Chapter 1
MASSIMO
Now
Fear has a smell. It took me years to figure out what the particular odor was. It’s not to be confused with desperation or regret; maybe they have their own scents. Fear is something different.
From the little kid falling and scraping their knees, to the person about to go into surgery, fear has a particular smell .
. . and it’s one my life has made me intimately acquainted with.
The tap of my boots echoed through the old building.
It had been abandoned halfway through construction, leaving a hollow shell.
Exposed studs and rebar jutted out in places.
Handwritten measurements and notes in chalk and marker littered the walls and floors like drawings on cave walls in a forgotten place.
The vast open-plan rooms were exposed to the elements on all sides, and there were plenty of corners to hide in. A breeding ground for dark deeds.
I passed by a group of men standing around a fire in the bottom of a trash can.
They talked quietly, the Neapolitan dialect a lullaby to my ears after years far from home.
They went quiet as I passed them by. They might have noticed my clothes and weapons and fancied trying to take them from me, but I didn’t think they would.
They didn’t want to die tonight. There was only one person who was dying tonight, and he’d just scrambled up the stairs before me.
I followed slowly, letting him hear me coming.
Scraping sounds and a muttered curse came from ahead.
What my target didn’t know was that I’d herded him this way on purpose. After these stairs, he’d end up on the fourth floor—where there was no other way down but to jump.
I arrived at the top of the stairs just as that fact sank in for him.
Fabio spun around as I clapped in a loud, slow way that sent his shoulders inching up.
“Well done, Fabi, you found a quiet place for us to talk,” I said.
“What is it you want?” Fabio called urgently, backing up as far as he could before he got too close to the roughly hewn building edge, hovering over the drop to the gravel below.
“Well, you, silly . . . Why do you think I’ve been searching for you for so long?”
“I-I didn’t hurt her,” he spat out, his voice wavering.
I nodded, pulled black leather gloves from my back pocket, and slid them on.
I usually only used sterile gloves, given they were more flexible and I could forget they were there, but tonight was cold.
A harsh wind blew across the open sides of the building, and frost lay on the ground.
It was only a few days after the holidays, and winter crouched over us.
Even in the South, we couldn’t escape the cold.
“Didn’t you?” I asked him, and drew closer.
He shook his head. His face was a mess. I might have gone overboard.
It had been a while since I’d killed for anything other than a contract.
My nine-to-five might be careful and meticulous assassination, but it was a job like any other.
I didn’t torture or maim, or get carried away.
No, letting the beast inside play with its food was always a mistake. I couldn’t let the lines blur.
Tonight, however, was personal. Tonight I’d let it eat its fill.
“I-I loved her.”
He’d barely gotten the lie out before I grabbed him, hauling him to me and smashing my fist into his face, once, twice, three times, before I let him sag to the floor.
I exhaled my fury into the cold air and flexed my fists.
“You knocked her up and then had her sent away in case it looked bad for you to be screwing your employees. I already know all of that, Fabi, you can’t change our past.”
“Our past?” Fabi rolled over on the floor. His white hair was dark red now. It suited him. The man had lived far too long on borrowed time.
“Why do you even care about some random employee I fucked around with and knocked up anyway? I can pay you to stop this. I’m well-off. You need money? I can get it for you,” he babbled away.
I sighed heavily and crouched before him. “Fabi, Fabi, I’m richer than you can imagine. Your money is no good here. I just want your confession before I send you to the next life. Think of me as the reaper come to collect your soul, and repent before it’s too late.”
Grim humor filled me as Fabi shuddered and crossed his chest. There was nothing quite like dirty sinners who had lived a lawless life fearing divine retribution, as if their blood-soaked old souls still had a shot at heaven.
I was a sinner too, but I didn’t expect anything other than the inferno at the end of my days. I’d always been a realist.
The sight of Fabio crossing himself called to mind my next target.
A priest, no less. My job as a contract killer had taken me to all kinds of places, from palaces to gambling dens; diplomatic summits to boardrooms to holding cells; but never church.
How exciting to have something new to look forward to.
“You sent her to a hospital to have your bastard, and she never left. Your sentence is already written—that’s not up for discussion,” I told him, taking a knife from my belt. It was thin and delicate. The kind that chefs used to separate flesh from bone.
I twirled it expertly between my fingers, and Fabio stared at it, petrified.
“The only thing you’re dictating now with your silence is how long your end will take and how much it’ll hurt.”
Fabio wet his shiny, bloodstained lips. “She went crazy, you know. In the end, she was a danger to that baby. She thought she was talking to angels.”
“And who are you to say she wasn’t?” My anger kindled, and I lowered my knife to his hand. A few cuts later, I raised a flap of skin in the air on the tip of the knife and waved it. “Call her crazy again, and I’ll do your ball sack next.”
Fabio went white. He clutched his hand to his chest. “I don’t remember, I swear. It was so long ago.”
The anger growing in my chest went quiet for a moment.
“I need the name,” I insisted.
He nodded. “Fuck! You think if I knew I wouldn’t tell you?” He glanced around. “Santa something . . .”
“Where is it?” I demanded next.
“How should I know? I never went there,” he spluttered.
“Oh really? I supposed you really loved her, didn’t you?”
“Why do you want to find it anyway?” Fabi gasped out as I flipped my knife between my fingers expertly.
I shrugged. “Maybe I want to pay my respects. Put flowers on her grave,” I said, and then gave him a bloodthirsty grin. “Talk to the doctors in charge.”
He shook his head. “There are no graves. It’s gone, all of it. It burned down, and I’m sure they salted the earth after it. I can’t remember anything else about it except that.”
His words cut through my calm and sent black fury racing back along my veins. I hauled him to me just as his hand rose toward my face.
Dust hit my eyes, gritty and blinding. I dropped him to swipe at them, and he stumbled back.
I didn’t have time to throw out a hand or take a step forward before Fabio stumbled too far backward and disappeared from view.
I walked to the edge of the drop and stared down. He was already sprawled lifelessly on the cement below, his head cracked on the ground, dark-red juices peppered with bits spread all around. Just like watermelon seeds . . . but brains.
With a sigh, I straightened up and tucked my knife away. I took a cigarette from my coat pocket and lit up.
Finding Fabio had taken years, and now I was once again at a dead end. The hospital where she’d died had burned down? Why were there no records of it? No graveyard to visit, no explanations for the families?
None of it made sense.
I smoked, enjoying the quiet of the night, then stubbed out the cigarette and tucked it into my pocket. I hadn’t gotten to where I was by leaving my DNA at crime scenes.
“I care, Fabi, because men like you shouldn’t get to do whatever they want to the women they employed, and then stuff them away somewhere when they were inconvenient,” I murmured, finishing my conversation with the man who had destroyed my life.
“They had lives and families of their own before you ruined it all.”
I crouched and studied Fabi’s lifeless body. It had been too quick in the end.
“My mother deserved more from you, and from the world. And in her name, I’ll burn it all.” I spit down at his body. “See you in hell; keep it warm for me. I’ll see you soon.”
A shuffling sound pulled my attention to the stairs. A teen stood there. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen. Dirty and wrapped in rags. He stared at me with hungry eyes.
“You got a cigarette?” he asked in a rasp.
He’d seen it me with Fabio. I was sure of it, but he didn’t flinch when I walked toward him.
I never flinched in the face of death either; usually, quite the opposite.
I welcomed the final darkness with open arms. It was some cruel twist of fate that I’d never been caught for my crimes or killed in the line of duty—or the countless other times I’d put a target on my back.
Living was my punishment, and I had no idea when it would end.
I took my wallet and the cigarette pack out of my back pocket and slipped a fat roll of bills into the slim box.
“Here,” I called, and tossed it to him as I approached.
He caught it and held onto it like it was a life preserver in a stormy sea. He wouldn’t tell a soul the things he’d seen in the dark. Maybe by now he’d stopped even noticing them. We, the damned, were all so similar, really. A family you never wanted to belong to.
I passed him by and he didn’t say a word.
There was no time to stick around and read in the papers about the tragic death of local millionaire Fabio Carrozza. I had a job waiting for me, and I was behind schedule.
I flew first-class to Torino. The hands that only hours ago beat the shit out of someone were now being pampered with hot, lemon-scented towels and flutes of champagne.
I glanced around the cabin at the other people sitting in their little pods, their towers of wealth and power.
I’d bet good money my hands were no dirtier than the majority of them.
I landed and made my way into town to see an old friend.
Father Vittorio had joined the Church not long after we’d both left the Italian Special Forces a lifetime ago.
The Col Moschin changes a man. It had led Vittorio to God and me in the other direction.
It wasn’t the Col Moschin’s fault. I’d been hell-bound from birth.
I knocked on the door of the apartment situated in the back of the little chapel in downtown Torino.
After a moment, the door opened, and Vittorio was there. He looked up at me with his warm, round face. He’d always been small but strong. The kind of guy who could sneak in anywhere. He’d been a hell of a solider, but even I could admit, he was also a hell of a priest. The only one I’d ever trust.
“You made it,” he said, and smiled at me.
I nodded and stepped into the apartment. “Duty calls. I need to get over to that sanatorium or whatever it is tomorrow.”
Vittorio followed me down the hall. He had an electric fireplace on and a teapot with a cozy on it. His apartment was humble and heartfelt, and I relaxed for the first time in months when I sank into his overstuffed sofa.
“It’s a hospital, apparently, one that used to be very loosely affiliated with the Church, or so I’ve heard. You have to go there to reach him?” Vittorio asked.
“Mm-hmm, it looks that way. He has some kind of private security most of the time, which seems strange as hell for a man of the cloth, but perhaps it’s just delusions of grandeur.
Anyway, my brief is very specific. This mark needs to die in a particular place, and it pays extra. ” I grinned at Vittorio.
He tugged at his dog collar and glanced away.
“Come on, don’t be judgmental; you know who I am and what I do for work. If not me, then someone else would take that contract and the mark would still die.”
It was our well-worn argument. Vittorio worried for my immortal soul, while I argued that I needed to be practical about my talents and skills and find a job accordingly. I’d never been good at anything else.
“How did you get on in Napoli?” he asked, changing the subject.
I told him briefly of Fabio.
“So you killed him? That was no contract,” Vittorio reminded me.
I stared at him. “So? I wish he’d died slower for what he did to my mother, and me, and who knows how many other women before her.”
Vittorio nodded slowly. “I know, and believe me, I expect that he will be judged and his soul will be sorted accordingly, but the act damages your soul. You will be punished for taking justice into your own hands.”
“And by removing evil from the world, don’t I save someone?” I said with a sigh, sinking back into the couch and staring at the blue light of the electric fire. “If I save even one person from my mother’s fate, isn’t that worth my soul?” I eyed my friend. “Their soul isn’t worth less than mine.”
Vittorio sighed and shook his head. “My brother, you break my heart sometimes.”
“You’ll get over it. Now, what about these holy robes you promised me? I have an important part to play starting tomorrow . . . I need the right costume.”