Page 81 of The Mafia Assassin's Redemption
The trick’s old and also familiar. Shit like that doesn’t always make tracks invisible, but it muddies things plenty.
Christ. We’re no closer to an answer than we were before. This might be something new, someone deciding to try to start something between us and the Ricci family for their own gains, a leftover from that original hit and a coincidental attack on Salvatore.
Or maybe it’s someone out to get Harry…
I glance down. My friend on the floor’s managed to pull out his gun. I step on his hand. “I wouldn’t.”
And then I look at the gun.
Fuck me.
I kick him over onto his back and grab the gun as I lowermyself, kneeling on his chest, right above his throat for maximum discomfort and ease of death should I choose to go in that direction.
The gun’s military grade. Cutting edge, a sister to the one back at home.
“Where did you get this from?”
“Why? You can have it, it’s yours if you wa?—”
I kick him. “Where?”
He says something, but I don’t catch it.
I need to lean close to hear him. “Pawn shop… East Harlem.”
“Address?”
He rattles it off.
“Seamus?” I stand and pocket the card with the number on it. “I think we should go.”
It takes us about forty minutes to get to our destination. Seamus slants me a look as we get out of the car, eyeing the graffiti over the store that reads Beloved Used Goods. There’s paper on the windows, and across the street, two punks watch us with a little too much interest for my liking.
We were them once, though harder, probably meaner. But while they’re clearly armed, I don’t think they’re here for us, and leaving our driver means the car’s occupied.
I get it. We’re new, so we’re of interest. I walk with Seamus, leading him around the block, toward an alley between an apartment building and the store. There’s a back area for the dumpsters.
“Look at that,” I say when we stop in front of the store’s back door.
Deep inside, I can’t help feeling like I’m missing something.
My guilt, the old fiend that won’t ever leave,flares. If I’d have saved Harry’s entire family and done my job, killed the fucking mercenaries I had to leave behind, maybe…
I don’t know.
“Broken lock. Forced by the looks. You think Dec came here to get guns?” Seamus asks.
“He’s a lazy little bastard, but…” Nah, he’d see the place as shady.
The door opens, and with a stilted breath, we both creep inside.
Something’s wrong. I feel it in my bones. And I don’t like it at all.
The air’s permeated by a familiar sickly-sweet scent.
“You smell that, Torin?” Seamus says, using his phone’s flashlight to scout the place as we move from the back to the front. “This feels like a trap.”
I swing my light around and the plastic-wrapped bricks of cocaine on the dust-free glass counter get my attention, but that’s not what I’m looking for.
