couple of minutes, or that there wall is going to be covered in your brains.”

 

He swallows, his face going even more deathly pale. “You’re a sick bastard.”

 

“I’m a sick bastard?” I laugh viciously. “If you came here, then you know there’s a lady upstairs, a lady who has no part in this.”

 

“What?” The man growls out a chuckle. “Has big bad Gabriel Moretti fallen for the Irish slut—”

 

I leap forward and press the pistol into his seeping wound, twisting it so that he lets out a roar of agony. For some reason, when he insults Colleen I lose control of myself. It’s like he pulls a trigger, and the trigger fires me; I press the barrel even harder, until an inch of it disappears into the wound. The man’s world is hell right now, I know, because this sort of shit has been done to me before. That’s the life: torturing and being tortured.

 

“Fucking talk,” I snarl. “I won’t ask again.” I twist the gun savagely; blood stains the metal.

 

“Samuel Romano!” he screams, and then bites down on his lip as though he can take it back.

 

But it’s too late. I withdraw the gun and pace to the other side of the room, wishing the little shit was here so I could do the same to him. All those times that little untrained shit tried to act the big man, and now he’s gone one step too far. Attacking one of the Family’s own? Even a made guy can’t pull a move like that and …

 

“Fuck,” I whisper, wondering. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

 

I spin on the man. “How? Where? When?”

 

“He called up my boss and said he needed some fellas for a hit job. Didn’t say why or anything like that. Just said that we needed to kill you clean.”

 

“Well, you fucked that up. Did you meet with him in person?”

 

“Yeah,” the man says.

 

“Was anybody else there?”

 

“No, just him.”

 

“Okay.” I go back outside and around the house, checking the corpse. I search his body and find a cell phone, which I’m guessing means this bastard is the leader, since the other one doesn’t have a phone. I take the phone—the same make and model as my burner, which is another sign—and dial the skipper’s number. His response will tell me everything I need to know. It should be confusion, as in why the hell this random number is calling him; maybe he won’t answer. But if he does answer, and if his response …

 

I ignore that thought as the cell phone rings. My hands are shaking, which I stop with an effort, and then the phone just rings and rings. After about two minutes, I’m confident that the boss had nothing to do with this. I head back into the house to get my burner. I’ll call Lorenzo and, together, we’ll sort this mess out. He’ll have to discipline Samuel; there’s no way around that.

 

“Why are you calling me?” Lorenzo hisses. “Is it done? Are they … has the merchandise been disposed of, eh?”

 

I hold the phone to my ear for a long time, pausing mid-step, hardly able to believe what my ears are telling me.

 

“Well?” Lorenzo snaps. “What’s wrong with you? Is it done or not?”

 

I walk slowly into the house and drop onto the couch, my chest hammering like it might snap in two. I need to calm down, but this is something else entirely. This is my cousin, my boss, the man I’ve worked with for most of my life. And here he is, asking if I’m dead the same way he’d ask if a package has been delivered. The asshole. The fucking traitor.

 

“Gabriel?” Lorenzo mutters, after another long pause. “Did you kill them all?”

 

I open my mouth to speak—to tell him that, yes, I killed his goons—but I find that words won’t form. All that comes out is a breath that doesn’t sound like me at all. I hang up the cell phone and let my head fall back, take a deep breath, and then, as calmly as I can, return to the bleeding man.

 

“I’m a man of my word,” I say, “so I’m letting you live. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to make it easy for you, you fuck. You almost killed a lady, a twenty-one-year-old lady who’s never even fired a shot.” I take out both his elbows and then untie him and carry him out to the yard, which is covered in a fine layer of snow now. I drop him onto the grass, staining it red with his blood, and then kick him in the gut.

 

He hunches over, gasping. “P-p-please.”

 

“Get the fuck out of my sight,” I growl, hauling him up and tossing him again.

 

This time he manages to stay standing, his arms limp at his side. I turn back to the house, dread in my gut. But something else, too: rage …

 

Rage like only a betrayed man can feel.