Angelo Lamonica flipped the collar of his jacket up and braced himself against the icy wind. It looked like it was going to snow.

He hated having to walk to work. Actually, he hated work in general. He’d much rather have stayed home, made himself comfortable at the computer, and spent the day looking at naked women…or maybe gone to the gym and lifted some weights, primarily to impress Tara.

Just thinking about Tara got him hot. Angelo knew girls like her weren’t for long relationships. They were good for spending the night with every so often, and that was all Angelo was interested in. Not that he’d tell Tara that, of course. He’d keep the relationship going for as long as he could, though he suspected she was actually into guys of a completely different variety. Guys like Danijel Taylor, who were the exact opposite of him. Guys who were born with a silver spoon in their mouths and never had to lift a finger.

Success was practically a given when you had the financial means. Being attractive made it even easier. Angelo knew that full well. He, too, had been blessed in the looks department: he was tall, muscular, with smooth olive skin, long hair that he usually wore tied back. His biceps were impressively large, thanks to years of working out and plenty of protein shakes. And he had a collection of fierce tattoos.

His most recent acquisition was a fire-breathing dragon he’d had done across his shoulders. He was looking forward to showing it off to the girls at the pool that summer. And God help anyone who gave him any shit about it.

It didn’t take much to make Angelo Lamonica mad. And when he got mad, he got violent, compensating for his lack of technique with sheer aggressiveness.

Of course, he had one key advantage over his opponents: he had no scruples. Hitting a guy when he was down didn’t bother Angelo in the slightest. He’d keep right on going without batting an eyelash. In fact, that was when he really hit his stride. He loved the sound of bones crunching and the sight of blood spraying. Craved it, almost.

That was probably the main difference between him and his best friend, Pete. Pete wasn’t any less prone to violence—he could send guys to the hospital with the best of them—but he experienced no emotion whatsoever when it happened, and if it didn’t happen, Pete was okay with it. Not like Angelo, who was practically addicted to violence, spent his weekends doing whatever he could to provoke it. Unfortunately, the opportunities didn’t always present themselves…

So how fortunate was it that Tara had come and told him about this Taylor guy?

Angelo had seen him before often enough—on the street, at the mall, wherever. He hadn’t known the guy’s name, and they’d never spoken, but Angelo couldn’t stand him anyway. He was just too good-looking and drove too fancy a car. Angelo didn’t even have a license at the moment, thanks to a DUI, which only magnified his envy. Something about the guy had always gotten under Angelo’s skin, but he hadn’t been able to put his finger on it.

And then Tara had told him what she’d found out about him at work. She wasn’t supposed to pass information like that on, but Angelo had sworn on his life that he wouldn’t tell anyone else.

Of course, he hadn’t kept the promise. How could he? If they wanted to give him a proper beatdown, they needed backup. You never knew what people like Taylor were capable of.

All Tara wanted was for Angelo to intimidate the guy a little. Her pride had been injured, and she wanted revenge. Angelo found that childish and ridiculous. His motive was simple: he hated fags. Especially sick, junkie fags like Taylor. The way they lived was disgusting enough, and now this one was bringing the plague into Angelo’s hometown. His hatred knew no bounds. And if he could impress Tara at the same time, so much the better. That’d earn him another hot night with her. It had been far too long since the last one.

The fact that Angelo and his buddies had already spent the last eight weeks staking out the guy’s apartment and never run into him didn’t make the situation any better. He was itching to let off steam already, but Taylor had seemed to be on permanent vacation. Apparently he had the money for it.

When they’d finally spotted Taylor again at the end of January, Angelo had called in sick just to be on the safe side. He faked his way to a doctor’s note that gave him nearly a week to spy on the guy. Now he knew where Taylor parked, when he worked, when his girlfriend came and went. That guy had a lot of nerve, lying to that girl so he could use her to hide his interest in men.

That wasn’t Angelo’s problem, though. The main thing was that he knew when and where the guy went running every morning: across the fields, and then a short distance through the woods. At ass-early o’clock, when normal people were still in bed. But that would be perfect. They’d just have to drag him off the path a little deeper into the woods…

Patience, Angelo. Just one more day.

His team would be ready, provided that none of them overslept. Lazy jackasses.

Angelo rubbed his hands. Whether from the cold or in anticipation, he wasn’t sure. He stepped into the large warehouse where he worked and called out a cheerful “Good morning!”

His coworkers turned and stared at him, dumbfounded. Nobody there had ever seen Angelo Lamonica in a good mood.