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He caught sight of Blake Rathbone trying to look inconspicuous beside a coffee cart.
“Twat,” Caelan scoffed, laughing. Good that he’d taken the bait and had come to Venice, though—as planned.
Then, as he surveyed further, he saw the familiar face of Drake Barnett. Notorious gun for hire. He stood in the dark shadows of a closed-down bar with a hand half buried inside his coat. Almost invisible in a dark trench, nothing about him screamed, “Look at me.” Which, ironically, had made someone like Caelan look at him.
Caelan fired a warning shot a couple of inches from Drake’s head. Convenient that the shots would be absorbed into the thick brickwork behind Drake and unheard by anyone else. That noise would scare him however as it reverberated around the dark, enclosed, echoey space he occupied. Even scum like him could be terrified into submission, the human survival instinct strong in even the toughest of bastards. So, he put another bullet into the slats right between Drake’s legs. Drake hopped on his feet, eyes darting around—and when he looked up, Caelan fired another shot that left a nick on the top of his crewcut-head.
Drake flipped him the bird then ran off. It had been a risk and Drake had known it. Whether he’d have actually made the kill with all these people around, who knew? He’d certainly not have managed it with Caelan in the city too, that was for sure.
Caelan swapped back to his binoculars and watched as Flora stepped onto a boat with a bunch of other people. Relief. Pure relief. She’d be safe now. He moved back to where Blake Rathbone hid and found the man scanning the area he was hiding in.
Good, Caelan was ready for Rathbone to follow him instead.
***
After Caelan had dealt with Rathbone, both of them having fed one another a pack of lies—Caelan that he was going to take Flora and fuck her up; Blake that he didn’t know exactly who’d killed his uncle, Jimmy—Caelan walked out into a typically grey Venice evening and reached the spot he and Hamish had pre-agreed on. A dive bar providing a little bit of privacy in the back.
“What a treat we have here, then,” said Hamish, in his slightly more cosmopolitan Scottish accent, as Caelan announced his arrival with the cluck of his tongue.
Caelan grinned wildly at the sight of Drake tied to a steel chair, his wrists and feet bound by rope, tape over his mouth, and Hamish’s club of hand holding his forehead so tight, it looked like his neck might snap at any moment.
“Aye, something told me this wee scrote might be the one she’d send. Dead meat. Since she knew it’d be impossible to get past me.”
Caelan had refused Sherry’s order to kill the stepdaughter who stood to inherit a big sum of money from Blake—while all she’d get was more debt, more grief and more trouble. The woman was desperate. She’d tried to blackmail her own son, saying she’d go to the police about how he’d killed his own father. Caelan had called her bluff—said if she went and told the cops, she’d also have to admit to having lived the past thirty years of her life under a false name.
She said she would do it, however. If it got to the point where she had nothing left to lose, she would do it, she’d claimed. Caelan had told her to do her worst, while secretly fearing how people would view him if it ever got out.
Caelan sat on another metal chair, sitting on it reverse-ways with his hands resting on the top of the back. He grinned at Drake like he didn’t give one shiny shite.
“I thought my friend here, Hamish would enjoy you, hence why I had him trail you earlier.”
“Yeah,” snapped Hamish at Drake’s ear. “You know of me? You must do.”
Drake shuddered with fear. From the smell in the room, the man had already wet himself earlier.
Caelan gave an arrogant laugh. “We’re gonna take off the tape and you’re gonna tell us concisely, no details spared, exactly what instructions Mrs Rathbone gave ye.”
Drake nodded.
“Remember, I ken exactly what sort of lowlife piece of shite ye are, pal. The sort who once killed one of our friends. And, someone willing to kill that beautiful woman who doesna deserve death at the hands of Sherry, yeself, or anyone else for that matter.”
Drake trembled with more fear and loathing.
Nearly always the case.
Most of them were fucking cowards.
Desperate for a payday.
Weak as they come, beneath.
When Caelan pulled a pair of pliers from his pocket, he said to Drake, “You’re gonna tell us the truth, are ye nae?”
Drake nodded slowly, eyes like coals. Caelan nodded for Hamish to remove the tape.
He and Hamish shared a look. No, they weren’t going to allow Drake to live after he’d confessed.
Drake seemed to register this because he smiled grimly, stuck his tongue in his cheek, then chewed on something.
