Page 8 of The Wages of Sin

The New York mob world had always been messy. Photos going back a hundred years recorded the bloody aftermath of a century of gangland justice—limp bodies sprawled across streets and alleyways, cars and walls splattered with blood and peppered with bullet holes.

Every now and again, the bosses felt they had no choice but to send a public warning. A wrong step by a rival family, an overly ambitious street soldier encroaching on another’s territory, a rat talking to the cops—that was all it took for someone to end up tomorrow’s front page news.

Street hits like that gave new blood an opportunity to prove their loyalty. Give a punk a gun, send him out on an ambush, and he’d come back a made man. Anyone could make an amateur hit like that.

But no one could do what I did.

Public spectacle had its place, but for every loud, brash, headline-making St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, there was a calm, quiet, surgical hit. The kind that was needed when the head of the family wanted to keep his business private. When he didn’t want any evidence left behind. The kind that left the cops and rival families scratching their heads.

That’s when the D’Angelo family called me, and with the debt of gratitude I owed them, I never said no.

Besides, I was very good at what I did.

Sometimes, it was a body with a broken neck found at the bottom of the stairs or an accidental drowning in a backyard pool. Sometimes, it was a home burglary gone wrong or a tragic suicide no one saw coming.

But more important than what was found at the scene was what wasn’t—bullet casings, fingerprints, hair strands, fabric fibers, footprints. No loud sounds for neighbors to overhear. No witnesses. No evidence.

Nothing to prove that New York’s own Angel of Death was ever there.

And when my work was done, I came home to the solitude of my apartment—the one place where I didn’t need to be vigilant, where there were no surprises.

Until today.

It wasn’t simply the new face at the door that surprised me. I always knew that was a possibility.

If anything, I’d been amused to see someone different. The women who usually cleaned my home every Tuesday were competent and efficient enough, but lately, they’d become a little too comfortable in their positions, as proved by Rose daring to question me earlier.

Besides, the new girl was at least fifteen years younger…and pretty.

Of course, that wasn’t the surprising part either.

The underworld was filled with beautiful women, many of whom would be considered hotter than the woman who’d just run out of my bedroom. Women with long legs and short skirts. Women with plumped-up lips and smokey bedroom eyes.

Those were the kind of women who flocked to my adoptive brothers. Any night we went out together would end with at least one or two of them wrapped around Gabriel’s arms and another on Matteo’s lap. It was like the poor creatures couldn’t help themselves.

Of course, there were always a few who looked my way, too.

The brave ones would curl their hair around their finger as they flashed their eyes my way. They looked at me the same way they’d watch a tiger in a cage, with equal parts fascination and fear.

The truly reckless ones, the ones who got off on brushing up against danger, did more than look. They’d rub their ass against me on the dance floor or trace their hand down my pant leg as I walked past.

Every now and again, I’d take one of those women up on the offer they were making with their bodies, taking them hard and fast in one of the club’s dark corners. But once they’d gotten their fill, they disappeared. They never ended the night hanging off me like they did with my brothers.

Gabriel liked to joke that “no woman likes curling up with icicle,” and he had a point.

My profession—my life—didn’t allow for shows of warmth or passion. Those things were weaknesses for men like me. Staying cold and methodical is what kept me alive and my brothers safe...and if that made everyone from innocent bystanders to the women at the club look at me as if I was more predatory animal than man, then so be it.

And in the end, that was what surprised me about this new girl. It wasn’t her simple beauty, glossy dark hair, or big, round brown eyes. It wasn’t her sweet heart-shaped face or those lush curves that looked deliciously soft.

It was the way she’d looked at me.

The way her pupils dilated with want instead of fear. The way her lips had parted on instinct. The way she’d grazed her teeth against them. The way she’d subconsciously leaned closer toward me instead of away the longer she stared.

She wasn’t some adrenaline junkie wanting a story to tell her friends about her adventure with a deadly animal. She was a woman looking at a man.

A man she was clearly very attracted to.

Screw all the fake lashes and pushup bras. The honest desire shining in the stranger’s eyes was the single sexiest thing I had ever seen.

---