AllFreeNovel
Share Us
1
CESARE
“Two minutes out!”Leonardo’s voice rang out over the radio, and I grinned. Freedom. That’s what was two minutes out and heading our way. Fucking freedom. Though others may call it an armored truck, it was far more than that to me.
Static crackled through the device in my hand, and then Matteo’s voice came through. “We’re ready.”
We sure as hell had better be.
The money inside that truck meant that we’d never have to work for anyone else again. Never be under someone else’s thumb. Never have to take orders from an asshole.
Ifthis worked.
Tamping down the adrenaline that spiked my system, I took up my position behind a cedar tree on the side of the road, the feel of cold metal on my fingertips. Across from me, barely visible in the dark, Matteo was already in his spot, his gaze on the timer in his grasp.
At times like these, I admired his nerves of steel. He knew the risks and the stakes, but I bet his pulse hadn’t risen at all. After five years in the Army, he was unshakable. Not that he’d ever been the type to lose his head. He was my cousin, and I’d known him for nearly all of my thirty-three years.
He wanted this just as much as I did. Like me, he wasn’t content to be a henchmen or mob boss’s lapdog. Who wanted to do all the dirty work and stick their neck out for their boss? And for what, shit pay? A pat on the back?
Both of those were fucking worthless. There was a much better way.
To earn respect, to carve out our place in the New York underworld, we didn’t have to go out and shoot someone in the head. All we had to do was to have enough money, enoughpower, to hire a pathetic jerk to do that for us. To use them for our own benefit. Then we’d be in charge.
Or, okay, I could admit it,I’dbe in charge. But Matteo and Leonardo were okay with that. It’s how it had always been. Unlike the losers we’d sometimes worked for, I wasn’t an asshole.
Usually.
We worked well together, and we each had our own role to play. This heist had taken a lot of planning. I spent the past three months going over every single detail with Matteo and Leonardo.
Matteo, with his military background, was in charge of weapons. He was also the best with strategy. Leonardo wasn’t much of a planner, but he could think outside the fucking box, or whatever you called it. He could think on his feet, too. We needed him to do that tonight or we could very well wind up dead. Or in jail. Both were equally shitty outcomes as far as I was concerned.
After months of preparation, we had the exact route the armored truck would take, all the way from Vegas to New York. Yesterday, at random times, I’d quizzed Matteo on where the truck was at that very moment. And every single time, he knew.
In the end, we’d come up with four sweet spots, where the truck was the most vulnerable, and a shit-ton of spots to stay away from. Crowded city centers and the interstate were just two of them. There would just be too many witnesses around, or too many complications. Pick the wrong spot, and instead of a big, fat reward, we’d get a prison sentence.
Fuck that shit.
Of course, there were a few issues along the way. First off, Leonardo practically got a boner whenever he heard the word “Vegas.” Running an illegal business in Sin City had been on his mind for God knew how long. He believed it was untouched territory. The funny thing was, he was right. There were few crews working in Las Vegas. The mob had stayed away from that part of the world for the past thirty years or so, for good reason.
Other people were running the show.
And by “other people,” I meant corporations. Giants who could pretty much buy the whole State of Nevada. Companies that could—and would—mobilize the entire police department if someone was stupid enough to mess with them. The mafia hadn’t dared do that in a long, long time.
But this truck was on our turf—and we were going to take full advantage of that fact.
I gripped my gun, my ears straining for the sound of an engine. Beams of moonlight were peeking through the trees, and all I could hear was some fucking bird, probably an owl. Matteo would probably know, but I wasn’t exactly nature boy. My place was in the city. Hopefully, I’d be returning to it with masses of cash.
A quick glance at my watch revealed it was ten past twelve. The armored truck was less than a mile away. We had seen it drive past this spot three times in the last three weeks, each time looking like a different food delivery truck. Any idiot who’d been in this business longer than a day could clearly see that it was an armored truck, but they’d continued with the lame-ass disguise.
The first time, it purportedly delivered pizza. The second time, it was a taco truck. That had amused Matteo because half the food items on the menu on the side of the truck were misspelled. The third time, they’d gone with Korean. None of us knew enough about that cuisine to know if it was spelled right or not.
It was fucking stupid of them to stick to one route, but it was good for us. A grim smile spread across my face as I heard the sound I’d been waiting for. The noise of the powerful diesel engine grew louder as the ground began to rumble.
“Showtime,” I muttered into the radio, abandoning the cover of the trees. I strode into the middle of the road, the truck’s headlights hitting my ski-mask covered head.
Though I couldn’t see the driver’s face yet, I heard the shift in the engine as he took his foot off the accelerator, probably reflexively. Right now, he was probably trying to decide if it was better to stop or run me over. I was prepared for both options but stood my ground.
The truck slowed, and I knew that the driver had seen the high-powered assault rifle I was aiming directly at him. I could see him through the scope now. Technically, Matteo was a better shot, but I had this asshole covered as surely as if he’d had a target drawn on his forehead. From the bead of sweat I could see through the scope, he knew it, too, and the large vehicle lurched to a halt.
