Shit.
“Orion, Sparrow, and Dante all texted us,” Elio explains.
“I’m surprised they had time to text between plotting world domination and downing martinis.” I let out a laugh that I hope to hell sounds carefree and not like I’m about to shit my pants. Obviously, I can’t deny that I was over there, so the lie that Sparrow already gave me is probably my best bet. “I thought maybe Dante would have some ideas about how I could work on figuring out who The Ghost is. He’s drawing a lot of attention, boss, and it seems like maybe we need to have a talk with him before we end up with these murders becoming national news. Last thing we need is a bunch of eyes on Wildcliff.”
He hums in agreement.
“He is a bit of a problem,” Xaviaro says. “None of us are losing sleep over any of the Sleepless Reapers, but whoever this Ghost is, he’s sloppy as hell. He’s leaving bodies out in the open, killing multiple club members in one week sometimes. Les is right—we should figure out who he is and have a chat with him.”
Lorenzo nods. “Do it.”
I open my mouth to tell him that Dante made it sound pretty much impossible to find someone whose name we don’t know, let alone anything else about the guy, but he was talking about my intruder, whether he knows that or not. Finding The Ghost won’t be easy, but there are some options. At least we have a general idea of where he’ll be: wherever the Sleepless Reapers are.
“Xav, work with Les on this one,” he adds, and Xaviaro nods.
The meeting shifts gears into numbers and reports, and I nod along and add my contributions when necessary. I wasn’t angling for my lie to get me put on the Vigilante Task Force, but fuck it, there are worse jobs to be assigned. Finding my hot,dominant intruder might be a lost fucking cause, but hunting down The Ghost is a decent distraction. For now, anyway.
GHOST
You’d think since I’ve left a dozen of them in pools of their own blood, the Sleepless Reapers would be a little bit more aware of who’s slinking around the shadows at their parties, but so far no one has given me a second glance. They’re all too drunk and high, or too focused on plying bleary eyed men and women with drugs and alcohol to notice me. I pull a hard candy out of my pocket and pop it into my mouth.
The first time I slipped into one of the parties at their club house, the smell of booze and meth, the ear-splitting blare of their heavy metal music, and the taste of sweat and vomit in the air dragged me right back to that night with a vengeance. I didn’t come here to kill that night. At least, I don’t think I did. I brought a gun, but I told myself it was only for protection. I just had to see, I had to know which parts of it were real and which were just twisted nightmares. I don’t remember stalking my first victim out into the pre-dawn darkness, and I don’t remember pulling my gun. Idoremember the sneer on his face when I pressed it to his temple and told him to apologize, and I remember the split-second look of surprise in his eyes before he slumped over, lifeless.
Satisfaction thumps inside my chest and a smile tugs on my lips at the memory. I’ve managed to build up an immunity to the triggers here over time. Or maybe I’ve just rewired those pathways in my brain to associate these parties with my own cathartic revenge instead of what happened the night I died.
I lean against a pillar in the corner, shrouded in shadow, and watch the scene around me with a sense of detachment.I wonder what the Morettis think about shit stains like the Sleepless Reapers in their city. Do they care at all? Maybe they’re in bed together. I don’t have the first clue where the Reapers get their drugs. Maybe from the Morettis, or vice versa. Bile rises in my throat at the thought of the Moretti I let suck me off last night having anything to do with the men in this room.
Except… no. He asked if I was sent by the Reapers, didn’t he? If they were friendly, he wouldn’t suspect them of sending an assassin in. Underworld politics are messy, but my gut wants to believe that there isn’t any love lost there. I wish there was a way to find out for sure though. My goal of taking out the entire club is starting to feel like a damn Sisyphean feat. I shoot one Reaper and two more get patched in. If the Morettis hated them as much as I do, maybe we could work something out. They certainly have a hell of a lot more firepower than I do alone.
I turn the possibilities over in my head as I watch the party rage around me. My attention lands on one man in particular. He’s a Pass Around, that much is clear. He’s young, maybe not even eighteen yet, and too skinny, like he hasn’t bothered to ingest anything but meth in a week. My stomach clenches and liquid heat churns in my veins. Is that how I looked when they had their hooks in me? Too stoned to hold my own head up and still clinging to a big, ugly biker, begging him for more?
I grind my teeth together. The biker he’s with—Shrimp Dick, my brain supplies the name from the depths of my mangled memories—grabs him roughly and grins, showing off a mouth full of yellowed and missing teeth. I straighten up and feel for my pistol, tucked into the back of my jeans, hidden underneath my baggy shirt. The kid stumbles but doesn’t fight Shrimp as he grips his arm and starts to drag him outside.
I don’t know why he’s bothering. He could bend the poor kid over right there and no one would have a word to say about it. Maybe he’s not in the mood to share. I move through theshadows around the edge of the room, keeping my eyes on them as they slip out the door. For just a second, I feel someone’s attention on me. I glance over my shoulder and find someone watching me. As far as the Reapers go, he’s not the worst looking man in here. He might even be attractive if he weren’t a monster. He holds my gaze for a minute, and I stand still, like a gazelle trying not to excite a lion. Is he realizing I don’t belong here? Does he recognize me from years ago when I was that poor, drugged kid being dragged out back by whichever member wanted to have their way with me?
He takes a sip of his drink and looks away, and I don’t linger to find out if any of those possibilities are true. Even if he puts two and two together later, it’s not like any of the Sleepless Reapers are going to the cops about these murders. It makes them the perfect victims. That and the fact that they have more enemies than they can count. And that’s not just because most of them are too dumb to count higher than ten without taking off their shoes.
“That’s right, choke on it,” I hear a gruff voice growl in the darkness as soon as I slip outside.
I yank my pistol out and quickly screw on the silencer, the movements pure muscle memory at this point as I stalk silently around the side of the building. Shrimp is leaning against the building with his eyes closed, not the least bit concerned about what dangers might be hidden in the night. His fingers are tangled roughly in the kid’s hair, and he’s using the grip to jerk his head back and forth. He doesn’t see me step into the orange glow of the light. His eyes don’t open until I press the tip of the silencer right to his forehead.
“What the?—”
“I hate that you’re going to die doing what you love, Shrimp Dick. Being an absolutely vile excuse for a human being. But at least you’ll be dead.”
The man kneeling at his feet chokes in surprise at the sound of my voice, and I squeeze the trigger before Shrimp can open his mouth to scream. His eyes roll back and he slumps forward. I grab him by the front of his shirt and shove him off to the side so he’ll fall that way instead. The poor, drugged kid vomits down the front of his shirt and scrambles backward, bumping into my legs and looking up at me with terror shining in his eyes.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” I put the safety on and tuck my pistol back into my waistband, then reach into my pocket to pull out the business card for the drug counselor who helped me after I got out of the hospital. “You’re worth more than this.”
I press the card into his hand then slip back into the darkness. I hope some part of that made it past the drug haze and settled into his subconscious. I hope he’ll wake up tomorrow and believe there’s a better life out there for him than letting the Reapers pass him around in exchange for drugs. Unfortunately, I can’t control that one way or the other. All I can do is keep taking out the Reapers, one by one.
Chapter
Five
ALESSIO
The glowfrom my computer screen is the only light in the apartment, aside from the ambient shine of the streetlights and lights in surrounding buildings. There’s no particular reason that I’m sitting here in my underwear at one in the morning in almost complete darkness. Definitely not a vain, borderline desperate hope that a certain cat burglar will think the place is empty and climb through my window again.