Dirty Hit (In the Spotlight)

Prologue

Dominic

Ialways notice the eyes first.

I don’t mean that in some poetic way people write about in books when they’re trying to make something ugly sound beautiful. I mean it in the most practical sense possible.

His eyes are green, bright, and frantic. They search mine for mercy; a sign that this is a mistake that can be undone. I give him nothing and watch the moment he realizes that. I watch the exact second hope drains out of him, and fear settles in its place.

Fear is loud, acceptance is quiet—the quiet always comes last.

“You don’t… have to do th…is,” he whispers as his hands try to grip my wrists, but I can feel him losing strength. The damage is done. This part is just the ending.

I tilt my head slightly, studying him. “You’re wrong,” I say, and my voice sounds almost conversational. “I do.”

I tighten my grip without thinking, thumbs braced along his jaw to keep his head steady. I don’t want him looking anywhere else. I don’t want his last sight to be the trees or the empty stretch of road at my back—I want him looking at me.

I’ve always believed that if I’m going to take something from someone, I owe them the respect of being present for it. I owe them that much honesty.

He starts to speak again, but whatever he means to say dissolves into a wet, broken exhale.

“Shhh,” I murmur. “It’ll pass.”

The wind moves through the trees behind us, carrying the scent of damp soil, metal, and the piss slipping down his jeans. My gloved hands are slick, but I don’t look down at them. I keep my eyes on his so I can see the exact moment the light leaves his eyes.

His fingers slide from my wrists and fall uselessly at his sides. The green in his eyes dulls; the light dimming in slow increments until it finally goes out.

I hold him a second longer than required, just to confirm it. I’ve learned patience and not to rush conclusions. When his weight shifts fully into me, limp and unresisting, I let him go, and he hits the floor with a heavy thud.

The sound echoes slightly in the space around us, but we’re far enough from the main road that no one hears it. The building is half-demolished, and I learned through my research that it’s scheduled for renovation, but the work keeps getting delayed.

I stand there for a moment, staring down at him. Blood from the stomach wound spreads beneath his body in an uneven pool, creeping across cracked concrete. It’s darker in this light, almost black.

This used to feel different.

I remember the first time I killed a person. How my heart slammed against my ribs so hard I thought it might crack them, how my hands trembled afterward.

Now, I’m standing over another body, and all I can think about is how quiet it is, how empty my chest feels, and how the silence presses in instead of exploding outward.

I look at my hands, flex my fingers, and watch the blood slipping from the latex. Someone’s lifeblood is on my palms, and it hits me with a strange kind of clarity that my own life feels just as dead as the corpse at my feet.

I step back, creating distance between us, and I try to search for something inside myself that reacts—guilt, satisfaction, regret. Anything. There’s nothing there but a dull awareness that this is done, and I need to move on to the next part.

“Fuck,” I mutter under my breath.

I crouch beside the body and wipe my hands on his jacket briefly before pulling off the gloves and stuffing them into a sealed bag in my backpack.

I work methodically, the way I always do, and strip him of any identifying marks.

Wallet. Phone. Watch. I pocket the phone and empty the wallet, separating cash from cards.

The cards I’ll dispose of later, but the cash goes into a different compartment.

I don’t take trophies or keep sentimental reminders.

That’s sloppy, and I am not fucking sloppy.

His face is slack now, unrecognizable from the panic it held minutes ago. I drag him a few feet to reposition him, careful about the blood trail. I remove and unfold the thick plastic sheeting from my backpack, lay it down in the corner, and roll him onto it.

The process is practiced and precise. There’s a rhythm to it.

I finish wrapping the body, securing it tight enough to prevent leakage but not so tight that it looks obvious from a distance. I step away from the mess before pulling a small burner phone from my pocket. I don’t store numbers in it; I memorize them. The line rings twice before someone answers.

“Yes.”

“It’s done,” I say, keeping my voice even. “Same location protocol.”

There’s a brief pause. I imagine him nodding on the other end, though I can’t see it. “Be there in ten, mate.”

The line clicks dead. I remove the battery from the phone immediately, snap the SIM card in half, and drop both pieces into separate pockets. Those will go into different trash bins, miles apart, before the night is over.

I kneel again and begin cleaning the surrounding area.

Hydrogen peroxide from a spray bottle. A cloth.

Careful attention to detail. I work in widening circles, eliminating evidence of struggle.

I double-check corners and check beneath my shoes.

Blood has a way of hiding in places you don’t expect. I’ve learned that the hard way.

I stand and strip off the outer layer I wore over my clothes, stuffing it into another bag. Now, I’m clean—dark jeans, black boots, a plain shirt, and a leather jacket. If someone passed me on the street, they’d see nothing unusual.

I slide the backpack onto my shoulders, making sure the weight is balanced. I take one last look around the room.

There’s no sign of what happened except for the wrapped body waiting in the corner.

I step outside into the cool night air. The sky is dark, the city lights faint in the distance. I walk toward my Ducati without rushing.

Why am I still doing this?

The question surfaces uninvited. I don’t like questions I can’t answer. I prefer certainty— structure, cause, and effect. This feels like a malfunction… But the question keeps repeating in my head, regardless.

I unzip a small compartment in my leather jacket and pull out another pair of gloves before I swing my leg over the bike and settle into the seat. The familiar weight of it beneath me grounds me more than anything that just happened inside that building.

For a moment, I don’t move. I stare straight ahead at the empty road stretching into darkness. My hands rest lightly on the handlebars. They’re clean now, no trace of what I held minutes ago.

Green eyes.

That’s what lingers. Not his name, not his voice. Just the color and the way they dulled in my grip.

I close my eyes briefly and inhale. “Wake up,” I murmur to myself. “You’re not dead.”

But it feels close enough to it.

I don’t know if I’m chasing the wrong thing or if I’ve already burned through everything that made this worth it. All I know is that tonight, holding another life in my hands, I felt closer to a corpse than he did.

And that scares me more than any sirens ever could.