Fearless Sinner (Empire of Sinners #3)

Chapter 1

Cillian

Chapter One

Menacing clouds gather in the rich night sky, amplifying the tension in my soul.

The haunting moon beams down on my men and me, lighting us up as we rush toward the warehouse.

Tonight is the night.

Tonight, Lance Polinsky will die for killing my parents, and I will get my retribution.

They—my sweet Mam and my brave Da—will finally be able to rest in peace.

It’s bad enough that I never recovered their bodies. What remained of them was desecrated and lost to me. So I never had the option to bury them in the family plot in Ireland like the rest of the clan who’d gone before us.

I pray that tonight will offer some justice when I catch this bastard.

We reach the warehouse door, and I’m flanked on my right and left by my two best friends—Virgo and Dante.

They’re the best men I could have at my side. Without Virgo and his tech skills this moment wouldn’t be possible. Without Dante and his power and influence as the leader of the Creed I would never have had the backing and muscle to find this motherfucker.

Behind us stands an army of thirty of our finest men.

With our guns ready to fire, we burst through the large wooden doors. I feel like a hell beast as I use all my frustration to practically rip the doors open. Then we rush into the wide-open space filled with giant crates and heavy-duty machinery.

I’ve known about Lance Polinsky and his part in my parents' murder for the last six months. Not a minute has gone by since then that I haven’t looked for him.

The problem we ran into was the same as anyone else who’s looking for him and can’t find him.

Lance Polinsky is a faceless man. He’s a black-market dealer, but no one actually knows what he looks like. He’s referred to as a ghost in the underground, and the fucker only allows you to see his face if you’re working with him.

We only knew he was here tonight because Virgo was tipped off by a spy we’d been working with.

Lance is supposed to be in the office at the top of the stairs. Our intel told us that he came here to wait for a drug drop.

This warehouse, situated on the docks of New York Harbor, is perfect for such a drop. Except we’re here now. Not the Triad members Lance was expecting. We took care of them in the woods just outside Manhattan before we arrived.

Finally, we have the upper hand. I have the fucking upper hand. Lance has seemed to be one step ahead of me, but he’ll experience the shock of his life when he sees us. He can’t even try to escape because we have the warehouse surrounded.

Virgo, Dante and I take the stairs with five of our men. The rest spread out. There are supposed to be at least ten of Lance’s guards inside the building. I need them dead.

I lead the group to the office at the top of the stairs. Lucky for us, there is only one. The one we need.

I can almost taste the sweetness of revenge.

I’ve only had that taste in my mouth once. Death is always bad and always hard, but some deaths hit the heart harder than others.

The office door is ajar, so I rush ahead and smash it open as I thrust myself inside. But I stop short and my hands drop to my sides when my gaze lands on our spy hanging from the ceiling fan with his eyes gouged out.

There’s nothing else and no one else in the room besides him. And a note is taped to his chest.

While the men hang back, Virgo and Dante move closer and gaze at him, looking as enraged as I feel. Then they look at me and that rage turns into pity.

The two of them are similar in appearance with their dark blond hair, six-foot-six height, and military build. People often mistake them for twins. Right now, that pitiful expression displayed on their faces is a mirror image of the other.

How I hate to be pitied. I’m the head of the Irish mob. Pity shouldn’t even be in my vocabulary, whether I think it or say it.

They pity me because this is yet another failed attempt, and it seems like the worst one.

We’ve never had a note left by the enemy before. Or a dead body.

“The bastard knew we were coming.” I speak against the silence. “He fucking knew we were coming.”

“We only spoke to Johny five minutes ago,” Virgo says in his thick Russian accent. His tone reflects his disbelief at the situation as he stares up at Johny—our spy—hanging before us. “He confirmed Lance was here.”

“It was already too late then.” Dante’s voice and accent are lighter than Virgo’s, but he confirms what I was already thinking.

I realize that we’re the joke. We never even had a hope.

“He set us up.” I breathe out a ragged sigh and scan the empty office. No piece of paper in sight, and the file drawers are open and empty. “There’s nothing in here. He cleaned it out before he left.”

Tamping down my rage, I step forward and rip the note off Johny’s body.

It says:

You’ll never find me, Cillian O’Ridian. Stop looking for me. You don’t want to see what happens if you make me mad,

Your friend, L.P.

At the bottom of the note is a smiley face with two Xs for the eyes.

I hand the note to Virgo because he’s closest.

He seethes when he reads it then hands it to Dante.

“This was my best lead,” Virgo scoffs, balling a tight fist at his side.

“There has to be something else we can do,” I say.

Virgo and Dante exchange glances. Since we were kids, the two of them have always been closer with each other than with me.

I used to think that it was because they’re both Russian. Their parents also knew each other as kids and share that cultural connection. But then I realized it's more than that. They think the same way and could almost be the same person.

The expressions on their faces tell me they think we’ve reached the end of the line.

We’re not ordinary people. Virgo is a world-class hacker and Dante is one of the most skilled assassins anyone knows. For any of us to accept defeat means we tried everything, moved heaven and earth, and searched every corner of hell.

But I’m the guy who believes you just have to do it all again.

Try everything again, move heaven and earth again, and check those fucking corners of hell again. Because we missed something.

“Don’t you fucking dare pull the plug on me. I’m not giving up.” I grit my teeth and glare at them. “Lance left a note. That means I have him all riled up. We just need to go back to the drawing board.”

Dante nods, but it’s with reluctance. “Alright. We’ll go back to the drawing board.”

Virgo nods, too, but at least there’s compassion in his eyes. He’s been more like that with me since he married my sister and reestablished the old alliance between our families.

“We’ll start with finding out how Lance knew about our spy,” he suggests, cracking his tattooed knuckles. “That might give us a lead.”

“Okay. Maybe we check the surveillance here to see who was around.”

“Good idea,” Dante says, keeping his gaze on me. “While we do that, I’ll get the men to look around the warehouse.”

“Thanks.” I lift my chin with determination. “I have to find this guy. I have to find him. After what he did to my family, I can’t stop looking for him.”

“We know.” Virgo rests a hand on my shoulder. “Come on.”

We leave the room.

My heart is so heavy it feels like boulders are lodged together in my chest, pulling me under.

It wouldn’t matter if I had the entire world inside me dragging me to hell. I must keep going.

Failure is not an option.

The next morning I sit in my office at O’Ridians PLC, the bank I inherited from my father.

I’m so furious I want to tear off my skin and rip the earth apart.

After hours of searching through the surveillance, we found the leak.

It’s a guy called Harlan Jacobs, who works for my shipping company on the other side of the docks.

We picked him up walking through the building two hours before we arrived.

Since the prick has no connection to the warehouse whatsoever, and it’s situated several miles away from my shipping company, there was no reason for him to be there. Other than to report to Lance.

I figured out that Lance must have hired Harlan to spy on me. The fact that Harlan isn’t answering his phone, didn’t show for work this morning, and is nowhere to be found confirms my suspicions.

The surveillance footage showed Harlan speaking to a few people at the warehouse, any of whom could have been Lance. But, surprise, surprise, there was no surveillance for the office Lance was supposed to be in. The cameras that covered that area were turned off.

Everything is screwing with me and I feel like I’m back at fucking square one. Again.

I throw my fist down on the desk, making the stack of paperwork jump. What pisses me off more than anything is that a runt like Harlan was used against me.

Harlan is a motherfucker who joined the company while I was living in Ireland. He’d worked for me for three years. When I decided to return to the States after finding out about Lance, Harlan got close to me.

Or rather, I leaned more on him to take charge because of his experience, so I could focus on finding Lance. That was my first mistake. It’s people like him that your enemies use to fuck with you. I should know that better than most.

On top of that shit, Harlan owes me two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Because he’d proven to be so trustworthy and a good worker I loaned him and his wife the money to renovate a building to expand his family’s restaurant chain.

He’s obviously fucked me over with that, too. I never trust anyone, ever. But the fucked-up situation I’m stuck in blindsided me, turning me into a bitch.

A knock sounds on my already open door.

I lift my head and find Jaxon Bortsov standing at the threshold. We call him The Beast because of his long, unruly hair and Hulk-ish, barbarian appearance.

He’s the underboss of the Vysotsky Bratva, who are members of the Creed Council.

We’ve been working together for over a year. His family owns Bortsov Tech, one of the world’s largest heavy-duty arms companies. Due to the nature of our underground contacts, Jaxon was one of my first clients when I started up the shipping company. I wasn’t expecting to see him today.

“Hey.” He walks in. In his hand is an envelope. “Heard what happened last night.”

“It was a fucking shitshow.”

“Yeah. And it’s not over yet.” He holds up the envelope.

“What’s going on?”

“Harlan Jacobs. He’s a fucking conman. He stole my shipment last night.”

My back snaps straighter, as if someone shoved a steel rod up my spine. “What the hell are you saying to me?”

“My team just discovered that the weapons shipment that was picked up from headquarters never reached the docks. Harlan picked it up himself, like he always does.”

This isn’t happening. This isn’t fucking happening. “He seriously took the shipment?”

Jaxon nods and clenches his jaw. “Yes. He took fifty million dollars’ worth of weapons with new-age NASA technology that shouldn’t be in the hands of any old person. We also found this in my internal mail.” He opens the envelope and pulls out a piece of notepaper.

All it has on it is the taunting smiley face with the eyes crossed out and the initials L.P. beneath it.

“Lance Polinsky,” Jaxon fills in.

“Yeah.” Red flashes of fire blaze before my eyes. “That message wasn’t for you. It was for me. He’s basically trying to tell me that if I fuck with him, he will fuck with me. And he has.”

Jaxon releases a haggard sigh. “Then return the favor.”

“Believe me, I will,” I seethe. “I’ll get the weapons back one way or another. I have to find Harlan first.”

“I’ll join you. My father is livid about the missing shipment, and you know how he already feels about me.”

Jaxon and his father have a terrible relationship. One where his father dictates everything he does. Their relationship got worse after Jaxon’s older brother died. His brother was supposed to take over their company, but according to their law of succession it went to Jaxon, against his father’s wishes.

“Sorry this happened on my watch.”

“Let’s just focus on getting that motherfucker. I did some digging and it looks like he was in serious debt. He gambled away everything he and his wife owned. I found a quarter million dollars in expenses at a casino in Vegas last month and various other expenses. He cleaned out his bank account, his wife’s, and their business account.”

“You’re fucking kidding me.”

“I wish I were. It seems that Lance got him to work for him because of the debt. I don’t know yet, but it’s the only thing that makes sense for him to steal from people like us.”

Jaxon couldn’t be more right. Harlan knows who we are and that we’re part of the Creed.

The Creed is a council of twelve crime lords and their subordinates. Dante is the current leader.

There are four Bratva brotherhoods, two families from the Italian mafia, two clans each from the Camorra, Yakuza, and Irish mafia, of which myself and my uncle Seamus are part of. Each group has taken the blood oath to live by a set of laws and principles which have bound us for over fifty years.

We share power and wealth. But we also share vengeance. When you wrong one group, you wrong all.

A mere man like Harlan would have definitely been under some significant duress to fuck with us the way he has. But that will not excuse him. He’s already a dead man.

“I need to widen the search. Hopefully he’s still in New York.” I ball my hand into a fist.

“I did some checking myself. His wife had a heart attack last night and is in the hospital. I can’t imagine him leaving without seeing her.”

“Fuck. That explains why no one was home when we went there.”

“Her daughter arrived at the hospital this morning.” He pulls out a picture from the envelope and hands it to me.

I look at it and despite the turmoil crashing around in my head, I’m instantly drawn to the beauty that stares back at me. The stunning young woman with long brown hair and champagne-colored eyes.

She has a heart-shaped face with porn-star plump lips, and the sun-kissed skin on her elegant neck looks like cream.

She’s beautiful, but I’m surprised that just seeing a mere picture of her has managed to pull me away from my rage.

“What’s her name?”

“Chloe.” Jaxon’s amused tone suggests he’s caught on to my fascination. “Chloe Ricci.”

Ricci. She must be from Harlan’s wife’s first marriage. “Let’s go pay her a visit.”