Page 1 of The Mafia Enforcer's Temptation
ONE
seamus
Something isn’t right.
It’s too quiet, too still in all the wrong ways.
The party inside the Romanov mansion here in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, is going strong. The wedding celebration, a union of power between the Assisi family and the Romanovs, went off without a hitch.
Occasionally, music drifts over to where I haunt and skulk the grounds.
My brother Torin’s reports flow into my earpiece along with the occasional joke from our youngest brother, Declan. He’s with the rest of our crew waiting just outside the party, just in case. It always pays to be prepared.
The head of the Murphy clan, our eldest brother Callahan, is inside the party, prowling around the guests and probably chain-smoking, if I know him.
His interjections are few and far between.
We’re being paid to be here tonight. Some people might say that providing security is a bottom-feeder job, but we’re Irish and we don’t give a fuck about bullshit hierarchies. We care about empire building, making a shit ton of money, and creating strategic ties. Cal has plans he wants to move on, things that canexpand our power and establish deeper roots. Things that have nothing to do with what happens tonight.
The Murphy clan has no skin in this game. The Russian gunrunner Dec got us involved with a year ago recommended us for straight-up security.
But as I walk along the paths in the darkness, a weird sense of foreboding claws at my insides.
The pit of my stomach twists and coils. I can’t shake the feeling that I’m missing something, like?—
“Holy shit,” I mutter.
A bullet whizzes by me from behind and my attention, which catches a lone figure climbing from the second-floor window, diverts. I whip around, my heart lurching, then steadying because Christ knows I’ve fucking been in this position more times than I can count. I draw my gun, fast and smooth, and I shoot into the dark where the bullet came from.
I miss.
Whoever took the shot makes a leap at me.
I tackle him to the ground as he slams a fist into my side. He’s big, and he flips me onto my back. Perfect. I knee the fucker in the balls and grab his hair, giving him the Glasgow kiss and slamming my head into his. He grunts.
“Don’t fucking move,” I say. “I’m security?—”
The man doesn’t wait for me to finish. He slams a fist at my face, but I move and it hits the ground where I’m still lying because this fucker is goddamn heavy.
I grip my gun in my right hand, jam it into his chest, right at his heart, and pull the trigger.
He slumps on top of me, dead. With a low grunt, I push him off and quickly roll to the other side, squinting in the darkness, but nothing else moves. No one else is here.
“Is everything okay?” Torin asks, his voice flooding my ear.
“Just a hitch. Hike up the alert a little.” I frown, looking around, not forgetting the figure I saw. But before I move on that, I look around some more. If anyone else is here, then they don’t give a shit about shooting me.
Yet.
I pat down the dead guy, pull out my flashlight, and check his hands and wrists for any telltale tattoos. They could be anywhere, but there’s usually something easily visible. But I don’t see anything.
Declan’s voice crackles into my earpiece. “Sounded like three shots.”
“And one of us isn’t breathing anymore,” I say. “Guess who?”
“You need backup?” Torin asks.
Normally I’d say yes. But for one guy? No one else? Something the fuck is up. “Not yet, Tor.”
