Chapter 15 Skye
SKYE
I took in the guy tied to the chair. He had seen better days, that was for sure.
He sat slumped, watching Luca and me from his one good eye, the other nearly swollen shut.
His mousy brown hair was matted to his head, and dried blood covered his lower lip.
He was wearing black cargo pants and a long-sleeved black shirt with a tear in the shoulder.
There was an air about him that screamed professional.
He was quiet and alert. He wasn’t begging or screaming or pleading with us for his life.
In fact, the guards Leo had had on him all night had reported that he had never said a word to them.
He seemed resigned to his fate but not scared, like somewhere deep down he understood that this was always where he’d end up.
Neither Luca nor I had said anything since we’d walked in. We were waiting to see if he’d break first. Luca leaned against the wall near the door. He looked like he wasn’t paying attention as he scrolled his phone, but he didn’t miss a thing.
I sat in a plastic chair directly in front of our captive, posture casual and relaxed, and waited.
Finally, he sighed. “Listen, I know how this goes. Someone was going to end up dead before this job was up, and it looks like this time, it’s me.” He tried to shrug, but with the way his arms were tied behind his back, he couldn’t and ended up grimacing.
“Does that mean you’ll talk?” I tried not to sound disappointed. I was looking forward to a little light torture.
“Yeah. There’s not really any reason not to. It’s not like we owe those assholes anything. This was just a paycheck. Nothing personal.”
“We?” Luca asked, walking toward me.
“My brother and I.” I didn’t look at Luca, but I noticed the way his body stiffened a fraction. There weren’t many brother teams of hitmen for hire, so it drastically cut our list of who this guy was down.
“You’re hitmen?” I clarified.
“You could call us that.”
“And your brother. He was the one who killed Ramirez?”
He gave a short nod. “Yeah. The job was supposed to be fucking easy. Take out the old man and grab the kid. That’s it. You weren’t part of the picture at all. Fucking assholes.”
Luca clicked his tongue, considering. “That was why your brother backed off after killing Ramirez and didn’t go after the boy right away.”
“Mm-hmm. Our instructions did not cover fucking professionals. I told Andre to wait till we renegotiated. But the fucker always was too impatient and ended up taking a shot at y’all.
” He laughed humorlessly. “See where that got us?” Andre.
So, that meant this was Sven. Everyone knew about Sven and Andre.
They were willing to do jobs most weren’t.
Willing to get their hands dirty. They were high up on the FBI’s most wanted list, and the only reason they’d never gotten caught was because no one knew what they looked like.
At least till now. As far as I was aware, we were the first targets of theirs to ever survive.
“Who hired you?”
He scoffed. “You do know how this shit works, right? I didn’t meet the person or even speak to them. Everything was done electronically.”
I kicked at his foot, earning a glare. “Oh, c’mon, Sven.” His eyes widened in surprise before he schooled himself. He hadn’t realized he’d said Andre’s name, giving him away. “You may not have confirmation, but you must have your suspicions.”
“Yeah, but in this case, it could’ve fucking been anyone. Do you know the price on that kid’s head? There are more people who want him dead than don’t.”
“But you said you were hired to grab him. So whoever paid you didn’t want him dead,” I reminded.
“Yeah. Guess there’s someone out there that still thinks his skills are valuable enough to keep him alive.
Honestly, I have no fucking idea, and I don’t care.
There was no name on any of the contacts, and the money was wired from an offshore account.
I’m sure if you cared enough, you could try and trace it.
I only cared that it cleared.” That tracked from what we knew about the brothers.
As long as the money was good, they’d take the job.
“I wasn’t even supposed to get involved,” Sven added, “but then Andre fucked up and our contract changed.”
“That’s why you were following us?”
“Yeah. The price tag to grab the boy was good, but to kill Luca Castellano and Wesley Hayes? That would’ve set Andre and me up for life. We could’ve finally gotten the fuck outta here. Lived it up on an island till we died.” Sven grimaced. “Guess that was too good to be true.”
“Guess so,” I agreed. I didn’t think about my end too much, but times like these sometimes made me more introspective than usual.
The life we lived was dangerous. And even though I liked to believe we were on the side of right, we still straddled that line, leaving targets on our backs from both sides.
I’d love to die old and in my sleep, knowing I’d left the world a better place than it had been, but that dream wasn’t necessarily realistic.
There was as good a chance as any that I’d die like poor Sven here was about to, tied to a chair with a bullet between my eyes.
The thought was sobering, but I wouldn’t change a damn thing about my life, even with that risk.
“When you got the boy, where were you supposed to drop him off?” Luca asked. He had his arms crossed over his chest and his hip cocked, looking sexy as hell. I checked him out, licking my lips suggestively when he noticed.
“Don’t know. Never got that far. They’d have given us a location after we confirmed we had the kid.”
That tracked, and there really wasn’t any reason to lie. While Sven would likely protect his brother, he had no reason to hide whoever had hired him. At this point, he was probably hoping for an easy death, and he was earning it.
I glanced at Luca, silently asking him if he had anything else to ask. This was too easy. Boring, honestly. And I didn’t think we could get anything else of value from Sven.
“Where’s your brother now?”
“You know I ain’t telling you that. He might’ve driven me up the fucking wall and his stupidity signed my death warrant, but he’s still my brother.”
I waited for Luca to make his decision. Personally, as much as I wanted to get a little messy, I didn’t want to do it at the sake of him betraying his brother.
They might not have much in the way of morals, but I had to respect family loyalty.
I didn’t have any kind of relationship with my brother, but if he was in some kind of shit, I wouldn’t give him up, even if I hadn’t spoken to him for years.
And my real family? The chosen one that was always there for me, no matter what?
Yeah, there’d be nothing, fucking nothing, you could do to me that would make me betray them.
Luca seemed to agree because he smacked his lips together in frustration but nodded. “That’s fair. It might bite us in the ass, but if Andre comes for us, we’ll deal with it the way we dealt with this. At least we know one potential target. One more thing and then we’ll make this quick.”
Sven looked leery. “What?”
Luca walked over to the table in the corner and grabbed a phone. He held it in front of Sven’s face. “Give me the passcode. Seems like you were smart enough not to use facial recognition.”
Sven hesitated before sighing. “Fine. You won’t find Andre through that anyway. 742177.”
Finding whoever had hired them was a lot more important than locating Andre, and I was pretty sure the rest of us agreed. He was probably halfway out of the country by now anyway.
Luca typed it in, and sure enough his phone unlocked. “Thanks, man. Our guy could unlock it, but why give him extra work?” Luca looked at me. It was long and meaningful. A whole ass conversation without words. I knew what he was asking. What did we want to do with our hostage?
In most cases, a bullet to the brain was the obvious answer.
But Sven wasn’t who we were really after.
Yeah, he was a bad dude and should be behind bars or dead, but if we killed him now, where did that leave us?
With another target on our back if Andre decided to come and avenge his brother’s death.
Yes, they were killers, but it was fairly common knowledge in the underworld that they were in it for the money, not for the thrill.
Those were the fuckers you had to worry about.
Andre and Sven, they could be paid off to walk away.
The question was if that was the right call in this situation.
I gave Luca a slight nod. It relayed, It’s up to you. I’ll accept either decision.
Luca met my eyes once before turning to Sven. He crossed his arms. “How serious were you about retiring on some island?”
Sven blinked, obviously not expecting that. He had been fully resigned to death.
“Don’t bullshit with me, Castellano. Just kill me and end this.”
“I could. But then I’d have your brother after me, wouldn’t I?” Sven didn’t say a word. “Maybe not right away. He’d probably lie low for a while, especially after this fuckup. But memories are long, and I have enough targets on my back. Is your death worth another one?”
He sounded conversational, but he wasn’t expecting an answer and didn’t get one. Sven watched him suspiciously through his good eye, waiting for the trap.
“If I could get you and your brother set up somewhere away from all this shit, would you step away? Stop taking contracts?”
Sven pressed his lips together firmly. “And be in your debt for the rest of our lives?”
“No. Clean slate. You two leave. Stay the fuck out of our business and city, drink mai tais and spend the day in the sun. No contact from either side.”
“And I’m supposed to just trust this? Andre killed your friend.”
“I’m aware. Listen, I know I should kill you. I want to, if I’m being honest. But it’s risk over reward. Unless the rumors are all wrong, you’re not in it for the kills. Don’t get it twisted, I know you don’t mind, but you don’t need to kill, do you?”
Sven grunted. Answer enough.
“So stop. You claimed the two of you were ready to get out of this life. I’m offering that to you. You know I can make it happen. Leave. Take the money and run.”
“And if I do and we come back one day?”
Luca shrugged. “Then I’ll kill you both, and it won’t be the easy death you were being offered today.”
“Fuck. Yeah, okay. But I’m not indebted to you, Castellano. If you try, any deal is off. We worked fucking hard not to be tied to any organization. I’d rather die now than have that hanging over my head.”
Luca laughed. “Believe it or not, I don’t need a couple contract killers on my payroll.
I’ve got it covered. Don’t let me find out that you’re taking jobs and we’ll be golden.
I’ll get you that money, that one-way ticket out of this country, and then we’re done.
I’ll hopefully never have to hear your or Andre’s names again. ”
Sven’s shoulders heaved. I was sure he was still skeptical, but what other choice did he have? We were giving him a chance he probably didn’t deserve. He would be a dumbass not to take it, and he wasn’t.
“Deal.”