23. Chapter 23
Chapter twenty-three
Emilio
E xploring the abandoned house had been cool. I could see why Luciana liked it - getting to peek into a life that hadn’t been seen in years. But a graveyard? Fuck. If ghosts existed, they would haunt my ass for all the horrible shit I did.
“Fine,” I said to Luciana. “Let’s go.”
I grasped her hand and guided her down the hillside, carefully choosing a path that would keep her steady and prevent any slips on the uneven terrain. We made our way towards the gravestones, while I paid careful attention to each step we took.
“This is awesome,” Luciana said, pulling out her camera. “Probably one of the best things I’ve seen while exploring.”
“Feels like we’re treading on someone else’s story,” I muttered, staring at the graves, some worn away to the point where the etchings were illegible.
I followed Luciana as she walked through the graveyard, her camera getting footage of all the people that had seemingly been forgotten.
As we ventured deeper into the graveyard, Luciana stumbled upon an ornate gravestone, distinct from the rest. The stone was in surprisingly good condition, and the etchings remained clear. It bore the inscription ‘Abigail Pearce 1802-1826’.
“This one is a lot nicer than the rest,” I noted.
“Yeah. Abigail probably comes out at night to clean it,” Luciana shot me an evil grin.
“Very funny, Ja-“ I started, but something interrupted me by brushing on the back of my neck. “What the fuck?!”
She walked up to me, cackling. Luciana wrapped her right arm around my neck and gently moved something off. “It was a leaf. Big bad Emilio, comes home covered in blood but can’t walk through a graveyard.”
I silenced her with a kiss, not wanting to hear any more of her teasing. She eagerly leaned into it, letting out a happy sigh as I deepened the kiss.
Luciana looked so hot in the moonlight. I needed to control myself, or I would end up lifting her against this gravestone and fucking her until she couldn’t stand, or the gravestone crumbled beneath us.
I reluctantly pulled away from her. “Let’s go home. You have enough footage to make ten videos.”
Finding out who had torched the warehouse had been a slow and laborious process. After much persuasion (two hours of me torturing him with a screwdriver) Alberto had finally given us a name. Jorge. All Alberto knew was that Jorge worked under the man who initiated the operation.
I had to give Alberto credit, though. Not many could withstand my methods for as long as he did. I could admit it was impressive.
It took us an embarrassingly long time to track down the correct Jorge after we were given the name. There were thousands in New York, and we couldn’t just kill who we thought it could be. It would attract unwanted attention.
We had finally tracked down the right man. There was intel he was hiding out in an old warehouse outside of NYC. So, Ettore, Vincenzo, Felix, Rocco and I had piled in a van and were on our way to have a little chat with him.
“You should have let me sit in the front,” Felix complained. “You know I get carsick.”
“If you throw up back there, you’ll be using your tongue to clean it,” I responded.
I had seen Felix murder a man and his family without batting an eye, but here he was complaining about a tummy ache.
“We’re almost there.” His twin brother, Rocco, was more understanding.
“Here we are,” I said, turning down a seemingly abandoned dirt road.
“Remember, Jorge is the one with the Virgin Mary tattooed on the side of his face,” Ettore said. “If you kill him, I will put a bullet in your femur.”
I had known Ettore long enough to know they were empty threats. He would never harm his own men - well, close friends - but had the tendency to threaten us when he was under pressure.
“I’m pretty sure the Virgin Mary was just getting some on the side,” Felix muttered.
Ettore’s body turned gracefully, his sharp movements like the swift turn of a predator. As he faced Felix, his piercing gaze could cut through steel and make even the boldest of men fall silent. The surrounding air seemed to still as Ettore’s presence demanded respect and silence.
As we rounded a bend, the abandoned warehouse came into view. It wasn’t just any warehouse; it was one of those old ones - built in the early 1900s - that were now strewn across the outskirts of the city like forgotten relics of a bygone era. Time and weather had not been kind to it. Its paint was stripped, revealing the raw, worn wood beneath. The windows were mostly smashed in, with jagged shards sticking out like menacing teeth.
Two men stood on guard at the front doors. Their eyes squinted as they spotted us, and their hands instinctively reached for their guns.
“The van is bulletproof,” I said. “But even that only holds for so long.”
Felix muttered how we should have done a stealth mission, but unfortunately, it wasn’t possible. There were no buildings or shrubbery to hide behind, and from my initial scoping of the area, I found bright flood lights that would come on at night, giving away anyone who may try to hide themselves.
We were out of the van before the men could determine if we were friend or foe. Felix and Rocco took them out in near perfect sync - it was fucking weird; it must be a twin thing. Rocco then quickly scaled the overhang and set up his sniper rifle, aiming it inside the warehouse as we stormed the building.
There was a lot of yelling and cussing in Spanish. From what I could tell, the number of men wasn’t unmanageable, but having to make sure I wasn’t killing the target made it harder. I had the focus on the person before I shot them.
I glanced at one man’s face. No Virgin Mary tattoo, just a shitty mouth full of gold teeth. I shot him through his right eye, and he crumpled to the ground. I found another man, with no Virgin Mary, but three dots tattooed under his eye. He received the same fate.
“Got him,” Vincenzo radioed from the other side of the warehouse.
“Good; stay with him. We’ll take care of the rest of these idiots,” Ettore’s voice crackled back.
The four of us took out the remaining men, the smell of gunpowder in the air as we continued our hunt. The warehouse, once a place of production, had turned into an arena of death. Gunshots echoed in the cavernous space and off the metal structures we were hiding behind.
The deafening gunfire and frantic shouting finally quieted, leaving a peaceful silence. I stood amongst the carnage of the warehouse, looking at the bloodstains and bodies that lay scattered across the floor. We had successfully eliminated every last man inside.
It was as per usual; we completed our mission with precision and skill. I walked to find the rest of my team, surveying the aftermath. As I saw the sheer number of bodies, a sense of accomplishment and relief washed over me, knowing that we had finished and were safe.
“Can’t believe I fucking got shot,” Vincenzo muttered, holding his upper left arm. “What am I, seventeen?”
I cackled at the memory. It had been our first ‘real’ job, and he had gotten shot twice in the arm. He hadn’t made the same mistake again - until now.
“You captured the flag, though,” Felix said.
“Yeah,” Vincenzo said, digging his boot into Jorge’s side.
With Jorge in our hands, it felt like we were inching closer and closer to discovering the mystery of who burned the warehouse and exacting our revenge.