Chapter 3
Hollis
I question my choice of drink for the third time as I lower the glass from my lips. I don’t know if the bartender just has a heavy hand or if I’ve triggered some need for the man to try and get me drunk with a single whiskey and Coke.
Monterrey, Mexico looks gorgeous in travel photos, the mountains a perfect backdrop for the modern-day mecca that it is, but people in the know are well aware of the things that hide in the shadows once the sun goes down.
The front of the bar I’m in is lit with neon signs, a warm welcome to anyone on the street, screaming in invitation.
Yet, the bathroom is the place for coke deals and blow jobs performed by hookers after their pimps are handed the money.
The back alley no doubt holds the silent secrets of at least one dead body that more than one person has stepped over without reporting.
It’s a very public place for such a private meeting, but the players up in the VIP section overlooking the people gyrating on the dance floor don’t seem at all concerned about their secrets being spilled. The people here know better than to listen, and the ones that don’t are educated very quickly.
I recognize the face tattoos of several of the guards scattered around the club.
The Cortez Cartel isn’t a group many would fuck with.
Not long ago, Cerberus, some motorcycle club out of New Mexico, took out two of the main men and a slew of their lackeys.
But like roaches, it didn’t take long for them to pop up again.
Rumor, according to the people dumb enough to repeat whispers, is that they’re involved in trafficking and drugs, but according to the email Angel sent, they aren’t my focus.
I pull up the email, knowing I look like any other asshole in here waiting for my international Tinder date to show up. I check the email again.
Apparently, I’m waiting for a group of douchebags to show up, Angel citing that I’ll know them when I see them. I should’ve called for clarification because our idea of a douchebag may be different. But then the atmosphere shifts.
I don’t immediately look toward the front door of the club, although I doubt my attention would be noticed, considering the way half the club looks in that direction. I wait for them to pass, taking note of the five men and one woman that walk toward the VIP area.
She’s got great legs, ones she no doubt spends a lot of time sticking in the air for the suited guy that has his hand low on her ass.
I dismiss her immediately. Angel doesn’t exactly take jobs from people that are morally upstanding citizens.
I’ve been sent here to observe and gather intel.
She’s not meant to be rescued, and with the way she’s holding her chin in the air, she’s quite fucking content to be exactly where she is.
With his back to me, I log the leader, the one who greets the man acting as a representative of the Cortez Cartel. Three men split off, no doubt bodyguards, while another man moves the woman to a spot several feet away.
I can no better understand what they’re saying than someone in the parking lot, but Angel told me of this particular meeting because it’s the jumping off point. From here, I’ll need to establish where this new group is staying and follow them.
It seems easy enough, a job not exactly like many of the others because it doesn’t involve rescuing anyone. It certainly doesn’t feel dangerous, warranting the five times the fee.
I’m feeling a little letdown as I watch, lifting my too-strong drink to my lips once again as the man takes a seat beside the cartel rep.
My blood runs cold. I’d recognize that too-tan, smug face anywhere.
I consider my escape options, running my eyes all over the club.
The front door would be the obvious choice, and probably the most dangerous.
There has to be at least one exit from the kitchen, and possibly another inside the manager’s office, because the head of the house will need a quick escape if any regulatory agency comes to ask questions.
Maybe Angel knows more about me than he ever lets on. Maybe that’s why he wanted to hand this job over to anyone but me. Maybe it isn’t the job, but what the job means to me, that makes it so fucking dangerous.
Alessio fucking Severino smiles as he smacks a scantily clad waitress on the ass before she has a chance to walk away with his drink order. I’ve imagined peeling that man’s face from his skull as he begs for mercy more times than I’m comfortable admitting.
Alessio Severino, heir to the Severino Mafia, is the one that got away with Ellie’s murder.
He’s been an aggravation nearly my entire life.
I’ve considered ridding the world of the man more than once, but he’s also a living reminder of why I do what I do. My father never stepped up to take care of the problem, letting the justice system set him free when the evidence that he was guilty was left on her, in her.
Knowing he’s still alive has always motivated me to work harder, faster, to take out more and more evil. I’ve never come this close to him. I’ve avoided Chicago since my mother divorced my dad and moved us away when I was ten.
I dart my eyes to the other man sitting with the woman Alessio was touching as they entered the club. Family resemblance tells me that it’s the younger Severino, Marcello.
I’ve avoided all news of the family, knowing that diving in too deep would put me on their doorstep, seeking vengeance one minute and in a body bag the next.
I know going after them would end with my death.
It’s not the fear of dying that has kept me away, but knowing I can still do some good in this world so long as I’m alive.
Angel’s warning is going to prove more truthful than I think he realized when he spoke it.
This will end with me six feet under because there’s no way I can face them and not seek the vengeance Ellie deserved.
Alessio killed her, and rather than getting justice, her father, Patrick, stuck his service weapon in his mouth.
My father, rather than getting retribution, drank himself to death, his own grave only a year old now.
Seventeen years ago, Alessio Severino signed his death warrant, and I imagine he had no idea he’d be signing mine with the same date when he did. I’m nothing to him. The man doesn’t know me. He definitely doesn’t fear me, but all that will change.
Walking up and putting a bullet in his head would be easy, but it doesn’t vindicate my own losses.
I had a loving father before Alessio picked Ellie.
I had a family, connections, and love. He killed all of that the night he decided it would be a fun way to spend two days when he offered Ellie Baker a ride home from school, only to spend the next forty-eight hours raping and torturing her before growing bored and slitting her throat.
I know all there is to find out about the Severino family.
I’ve spent countless hours poring over the limited information I can find online about them.
One could say I have a plan for their final destruction, but I’ve never set it in motion.
I know about their guards and Lucian, the current boss.
I know they have branches loyal to them, mostly through force and fear than actual allegiance.
I know government agents fear them enough to make them damn near untouchable, as evidenced by the district attorney’s office throwing out the case despite the piles of evidence they had.
I know that case was the last one to be written about, despite the trail of missing and dead people in Chicago related to them.
Their power, it seems, even extends to the media.
Even my mother wouldn’t speak their name after we moved.
My father only spoke it when drunk, but despite only seeing him a handful of times after my mother left him, I heard it enough to never be able to forget.
They protected me a lot as a child, and some days, I wished I didn’t know now what they knew then.
The crime was gruesome. The crime scene photos I scored from a crooked Chicago cop who needed money more than he had sense were even worse.
I’ve tortured myself with them for years, keeping a copy at my home back in Kansas.
I do my best to formulate a plan in the very limited time that I have. I want to cause the most damage, the most pain, to the Severino family before finally putting every one of them out of their misery.
I look at the girl and back to Alessio. He isn’t paying her any mind.
He doesn’t dart his eyes in her direction, the way I saw Liam do, the way I notice Angel does.
Losing her would probably be no more than a minor inconvenience.
He might be mad, but it would probably have more to do with having to waste time finding some other bitch to ride his cock.
Killing his men would give me better access to the brothers, but it wouldn’t really cause that much of an uproar other than the slap in the face of killing some of their men.
My eyes lock back on Marcello. He’s the target. Killing the youngest Severino will bring the most pain because their younger sister is a woman and doesn’t count for shit where the mob is concerned, other than being a token possession.
My hands tremble, anxious to get the party started, but I know my chances of reaching either Severino are slim with the muscle surrounding them. I’ll have to bide my time, something that was much easier to do with them hundreds of miles away in Chicago than it is with them both across the room.
It doesn’t stop the anger from growing as memories of what I had and what I lost because of them come to mind.
My father died, his skin as yellow as a flower in a puddle of his own piss last year, waiting for a liver transplant that would never happen, because he never got the courage to face the reality of losing his best friend and partner.
I refuse to think about my mother and what happened to all of us after leaving Chicago.
I’ve considered more than once that living with a sad alcoholic father was better than what we went through after, but I can’t focus on that right now.
Those losses make me think I can make my way through the crowd with my gun drawn and survive long enough to watch two pairs of Severino eyes widen the second before I put a bullet through their heads.
I think about the fallout, focusing on how many lives I’ll be saving just by these two brutal organizations being prevented from joining forces. Both the Severinos and the Cortez Cartel are brutal and murderous on their own. Together? The death toll surrounding them would skyrocket.
What I’m not is delusional. It can’t happen, therefore I have to wait, and it’s the longest wait of my life. I know I’ll probably die tonight, but I also know that it will be worth it. One final sacrifice in Ellie’s honor. It’s what she deserves.