Chapter 36
Gabriel
The cops only knew the Don was dead. The ones on our payroll gave me their condolences and left. The Feds didn’t, but they arrived hours after my father was zipped up in a bag and carried away, so we ignored their pounding at the door and their empty threats.
I had showered my father’s blood away. Drank more than I thought was possible. Smoked every cigarette and cigar I could find.
It was time to get to work.
The assassin’s body lay in front of me on the table—mangled and stiff. I didn’t recognize him. No tattoos. No markings. Just a face that meant nothing and everything.
His belongings were neatly arranged beside him: one handgun, a crumpled piece of paper with an address. No phone. No wallet. No name.
The folded body bag still sat unopened on the floor, waiting.
“No phone, no wallet. Just the note and the gun. That’s all he had on him,” Damien said.
“Have some men check every inch of the woods,” I replied. “He must’ve had a bag stashed. He came in light.”
“They’re already looking,” Damien muttered.
“Good.”
I turned to him. His eyes were red. Pupils like pinpricks. Jaw tight. Shoulders tense but sagging.
“What are you on?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he said, flat.
“Right. Well, don’t use ‘nothing’ for more than a week.”
“I won’t.”
Silence. Thick. Not heavy with grief—just compressed by it. Like it was sitting on the air itself.
I exhaled, slow.
“How’s Caroline? Isabelle?”
“Caroline blames herself—for leaving her window unlocked. Isabelle’s functional. That’s all I know.”
He slumped into the chair across from me and let his head tip back against the wall. A minute later, he was nodding off.
It was going to be on me.
Not just to clean this up.
To avenge my father.
To make whoever sent this man pay.
I looked back down at the corpse.
He wasn’t Italian. Wasn’t Russian. Just a plain-looking man.
It was professional.
I opened the note again.
Just an address.
Somewhere in the Upper East Side.
It was bait.
Or it was sloppy.
Either way—I was going.
But not yet.
I tucked the paper back beside the gun and stood. My neck cracked as I rolled it. The grief was still there, pressed behind my teeth, but it wasn’t sharp anymore.
It was just a dull fact I could keep at a distance, tucked away.
After the funeral, I would make use of it.