Chapter 1
Chapter One
QUENTIN
F or fuck’s sake.
The blaring of my alarm clock in my ear never failed to make me want to punch someone’s face. I’d been getting up at five o’clock in the morning for more than five years, and though my body was used to it by now, my mind still hadn’t gotten the memo.
I could easily sleep in and skip my morning workout, but then Larry or some douchey tech bro in the office would approach me and it would be game over. Being an intern at a large tech company made people approaching my cubicle to ask for dumb shit inevitable, but I tend to have a short fuse nowadays, and a bad temper.
My younger sister Leila always told me that I was one of the calmest, coolest guys she’d ever met. But now she’s six feet under and I’ve had a chip on my shoulder ever since she passed. Having one of the only people you care about brutally assaulted and murdered will do that to you.
What would she say if she saw me now?
Swiping a hand over my eyes, I stowed away thoughts of Leila lest they bring on murderous tendencies. It was too early for that. I grabbed my phone from the nightstand to silence my alarm and found my notifications flooded by Brendan, one of my best friends and one of the best hackers in the country as far as I was concerned.
Brendan
Check your laptop.
He didn’t have to say much for me to know exactly what I’d find when I looked. A new target was awaiting a visit.
I dug through my dresser for a pair of sweats and pulled them on before padding shirtless through the living room into the kitchen.
“ Fuck , Quentin!” my roommate yelled, currently inside of a naked blonde on our couch and fumbling to cover her up with a blanket. The blonde in question yelped as she attempted to help Joey cover her exposed body.
“Take that shit into your bedroom, dude,” I grumbled before reaching into the cupboard and pulling out a bowl for cereal.
This wasn’t a usual sight in my apartment, but Joey never fucking listened to me when I tried to establish any sort of boundaries regarding me walking in on him and his flavor of the week.
I honestly didn’t understand how he did it, much less had the time for it. The women of this world didn’t interest me, never able to break through my rage and offer something deeper. The only woman I had ever loved—my baby sister—died, so why would I subject myself to the possibility of that pain again?
There was no such thing as true love or happily ever after. Love only ended in agony or tragedy, and I had enough of that for a lifetime.
I set my bowl on the kitchen counter, hurriedly plopping down on the lone barstool, shoving a bite of cereal into my mouth before opening my laptop and entering my password to check my emails.
My fingers flew across the keyboard once it was unlocked, and I pulled up the file from Brendan with my new target: Nico Santino. The forty-five-year-old’s mugshot glared back at me, his eyes cold and vacant, a smile on his face that told me he had no remorse for what he had done. My jaw clenched as I scanned his rap sheet.
Local gang member with a surprisingly large part in the state’s biggest human trafficking ring
Predator with a taste for underage girls and domestic violence
Drug pusher who didn’t think twice about lacing his product with fentanyl and hooking naive college kids up with a potentially lethal dose
I leaned against the counter, my hip brushing the sink’s edge as I committed every detail of Santino’s face to memory. I don’t even think this fuckrag had a family who would miss him when I extinguished his existence from the earth.
In all the recon I’d done, I’d learned Santino was a mob lackey with a penchant for strip clubs. Night after night, he’d prowl the joints to torment the dancers and seek out sex workers for his baser urges. His life was a monotonous cycle of crime and depravity, and so predictable it was laughable.
Taking him out wouldn’t be an issue, but not before I had a little fun first. Taunting his victims was Santino’s foreplay, so I couldn’t wait to see how he liked the taste of his own medicine.
I closed my laptop with a smirk on my face before getting ready for the gym, counting down the hours until tonight, when the Portland Slasher would grace Nico Santino’s doorstep.
* * *
Water ran down my face as I walked from the gym to the coffee shop, my hair still wet from the shower. It would likely have been dry already had I brought an umbrella to ward off the drizzle of rain that never seemed to let up.
I’d grown up in Portland, so you’d think that I’d be used to the wetness that always permeated the air, but I never seemed to learn my lesson. I was just grateful that my fix of caffeine was a short walk away, everything from work to my apartment being in walking vicinity.
I’d be late to work before I missed the chance to get coffee, but the universe seemed to be testing me today as I walked in and discovered it was slammed.
Fog and Bean was a decent-sized coffee shop, with comfortable couches and chairs and large windows to spy through. It was easy for me to sit here with my laptop and pretend I wasn’t plotting how to gut a man from stem to stern and leave without a trace.
I just looked like your average pissed-off twenty-something man with a caffeine addiction and more tattoos than he could count.
I scrolled on my phone until it was my turn in line, but as soon as I opened my mouth to order, a figure in my peripheral walking toward me caught my attention and I found myself tongue-tied.
She was one of the most gorgeous creatures I had ever had the pleasure of laying eyes on, looking like sex on legs. It was almost unreal—the way her sage-green eyes lit up as she politely smiled at the man across the table from her as she sat down, how her silver hair glistened even in the shitty lighting of the coffee shop and the lack of sunshine shining through the windows.
“Sir?” the barista asked, bringing me back into the present and reminding me that I hadn’t placed my order yet.
“Coffee. Black,” I replied, tone short and impatient, handing her a ten and not waiting for the change before I moved down the counter, eyes glued on the woman now sitting across the coffee shop in front of the café’s windows. She reminded me of a moon in the darkness, everyone else orbiting her while she shone in the center.
She hadn’t looked my way yet, painfully trying to give what I assumed was her date her full attention. I could tell based on her body language that she wasn’t having a good time: she grimaced when he laughed at his own joke, her shoulders tense.
“Your coffee, sir,” the barista said, once again interrupting my thoughts and my staring. I took the cup without paying attention and brought it to my lips, piping hot coffee sliding down my throat as I moved from the counter to an open table.
I didn’t know what it was, but I couldn’t break my gaze away from her. I didn’t even know her, but it felt like something was twisting in my gut as I watched her smile at another man, even if it wasn’t genuine. My fingers tightened on my flimsy coffee cup, feeling like a total creep for wanting to cut out a stranger’s vocal cords for making such a beautiful girl laugh.
It was a miracle she—or anyone else—hadn’t noticed just how intensely my eyes were glued to her.
But then her green eyes suddenly snapped to mine, and I felt my heart still in my chest.
It was just for a moment, her face falling and her eyes widening before she turned her attention back to her companion, yet one small glance my way was all it took for me to call into work sick and stay fixed to my seat for another fifteen minutes just so I could continue looking at her, taking in everything about her like she was my next target.
And I guess you could say she was, because I planned to learn everything I could about my little moon.