Page 1 of Cruel Master

PROLOGUE

GAVEN

18 years old…

Snow sounded like fire embers when it was falling. Few people realized that. No, they wouldn’t ever realize that unless they shut the fuck up long enough and just listened to the sound of it. I supposed that, were I in different circumstances, I wouldn’t know something so trivial either. Still, it didn’t make the idiots of this world easier to deal with.

While everyone else was shopping for Christmas presents on this frost-covered December night, I was here—several miles outside of the city with little more than a thrifted, hole-infested winter coat that might have been quite nice several decades ago to keep the chill at bay. As if to punctuate my own inferiority to the rest of the world, my stomach rumbled with hunger.

“Fuck.” I rolled onto my back and closed my eyes, shutting out the dark covering of trees over my head. I shivered as the layer of snow beneath me soaked into my back.

I’d been out here for hours—dropped off long ago by the man I was currently working for. Or rather, I’d been dropped off by one of his henchmen. There was no way, after all, that a man as powerful as Jason Perelli was going to be seen with a wannabe hitman when I hadn’t even proven myself. For all he knew, I’d get caught after my first kill. To him, I was little more than a greedy cleaner wanting a better life, and he needed plausible deniability.

My stomach rumbled again and I settled a hand over my lower abdomen.

When was the last time I’d actually had something to eat and it hadn’t left me craving more?

Unlike most of the guys I worked around—I didn’t work out to stay in shape. I didn’t have to. Instead, I hauled boxes down by the bay during the day, and during the night, I was shipped around to various places in the city as a glorified janitor to clean up messy kills for the crime families in the area.

I wondered how many people in the city tonight went to bed with the comforting unknowing of all the evil and wicked things that lingered in this shit world. How many of them hadn’t seen the brain matter of a half-naked woman sprawled across an expensive ivory-marbled floor or had to get on their hands and knees and scrub out blood from the grit of the tile in some millionaire’s bathroom?

Most of them, I figured silently. Lucky fucking bastards.

Then again, if it hadn’t been for my one foster brother some years back, I likely never would’ve known myself. Too bad for Antonio, though. He’d died only a few months into what would also be my last foster home—gunned down outside of the theater because the stupid fucker had run his mouth about the great new job he’d gotten working for the Perelli man.

His loss though had been my gain and when Jason Perelli’s men had come around the next time, I’d lined up for the empty position. The money, however, was never enough. It never went far—clothes, food, rent. New York was a massive pile of leeches, sucking the life out of any man or woman that was miserable enough to get stuck here without a way out.

I opened my eyes at that thought and rolled back over, my thinly gloved finger finding the trigger as I settled back into my earlier position. This would be my out, I swore.

Blood. Murder. Havoc. War. It didn’t matter what I had to do. Someday, I would be one of those rich fuckers who called little shits like me to come and clean their messes. I didn’t care how many lives I had to take to feel some of that warmth. A fire on cold, dark nights like this.

Ultimately, this world was all about survival of the fittest, and I was going to be one of them.

As if thinking that conjured my target from the depths of the shadows, a car finally appeared along the edge of the property I’d been hunkered down in for the last half a day. Hours and hours, I’d fucking waited for this motherfucker, and now he was about to be mine.

The town car moved slowly up the snow-lined pathway towards the manor house at the end. I didn’t know who this guy was—that wasn’t part of my job. All I knew was that if I did this right, then Perelli wasn’t the only one who’d want my skills. Someone bigger and far scarier than him would. Raffaello Price. The head of the Price Family Syndicate. He’d already said as much during our single interaction.

My finger moved calmly over the trigger of the Remington 700 Sniper Chassis. A gift. A game changer. I don’t know what the man had seen in me the day he’d caught sight of me outside of Jason Perelli’s mansion. I’d only been there out of curiosity—hoping that maybe Perelli had an opening as a guard. More solid work. Even if I was just cannon fodder, I couldn’t take much more of living in a rat and roach-infested studio. I wasn’t just hungry—I was mad with starvation.

I wanted more. More money. More chances. More of a better fucking life than the one I’d been dealt. Maybe something in my expression had tipped him off, but as it stood, he’d made a deal with Perelli to give me an opportunity to take out a target that both of them wanted rid of. Then again, maybe for a change, I’d actually gotten lucky because it seemed to me that with the impending second child from his very pregnant wife, Raffaello had been kinder than any mafia man I’d met before him.

He’d given me this gun, silencer and all, and promised me that if I managed to pull this off, there would be more work for me in the future. Work that would take me out of the dark and push me into the blood-soaked light.

The car continued around the path, stopping as it neared the front of the building. My breath was harsh in my lungs, burning a path up my windpipe as the cold air seared the insides of my throat.

Inhale.

Exhale.

So close. Almost there.

My eyes landed on the back door as the driver stopped the car and got out, circling the vehicle until he got to the backside. A dark head of hair appeared, and then the man’s face was turned upward as he took a look at the darkened hull of the countryside mansion.

A supposed safe house that he had no clue was already compromised. It struck a desolate figure against the backdrop of black woods and white snow. I closed one eye and captured the man in my sight.

He didn’t know it yet, but he was the key to a better future for myself. One little bullet hole in his head would cost me nothing and him everything.

Everyone takes from someone else to give themselves more,Raffaello had said to me.Don’t think that we are any different. If you want something, take it. Fuck the rest.

---