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It’s true that betrayal can spark to life a bone-deep hatred of someone. But love and hate aren’t natural opposites that cancel each other out. They can reside within the same heart. Bleed into each other. Become so tightly wound around each other that it becomes impossible to tell which is which.
Guess I won’t have the time to sort that mess out.
“Good night, Emily.” His deep, warm voice rumbles through me just before the crack of the hammer against the bullet.
Pain spears me through the chest and I go down to the floor. White-hot fire blazes from my ribs to my back and I futilely gasp for air.
He stands over me, looking at me the way I imagine he has with the dozens of others he’s killed. Then he lifts his arm and aims at my chest once again to deliver the finishing blow.
And he shoots.
1
NOAH
Four Months Ago…
Death.
It surrounds me. It’s in everything that I do. Eating. Breathing. Fucking.
I wield it like an extension of me, a scythe that forms another limb.
I’ve been given the power to take life. Trained to snuff it out on command.
Don’t ask. Don’t think. Don’t look into their eyes. Just do it.
Death surrounds me, and yet, until today, I’ve never seen the aftermath. What happens once the dying is done. I’m usually gone by then.
This time, I have nowhere to go. This time, I’m not the one who’s dealt the lethal blow, but the one who has to deal with what comes after.
A wail full of sorrow and despair fills my loft apartment as Sylvia, my stepmother, once again cries. She wraps her arms around her knees as she balls up on my couch. “How can I go on without him?”
She’s asked the same question a hundred times, maybe more, since we were informed yesterday morning that my father’s body had been found in an alley behind an abandoned bookshop near the Hudson River. He’d been missing for days, and were it not for the homeless man who was wandering the streets in search of a place to hunker down before the forecasted rain swept in, he’d still be missing.
I go to the kitchen and fill a teakettle with water, then place it on the stove. When it’s done, I steep chamomile leaves, then strain the tea and pour it into a small white cup. While I’m not one to enjoy anything but black and bitter coffee, she’s always insisted I keep this for when she visits. Today, I’m glad for it.
Sitting beside her, I give it to her. “Drink.”
She peers at me through wet dark lashes, hesitating only a moment before she takes it. After a few sips, she sniffles and turns to me. “Have you heard anything from the medical examiner?”
“Not yet.”
As if the power of my will conjures it, my phone buzzes. I tug it out of the back pocket of my slacks and view the screen. “I have to take this.”
Before I can get up, she grabs my wrist, her expression wild and desperate. “Promise me you’ll make them pay, Noah. Whoever took Leonardo from me needs to pay.”
I pat her shoulder. “We’ll figure out who did this. They will pay. I swear it.”
She nods and sniffles again, wiping her red, swollen nose with a tissue from the box I brought her earlier. “I know you will do it, sweet boy.”
Going to the stairwell that leads to the rooftop deck, I answer the call. “Yes.”
“Mr. Esposito. This is Carl Gunderson from the medical examiner’s office. I’m a friend of Joaquin Gianni,” he says, referring to my step-cousin.
But as head of thefamiglia, Joaquin doesn’t have many friends. He has people on his payroll, and Gunderson is one of them.
Actually, the asshole probably wouldn’t have any friends even if he was just a civilian.
