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Chapter 1 - Adrienne
“You’ll be dead in two minutes.”
The man whose time of death I’d just pronounced unburied his face from a stripper’s cleavage and looked at me with eyes that screamed he thought I was either a nuisance or completely crazy. All of them looked at me that way, and they ended up dying without having to regret not taking me seriously…or maybe they regretted it in the second after the bullet hit their head, before their lives drained from them.
“Who the fuck are you, bitch?” he asked, his Russian accent thick. I could see the utter disgust in his eyes as the disco lights took turns flashing green, red, and blue on him.
“Me?” I gave him a smile because I thought it was only fair for a soon-to-be corpse to be surrounded by cheerful faces in his last moments. “Adrienne, but some call me Portatore di morte.” Bringer of death.
His dark eyes widened at me; their eyes always widened at me when the realization hit them. “Morte?”
“Some call me that too,” I inclined. I turned my wrist and stared at my black watch before returning my gaze to him. “You’ll be dead in thirty seconds.”
He pushed the stripper away from himself, causing her to crash into another clubber who had no idea their night was about to be ruined. “Devka!” he roared at the top of his voice as he flew to his feet at the speed of light. He was about to retrieve something from his pocket when a loud bang silenced the room and warm liquid splattered all over my face, then the thud of a body falling to the ground followed.
The club grew chaotic with screams and the stomping of desperate feet as they tried to flee what would have become a crime scene in a normal circumstance. But this was not a normal circumstance; it was a crime family war circumstance and the body on the floor would be nowhere to be found ten minutes from now.
I lowered my gaze to him, his dark eyes wide open as blood trickled from the bullet hole in his forehead. “Rest in peace.” I did not add a name because I never cared to know their names, all I needed was a picture of their faces. It somehow made the burden of taking so many lives—or at least, delivering the news of one’s death to them—easier.
And to be honest, none of the people I’d delivered their deaths to since I was fourteen were innocent. Most of them were traffickers, drug dealers, rapists, and murderers. They all deserved it in one way or another.
I wasn’t much different from them either.
I may have never killed a man myself, but I had as much blood on my hands as anyone else associated with the mafia.
This is the world I was born into, a world where the shedding of human blood was no different from slaughtering animals during Thanksgiving. A world where I was nothing but the bringer of death, seducer of men, and someday, a bargaining prospect for my papa, Dante Paolo. He was the bloodthirsty leader of the Italian crime family in New York, and I was his daughter in every way that mattered. His only daughter.
I took a bottle of whiskey off the round table beside this man’s lifeless body, poured myself a shot, and said a silent prayer for his soul. For my soul.
Another bang came from outside. I took my time to gulp my shot and enjoy the burning sensation it created as it trailed down my throat.
“Adrienne!” I heard Ricco, my father’s right-hand man, call out to me from a distance. There was urgency in his voice, and with the repeated screams and sound of gunshots outside, I presumed things were about to get messy. But then again, things were always messy in my world.
I poured myself another shot of whiskey and did a sign of the cross with one hand as I closed the man’s eyes with another hand before turning to the exit.
My eyes met with murderous piercing blue eyes that instantly froze my limbs, practically rendering me unable to move. I gasped. Andrei Levov was standing only twelve steps away from me, wearing a dark scowl on his face with both hands hidden away in the pocket of his suit, which I couldn’t quite make out the color of under the dim lighting of the now almost empty club room.
His height was intimidating from afar and I was certain he would tower over me if we stood close to each other. My eyes strayed to his chest for a second, and then to his shoulders. He was so well-built and muscular that it made me wonder if he was really forty-two.
And his face, there was no way I could forget it, the face of my family’s sworn enemy.
I hadn’t met him before, but my papa had several of his pictures in his office and he had appeared on the news several times for his famous whiskey brand—the one I drank three minutes ago being one of them. He was also famous for having the largest clubs in New York.
In other words, he was famously known as one of the richest businessmen in New York.
A laugh almost escaped my lips because only those of us born in this world knew Andrei Levov for who he really was; dark, evil, vile, and a bloodsucker. Not very different from my father, and I.
I’d known this was one of his clubs when I agreed to lead the job tonight—not that I had much choice anyway. Dancing in volcano lava was a better option than saying no to my papa, I’d learned that before I even learned how to walk. My papa’s brutal ego aside, I’d come here because I wanted to know if this Russian piece of shit was really as unkillable as they made him seem.
His eyes were still on me, scrutinizing me from a distance, as if he knew who I was and was being cautious. His gaze moved from my face to my breasts, then to every other part of my body. There was something fiery about his gaze that burned every part of me it landed on. I really felt like the better option would be to fuck him. Dammit! My attraction to older men was messing with my senses. I couldn’t risk it.
I pulled out my .45 from where it was strapped between my thighs, intentionally being sensual with the hope of distracting Andrei while keeping my gaze steady on him. He was one sneaky bastard; who knew what he’d do if I dared look away.
A wicked smirk found its way to my lips as I pulled the deadly metal from my thighs and raised it till it was pointed at Andrei. One of his guys came in just then; he removed his own gun and pointed it in my direction but dropped it back down when Andrei raised a dismissive hand.
Was he daring me? Was he thinking I wouldn’t have the balls to shoot him? What the fuck was he thinking? I cocked my gun to warn him, but that only had a negative effect as he started towards me.
My hand started quivering, my gun suddenly felt too heavy to carry. Cold blood rushed to my brain, and I could hear the drumming of my pulse in my ears with every step he took as he closed the distance between us.
