Page 3 of Brutal Legacy

I let go of her wrist. “I’m afraid that’s not in the cards. I’m not what you’re looking for.”

“You’re a man, aren’t you?”

Debatable.

“Maybe so, but I don’t have the parts you want.”

She pouted for a moment and then leaned in. A last-ditch attempt to seduce me. Her hand landed on my crotch, and she squeezed me through my dress pants.

“You feel like you have everything I need.”

This time, I didn’t bother moving her hand. I simply dropped my mildly pleasant mask and let her see the man beneath. She stilled as my eyes drilled into hers, and she saw it all. The madness, the anger, the simmering violence only just contained. The monster without his man disguise.

She dropped her hand and stepped back.

“That isn’t the part I’m missing,signorina.”

“What is it then?” she asked, muted now. “What are you missing?”

I caught sight of my target leaving the bar ahead of me and stepped forward. My missing parts were far more vital than some appendage. My missing parts made me incapable of mercy, or gentleness… It had been that way for as long as I could remember.

Sinceher.

“A heart,” I told her curtly and stepped past her, intent on my target.

He was a De Sanctis made man. I’d also been a De Sanctis for the greater part of my life. Service to my capo and thefamiligiahad been my sole reason for living for the last decade. The family was rooted in Naples, though that grip was weakening gradually with the decline of Salvatore De Sanctis’ health. I lived in the second De Sanctis stronghold, New Jersey. My capo Renato, Salvatore’s nephew, was visiting Italy with his new wife, and where they went, I went. I was his shadow, his right hand, and his personal executioner.

Since I owed him my and my sister’s life, it was only fitting. One of the most satisfying parts of my job was rooting out corruption in the heart of the family. Death before disloyalty was a motto I lived by. I wasn’t a merciful man, but I conducted the bloody and violent business of beingsottocapoto a brutal Mafia as professionally as possible… But a traitor in thefamiligia? They got special attention.

I enjoyed delivering them the consequences of their actions, and I was so very good at it. I was a natural-born killer and couldnever be anything else. I’d lived in hell and brought the demons back with me. I might as well use them in service of my family.

I followed my target toward the back of the club. I had no worries about repercussions from the police. The Italian police were some of the most corrupt I’d ever met. I’d learned that lesson young. Let them chase their tails.

My mark had entered the men’s room. I stood outside and kept my face carefully angled away. I had a black baseball hat on and tinted glasses, as strange as it was to wear them in a dark club. Thankfully, enough Italians were fashion-conscious to get away with it as a normal outfit.

There wouldn’t be any cameras in the restrooms; it was against the law. There was a handyCleaning in Progresssign just around the corner from the bathroom. I waited a few moments before entering the room. I wanted my target to be midstream and not easily distracted. There was only one other man in there, and he took one look at me and left quickly. No, not everyone was a drunken idiot. He stepped around the cleaning sign I’d placed in the doorway and took off.

My target was using a urinal. I waited until he finished and started to zip up, then slipped a garrote from my pocket. With a flash of explosive power, I had the wire around his neck before he could even realize there was someone else in the room.

The man struggled, his hands clawing at my face, but he was too drunk, and I was too strong for him. I pulled him against my body, bending backward so his entire weight hung from the wire around his neck. The crack was satisfying and clean. I dropped him to the floor and removed the garrote, washing it carefully in the sink. The whole thing had taken seconds, and there was always time to clean up your instruments. That was only oneof the habits ingrained in me by my long years in the military. Precision. Clarity. Focus. I glanced in the mirror and wiped a streak of blood from my cheek. Emotionless. In that whirling storm inside, I lived in the silent eye.

Untouchable.

I left the club, careful to keep my head down. As I strode away, turning this way and that down the warren-like streets, I found myself in Scampia, a neighborhood nestled in the heart of Napoli. I could have walked the way with my eyes closed. I grew up in that very neighborhood. A few streets down on the right was the house where my mother died. A little over was the place where my sister was taken by the state, and my father was arrested in the street, facedown like a dog on a rainy day.

If I were a man who could feel, then this walk down memory lane might be depressing.

Luckily, I wasn’t.

I didn’t feel much of anything at all.

Just the way I liked it.

Spring storms rattledthe thin old windows of my hotel room, howling up the skinny cobbled streets of Naples. A summer storm.

It didn’t interrupt my routine. It didn’t matter where I was. At home in New Jersey, or doing work abroad for my capo, my routine was unchanged.

Even here, in the city of my birth, dark dreams chased me from sleep in the small hours. Especially here.

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