Heavy fog hangs in the air as I walk through the empty graveyard, no sound around me the hooting of an owl in a distant tree. My footsteps don’t even make noise.

One of the things I was able to grab from Jerry’s apartment was his contact information, which in turn gave me access to his accounts.

So, I impersonated him, and I set up a meeting with Blake.

I told him there had been a complication at the hospital, and that we needed to meet up immediately. And so here, in the middle of the night in a graveyard on the outskirts of town, I’m heading to a meeting with Blake Brighton, who expects me to be Jerry, who he no doubt was planning to chew out or even kill, if I know anything about Blake’s personality by now.

This isn’t just any graveyard, either. This is where the Brighton family has their own private mausoleum.

It isn’t an unusual kind of place to meet people in my line of work. Back when I was younger and had a different idea of what dramatic flare was, it was almost like a calling card for me.

Of course, Blake doesn’t know that.

As I walk among the dead, I feel their stillness all around me like anticipation being tightly wound up. The moisture of the fog makes the tombstones damp and the ground wet.

The Brighton mausoleum stands like a lonely monument in the fog, a big and dark shadow among shadows. I arrived later than I said to meet him, just to make sure I didn’t beat him here.

I want the satisfaction of an entrance.

As I expect, though, Blake didn’t come alone. Outside the mausoleum, I see two men standing by the door. One has his arms crossed and leans back against the wall while the other smokes, looking out into the fog. I can see guns at their sides and know they’re there for security. My guess would be that he planned to have Jerry dragged before him when he arrived.

I crouch down as I approach. The fog and the gravestones give me cover, and whenever one of them looks my way, I freeze, looking like nothing but a dark shadow out in the sea of stone.

I circle around the back of the mausoleum and slip up the side of it, hugging the wall. The men aren’t speaking to each other. I can hear the smoker occasionally inhale on his cigarette.

With no sound and no hesitation, I come around the side of the building and deliver a quick, sharp strike to the neck of the man leaning against the wall. I watch his throat crumple in on itself before I move to the smoker. He barely has time to turn around before I seize him around the throat with my arms in a sleeper hold, and he kicks in silence before finally going limp in my arms.

Both men dealt with, I turn my eyes to the entrance to the mausoleum.

I move into the mausoleum through the stone doorway, and I draw my weapon. I’m here to get answers, but I need to be ready. Someone like Blake isn’t likely to be smart about how to handle the likes of me.

Once I’m halfway into the short hallway to the center of the building, I let my footsteps echo, and I hear someone breathe in sharply from the corridor to the left. The inside of the mausoleum is in the simple shape of a cross, with the entrance and three short hallways.

“Is he here?” I hear a man’s voice ask in a snide, demanding tone.

“Yes,” I say simply as I appear in the corridor as a tall, dark figure looming at the end of the passage at the intersection.

Blake is a short man, shorter than I expected. His face goes white at the sight of me, but it’s already deathly pale, and his blonde hair makes him look almost ghostly. He looks like a childish, softer version of his father, dressed in warm winter clothes from some top-line designer brands in NYC. He looks more like he’s about to go out on a yacht than meet a mafia contact in a graveyard.

“Who the fuck are you?” he says, cautiously stepping toward me, looking like he could bolt at any second. “And where the hell are my men?”

“I’m the one they call the Angel of Death,” I say, my voice a low, dark tone, each syllable rolling off my tongue with practiced ease. “If you knew anything about dealing with murder, you’d know my name.”

He looks chilled to the bone, and his hand twitches as if reaching for something at his side. He hasn’t seen my gun yet, but if I planned to just kill him quickly and quietly, he’d have never seen me coming.

“Where’s the ratty guy?” he asks, his voice thin. “What the fuck is this?”

“He won’t be coming, Blake Brighton,” I say. “Nobody will.”

Like snow melting away suddenly, Blake loses his will, and his skinny legs break into a run. He darts past me, fumbling with a gun at his side and clumsily shooting back, the bullet hitting stone and chipping some of it off as it ricochets behind me.

Blake takes off out of the mausoleum, and I jog after him.

I’m in no hurry, though. I want to let him tire himself out.

Outside in the cold, wet air, I can see his figure vanishing into the fog, but the sound of his running footsteps makes it easy to follow him, letting him stay just out of reach to give him the slightest glimmer of hope.

“Tell me about your sister, Blake,” I call after him as he runs. “Tell me about what you put her through.”

“I’m not telling you anything!” I hear his voice call back at me, and I weave through the tombstones as he runs.

He’s headed for the exit, so I pick up the pace and circle around him, blocking off his escape and listening to the sound of his footsteps running toward me.

“Do you know how she died?” I ask, moments before Blake’s sprinting form appears in front of me. He skids to a halt, and I can see the whites of his wide, terrified eyes. He raises his gun, but by the time he fires, I’ve already dived out of the way. He takes off running in the opposite direction, deeper into the cemetery.

“You handed her over to the devil himself,” I call after him, giving chase.

“Fuck off! I’ll have you killed!”

“Your hitman was a monster, Blake,” I say. “You condemned an innocent woman to a living hell.”

“Who sent you?” he yells, his voice getting hoarse. He’s veered off to the right. There are no exits this direction. I crack a smile. I’d forgotten the simple joy of hunting down someone who deserves it. “I’ll pay you triple!”

“Money won’t save you now, Blake,” I say. My tone is plain, matter-of-fact. I’m less of a person, more of a force of nature weighing down on my prey with each passing second. “How long did you think you could hide behind it?”

“Anything you want!” he blurts, his voice sounding panicked. I nearly catch up to him, and he fires blindly at me again. I feel nor show any fear. “My girlfriend’s a model, you want her? I can get you anything!”

“Are they even people to you, Blake?” I ask, hearing him starting to pant as he runs out of breath. “Your sister? Your father?”

“Is that what this is about? Did that bastard send you?”

“You’re the only one I’m here for, Blake,” I say, a hint of deadly pleasure in my tone.

He’s clearly running out of places to run. I hear another gunshot go off, and I can only imagine he fired blindly into the dark. I decide it’s time to close in on him. I get low and start moving quietly and swiftly, as if I were chasing prey that were really worth my efforts.

All this for Eva, and only Eva.

Because if it were me, I would just end him swiftly and silently.

It isn’t long before I get sight of him again, and I let him see me as I rush toward him. He’s not an athlete, and he’s already sweating and white-faced. He turns and runs full-tilt away from me.

As he does, he comes to a small hill, and in the slick mud of the late night’s fog, he slips.

I watch him tumble down the hill after a few frantic tries at getting his balance back. I hear a howl of pain as he twists his ankle on the way down, and he rolls through mud and dew before coming to a stop under a statue of the Virgin Mary.

I stand over the hill, glowering down at him as he pushes himself up and glares back at me. His gun isn’t far from him, but he can see mine as plain as day. If he has any sense left in him, he won’t reach for his.

After what I’ve seen of him, though, I won’t put it past him.

“What the fuck is this about?” he snarls up at me.

“I know everything about you, Blake Brighton,” I say, taking a few slow steps toward him. “But I want a confession from you. I want to hear what makes your heart so cold that you killed your own sister, a woman who’d done nothing in your life.”

“Nothing but get in the way!” he shouted, but his voice cracked into a thin squeak. “Is that what you want to hear, you fucking psychopath? I’m the one who grew up with Father, I’m the one who deserves this!”

“Your father wants to give her everything,” I say, taking another step. “Why do you think that is?”

“I don’t fucking care what that senile old ass is thinking,” he spits.

“He probably thinks that you’re a monster!”

Those weren’t my words.

Both Blake and I look right, along the base of the hill.

Eva steps out from behind one of the tombstones, a gun in her hand aimed at Blake.

“What the fuck?!” Blake gasps, trying to push himself further away but only backing into the statue. “You—you’re supposed to be dead!”

“He locked me away, Blake!” she shouts, holding her gun tight, a furious look in her eyes. “Your hitman just... just took me! I had a life, and you just took it away from me for... for just being there!”

His face twists into a sneer, like a bratty child’s. “That’s the whole problem! Father saw you and decided he liked you more, for no reason! But you can’t prove anything, anyway.”

I pull out a copy of the thumb drive full of the evidence I’ve collected and photographed over the past few days and hold it up with a smile.

“If we didn’t have evidence, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. You should have invested in better security at the offices.”

His face turns red.

“This is exactly what I mean. I could tell from the moment I saw you that you were always going to be this bitch who got in the way of everything I’ve had going for so long! You and Father have no idea how to make it in the real world. I’m the one who made the connections I had to, and I’m the one who called the hard shots.”

“People like you are the great evils in the world,” I say in a dark tone. “You’re no better than that hitman of yours, preying on vulnerable people because you have the power and can make a quick buck from it.”

“You want to be the bigger man, Blake?” Eva says, scrunching her face up and holding back so, so much anger. “Come in with us. I’m going to take you to court for everything you did. For what you did to me, what you tried to do to our father, for every other person you’ve screwed over.”

Blake is breathing heavily, glaring daggers at Eva. For a moment, I could swear I see his face softening. He clenches his fist and relaxes it again, then looks to the ground before him.

In the blink of an eye, he jumps for his gun.

Eva stands back and aims at him as he picks it up and swings the barrel toward her.

There’s a gunshot.

The next instant, blood is splattered across the Virgin Mary’s plinth as Blake slumps to the ground, a hole from my bullet in his head.

I lower my gun and look over to Eva, who stares at the scene with wide, shocked eyes.

Immediately, I make my way over to her and take her in my arms as she lets hers fall to her sides, stunned at everything.

“He’s…”

“He was going to shoot you, Eva,” I say, and Eva hugs me, but I don’t feel the shudder of sobbing in my arms like I expected. I look at her face, and there are tears there, but she hardens her face and nods, looking at Blake’s body again.

“No, you’re right,” she says, her voice soft but firm. She’s got far, far more mettle under the surface that’s only just starting to come out. “If anyone caught up in all this deserved it... it was him.”

I smile down at her, and she looks up at me with shining eyes that soon give way to a smile of her own. She sniffs and wipes a tear from her eye.

“Is it... does this mean it’s over?”

“He’s gone, Eva,” I say, squeezing her softly, “he can’t hurt anyone again. He was at the head of all this. We have so much evidence against him at this point that there will be no question that we acted in self-defense.” I brush a lock of hair out of her face. “Don’t trouble yourself with that, though. Not yet.”

She nods, fighting to hold back tears as she hugs me one more time. Even in the darkness and gloom of the graveyard, with her right there by me... I feel at peace.

The next moment, it shatters.

A buzzing comes from Blake’s body.

We both look over and see a cell phone half-hanging out of Blake’s pocket, lighting up as it receives a call. We exchange a glance before I walk over to it and pick it up.

“It’s the hospital,” I say, and Eva looks over to me with a concerned look on her face. I hesitate, then answer the phone.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Mr. Brighton? We need you to come down to the hospital immediately to see your father.”

My face goes ashen, and I look to Eva, and I watch just as much dread wash over her as well.

I close the phone.

“We have to go to the hospital. Now.”