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Chapter One
Jett
I walk around the ballroom, feeling out of my element. This isn’t my usual kind of job – with the bright chandelier glinting from the ceiling, the happy chatter of the party guests, the jazz band filling the cavernous room with their music from the corner – but it’s my last.
So I have to do it.
Then I’m done with this life.
I make sure to circulate and make small talk with the guests, using my false identity. These are all Wall Street types, and so that’s what I become. My name for the evening is Michael Chandler and I’m a trader of money, just like them.
I wonder how quickly their faces would change from friendly to terrified if I told them I usually trade in bullets and blood.
I don’t sip on the champagne which is stuck to all the guests’ hands. I just want to do my job and get out of here as quickly as possible, disappear from the East Coast forever, find somewhere quiet where I can forget about this life.
I search the men for any signs of depravity as I wander the room, pretending to take sips from my perpetually-full champagne glass. I’ve always drawn the line at killing anyone who doesn’t deserve a bullet between the eyes.
I take out the trash—the rapists, the killers, the scumbags.
I do it for a fee, so maybe that makes me no better than my quarry.
But fuck it. This is the life I’ve chosen.
I can lie to myself and say I was forced into it, but only weak men make excuses.
I end up in the far corner of the room, waiting for the burner cell to buzz from my inside pocket.
Usually, my contact – the contact, the man who runs all the high-level hits on the East Coast – will give me the details several days in advance so that I have a chance to prep. But this job is different.
Two days ago, he called me, using a voice changer like he – or she – always does.
“You’re going to attend a party,” I was informed. “You’re going to circulate, smile, be as friendly as a big bastard like you can be. At some point in the night, you’ll get a text with an image attached. That’s your target.”
“What did they do?” I ask, my usual question.
I have to be able to live with myself after all the gun smoke has drifted away.
But this time, my contact wouldn’t tell me.
“If you do this, you’re free and clear. We won’t hunt you. We won’t kill you. You’ll be a free man, Jett. So just do your goddamned job.”
“You wouldn’t talk to me like that if you were here,” I noted coldly.
The alien voice warbled as he laughed. “No, maybe not. But I’m not there, am I? So just do your job.”
I had to take a few long, deep breaths once the phone call was over, stilling the fire that flares constantly deep inside of me. There are caverns of violence within me, constantly firing, burning deep, my rage bubbling in a hellish boil just beneath the surface.
But tonight I’m Michael. I wear my most convincing face. I even try to smile.
The worst of the small talk comes from the women, draped in their glittering dresses, the bodies they’ve starved for the occasion shamelessly on display.
One of them – a tall redhead who might rock another man’s world, but does absolutely nothing for me – even hits on me in front of her husband. The man is short and balding and looks as if he’d crumble at a weak jab to the face, but that doesn’t excuse the behavior, the disloyalty.
A woman should be loyal to her man, just as a man should be willing to die for his woman.
“I guess you work out, hmm?” the redhead says, reaching forward as if she’s going to touch my arm.
I glance at her husband, waiting for him to do something, say something, but his cheeks just bloom the same color as his wife’s hair and he stares bitterly at the floor.
Disgusted, I make my excuses and continue my circulation of the room, like the blood pumping around a body.
Which one of these sorry bastards am I going to put in the dirt tonight?
I don’t like not knowing what he’s done. It niggles at the edge of my mind, telling me this is wrong. I need to find out if he deserves the punishment I’m going to dish out to him.
Another circuit of the room brings me close to the stage. The band is taking a short break, the soft background music being played from speakers dotted around the room now.
I’m already tired of being here and it’s only been forty-five minutes, my patience wearing wire-thin at the prospect of spending even another minute here.
These people are Olympic-grade shit talkers and it’s starting to piss me the hell off.
