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“Then I won’t take it from you.” He hands the loaded weapon to me butt first. “We haven’t been properly introduced. Rafe Gallo.”
I shake his hand, his grip firm, and find callouses I don’t expect. “Dominic Barese.”
Rafe gives my hand a hard squeeze. “Thank you for the assistance, my friend. I have four jobs going, it seems. Would you like one?”
I snort, slipping the gun back into its holster, its familiar weight a comfort at my back. “I’ll do the job.”
“Which?”
“All of them.”
Chapter One
Hollow Soul
Dom
The worn rubber soles of my boots make no sound as I creep around the back of the building behind the Rhode Island docks. Clammy air sticks to my skin, but this is usually a place I monitor business meetings from, and I should be used to the scent of sin-tainted salt.
But tonight feels different.
Holding my matching mirrored American Joe pistols at my sides, I jerk my head to the right. The softest crunch of gravel, so light the faint sounds of the working docks at night nearly wash it away. The movement tells me my best friend and my boss, Rafael Gallo, follows my directions.
As the head of his own mafia empire, it’s not my place to expect him to follow my orders. But he understands how critical tonight’s job is to me, and I know he has my back.
Not for all the times I’ve protected him, taking a bullet on his behalf—twice—but because he is closer to me than my own family. There is little enough of that left.
I shake my head, willing my melancholy back. I will have enough time to wallow once this is over. Once we get the girls out.
I glance back over my shoulder, but he has already turned the corner of the large warehouse we plan to infiltrate. I follow him, not watching the direction I should, and run smack into a slab of muscle that should be on the professional wrestling circuit.
I looked up and up—and at six foot four inches and built like a brick shithouse myself, that’s a massive task.
“Hey,” I greet the man jovially like I belong right where I stand. “Didn’t see you there, Bob.”
The behemoth’s eyes narrow, his unibrow as dark as his face. “What did you call me?” His Serbian accent mangles his sounds.
I raise an eyebrow, searching my head for Russian names, and come up blank. “Jerry?” I take a step back, keeping my hands loose at my sides. My thumbs touch the backs of my guns. “Sebastian?” I try again.
The behemoth’s mouth opens again, and never closes.
The percussion wave of the silenced gun that goes off beside my ear leaves my brain spinning, and gives the giant before me a new hole to breathe out of, at the back of his head. Not that he’ll ever use it.
Rafe shoves me forward, his fist digging between my shoulder blades as I step over the body, noting the gun he lowers as he focuses on the door to our left.
“Stop fucking playing around. You wanted to do this job. So do it.”
“Yes, sir.” I sketch a one-finger salute at his back, and as if by mind-reading, Rafe returns my salutations over his shoulder.
I snort and stride after him. Rafe’s fingers are on the door’s handle, but when it fails to turn, he rams it with his shoulder, never stopping in his stride. So much for a covert mission, and a little element of surprise.
I shake my head as he runs out of bullets in the silencer, aiming at whoever is the unfortunate asshole behind door number one, and pulls out his other guns.
We’re both packing to God but the remainder of our team haven’t even come in through the front entrance yet.
I follow him through the door, taking a low stance at his side, and eliminate every target I see in a clean sweep of the room, missing only a few bodies.
“Four behind the table on your left. One upstairs. Watch him. Think he might have been a sniper in another life.”
