CHAPTER ONE
RAVEN
Three years before the present day
Blood.
It’s everywhere.
Its warmth drips down my face and into my eyes until darkness swallows my vision.
Wiping my face on my shirt sleeve, I suppress a smirk.
Partly because the blood isn’t mine, and also because I’m just getting started.
I drag my gaze over the man dangling by his wrists from the ceiling of this abandoned warehouse, his bare feet narrowly grazing the blood-covered concrete.
Mildew clings to the damp air, mixing with the coppery scent of gore and sweat soaking through the fabric of his threadbare T-shirt, torn completely down the center.
Light filters through the bullet holes peppering the tin walls surrounding us, thin beams sliding across his defeated, low-hanging body.
His face is painted an adorable shade of red from my knuckles, and the barbed wire cinched tightly around his wrists, suspending him in place.
Not really my style, but it’s all I had to work with on such short notice.
I silence the part of me that wants to get this over with and focus on the reason why I’m here.
I don’t usually get my hands dirty like this.
I prefer to spend my time hidden in the shadows with my right eye locked behind the scope of a rifle, watching from a distance rather than standing up close and personal with my targets.
My work is usually much more calculated, quick, and a hell of a lot cleaner.
Enough that the world barely notices another soul has slipped from it.
But since Ezekiel King, my old boss’s carefully groomed protégé, took over as Don of the King crime family two years ago, my role within the organization has changed.
And so have the rules. Whether I like it or not, I am a sworn member.
I belong to the Outfit. Which means when they tell me to roll over…
I bare my throat like a damn lap dog and do it.
At only twenty-two, I’m the youngest silencer the outfit has ever seen, and I wasn’t handed the job for nothing. I earned it through one unwavering skill. Hunting my targets like vermin, moving through the darkest corners of their lives without leaving a single trace behind.
And I never miss.
When you spend your childhood fending for yourself, doing whatever it takes to survive, you become an expert at slipping through the cracks, ghosting past the dangers this world has to offer.
And for a nobody kid with nothing like me, danger was a fucking constant.
But honestly, I’m starting to enjoy it. Watching my prey squirm for a change, feeling their fear curl around me, especially when I’ve been searching for this asshole for almost two years.
There’s a dark satisfaction in knowing that finally, the hunter has the upper hand.
“Where is she?” I ask calmly, though I’m the exact opposite.
I move in closer, my boots scraping against the concrete with each step until there’s only a breath of space between my captive and me.
His body trembles as he squints through puffy eyelids, bloodied, bruised and on the verge of sealing shut.
“I told you everything I know,” he croaks, his insincere, sad excuse for eyes now locked onto mine.
“I don’t know who the fuck you’re talking about, now let me fuckin’ go!
” he shouts, before spitting blood onto the ground beneath him.
He’s lying and at this point, it doesn't matter. I already know the truth. My eyes flick to Ezekiel’s henchmen, Billy-John and Danny, leaning with their backs against the wall to my right, half amused, half bored out of their minds.
I raise an eyebrow, a silent signal, and they each give me a nod in response.
It’s done. Time to wrap things up. Because my captive likes games so much, I walk over to the wooden table in the center of the warehouse, taking in the selection of toys I now get to play with.
“You know what happens to liars like you, David?” I ask over my shoulder, gliding my gloved fingertips over the plethora of blades splayed out in a neat row until I’m hovering over my favorite one.
Wrapping my fingers around the KA-BAR knife, I turn back, slowly circling my target as he hangs limply, helplessly, his eyes glazing over when he sees the knife in my hand.
All signs of the fighter we dragged here earlier are long gone, replaced with a man who has finally accepted that he’s not leaving this building alive.
I examine his face, almost unrecognizable from the blood trickling from his shattered nose and busted lips, and lean in close enough for him to feel my breath on his skin.
He dares to flinch, irritated by my closeness, but shit like that only encourages me.
I give him one last opportunity to talk, despite already giving him more chances than anyone else who had ever been in his position.
If he had half a brain, he’d know he’s on borrowed time.
Every second he wastes, every stubborn twitch of denial only digs a deeper hole.
Cooperate, and maybe it might be over quickly.
Resist, and I’ll gut him like a fucking fish, slowly enough for him to see every last moment of it.
“I know you know who she is. I also know she paid you a visit two years ago, the last time you were both seen by anyone with a set of fucking eyes. I will ask you one more time, David. Where. Is. She?” My tone is sharp, emphasizing each word as I clench my fingers tighter around my knife.
When he offers nothing but silence, I drag the flat of my blade along his sternum, feeling it scrape through soft, yielding flesh.
I trace a line downward toward his navel, letting the sharpened tip slice through muscle with a wet, sickening resistance.
Pressing it beneath his ribcage, I push, watching the metal pierce tender tissue.
Blood wells along the jagged edge, spilling down his mangled torso and pooling onto the ground.
He roars, face paling, body jerking violently before his chin falls to his chest, mewling in pain and in terror.
He knew this was coming, yet his defiance only stretches the agony, and I savor every fucking second of it.
If he tells me what I want to know, he’s dead.
If he doesn’t tell me, he’s still dead, only he’ll die with a little pizazz for fucking me around all morning and wasting my goddamn time.
“I can’t,” he rasps, squeezing his eyes shut, hoping I don’t see the truth. As much as it pains me not to kill him right now, he’s the biggest lead I’ve had on this woman in ages. The word ‘can’t’ implies he knows far more than the nothing he’s offered up since this all started.
“Can’t, or won’t?” I hiss, teeth clenched, my gaze locking onto his with a promise of pain he hasn’t yet fucking earned.
“Both,” he mutters, blinking through tears and the crimson flooding his eyes.
I let the silence stretch between us, knowing that if I give him enough rope, pretty soon he’ll end up choking himself with it.
When he realizes that I’m not buying into his bullshit, he shifts, wincing as he uselessly tugs at his mangled wrists.
Even if he had one last ounce of fight left in him, he wouldn’t get far.
“I’ve heard about you, you know?” he rasps, voice scratchy from his endless wailing and the blood coating his split tongue.
Careful what you say next, old man, because one wrong word and I’ll tear that tongue from your mouth.
Still, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious.
Curious what he thinks he knows about me.
“You’re the Gravedigger,” he hisses. Well, isn’t this a small world?
His lips curl at the corners, smug as if he’s just unearthed a deep, dark secret of mine.
His head lolls, and a breathless, cracked chuckle escapes past the bloodied edges of his mouth.
“The twisted bastard son of a drunk who never amounted to anything. Just like his father!”
I snap, losing all my fucking patience. My knife finds his upper thigh, careful not to hit any arteries, though every fiber of me begs to carve him open fully.
“You fucking cunt!” he roars, jerking his arms against his restraints.
The barbed wire digs deeper, biting and tearing into his flesh, his blood dripping faster as he strains to break free.
I strike him hard across his cheek with the back of my gloved hand, causing his head to jerk sideways with a sharp crack.
The sound makes my chest hum with satisfaction.
I’ve been called many things in my time on this deplorable planet.
A soulless monster. The reaper. Shit, I’ll even answer to motherfucker.
But the thing that makes my blood boil faster than anything else?
Any comparison to my fucking low-life father.
Considering this asshole owns a jumped-up bar downtown, it makes perfect sense that he’s pieced together who my father is.
That old drunk probably spent every dirty penny he had there at one point, trying to forget the unbearable burden of having two mouths to feed.
I shrug, nodding to the guys like I didn’t just completely lose my shit a second ago.
Billy takes this moment to stride over to the table, lifting the laptop and opening it up to the surveillance footage that proves I know what the fuck I’m talking about, and that David here is a lying, scheming, pathetic prick.
Billy holds the device in front of David’s face.
He blinks a few times, squinting against the brightness as he’s forced to focus on the screen and watch his own lies unravel in real time.