CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE RYKER
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
RYKER
THEN
THREE MONTHS AGO
Idump the last of Graham into the hole I spent the last hour digging. This is the not-so-fun part of my job, but you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do when it comes to killing the scum of the earth.
“You’re a heavy motherfucker, you know that, G?”
He doesn’t respond…for obvious reasons, but I keep chatting anyway.
Graham Stepney deserves exactly zero of my sympathy, but if he did, I’d feel a little bad for how long his torture went on for.
I’ve been irritated ever since I got my next assignment, and he really dealt with the consequences of that.
But he killed and raped grieving widows and stole their money, so you know, he had it coming.
I only got through half the email before I threw my phone across the room and smashed it.
He’s benching me.
That’s the only explanation for why he would send me to watch some woman who works for a mafia family.
At first I thought I was being put in to keep an eye on the family as a whole, but nope, just the woman.
And it’s not that I resent having to keep someone safe, because that’s kinda why I do this at all, but that’s all I’ll be doing.
Bodyguard.
Fuck, I’m going to be so bored.
If I thought there was any chance of changing his mind, I’d ask for another assignment, but once the boss decides something, that’s what’s going to happen.
Ordinarily I respect that about him, but today I fucking loathe it.
I climb out of the hole and reach for the gasoline I dragged out here with the final parts of the body.
It’s not even like my killings have drawn any unwanted attention recently. Graham has been missing for close to a week, and no one has so much as filed a missing persons report.
There’s no reason for me to be sent to babysit some woman when my time is much better spent disposing of oxygen thieves.
Once I’ve poured the gas over the body, I fish out a packet of matches, light one, and throw it into the hole, watching with too much enjoyment as Graham catches alight.
He should get used to the heat because I hear it’s hot in hell.
Satisfied he’s burning and that the fire isn’t going to jump to the nearby trees, I fish out my replacement phone and get back to the email I’ve been ignoring, reading through the details I read earlier before moving on to the rest.
Camilla De Marco, the new queen of the De Marco mafia family, wants a guard on her housekeeper as the family navigates a series of leadership challenges from outside enemies. But that doesn’t explain why we have anything to do with this.
The security services we offer are very niche, and usually only extend to potential victims while we hunt down the perpetrators, but from what I can tell, this Chloe Weaver has more than enough access to security.
Which begs the question, why the hell are we involved at all?
There are some details about her fleeing another mafia family when she was a teenager, but they’re scarce at best. How she ended up in New York with the De Marcos is unclear, and either the boss doesn’t know or he doesn’t see fit to tell me.
The more I learn about this assignment, the less I like it.
“This is going to suck, Graham,” I tell the burning body, but once again he doesn’t reply.
Maybe the boss thinks I need some socialization with people who I’m not about to kill, and perhaps he has a point.