“Ask me to what?” Logan sits across from Adrian.
Adrian shakes his head. “Mind your own fucking business.”
“Always.” Logan grins.
Like hell! Knowing everyone’s businessishis business.
Gideon joins us, and it starts stiff, then eases, then becomes like it always is.
Four brothers. Four dysfunctional souls. Always loyal. Together. In step.
I go down the elevator with Logan, who tells me I’m quieter than usual.
“You got something orsomeoneon your mind?”
I shrug.
“What’s the fallback for…not delivering on a contract?”
I shrug again.
“You’re distracted.” He isn’t asking or even criticizing, he’s stating.
I offer, “I’m going to say what Adrian just did. Mind your own fucking business.”
Logan slaps my back as we step out of the elevator. “You let me know if you need someone at your back if the shit hits the fan.”
Some hitters demand half up front, half after—it’s a way to prove the client is serious, and to guarantee you get something for your trouble. I don’t like getting paid until the job’s done, so money hasn’t changed hands yet.
The people who hire me know better than to fuck around. They always pay.
But this is not about the money. It’s about keeping your word. In this business, when you take a contract, you finish it. If you don’t, someone comes after you—your family, your friends, anyone you care about.
That’s the real price of failure.
I have a week, tops, before the vultures will know that I’m fucking this up. Will it kill my career? Yes, because it will kill me…ifI were not a Maddox.
My name will protect me. My brothers will be my armor.
Logan and I walk into the cold December morning. He studies me for a moment. “You’ve spent three nights watching a woman instead of killing her. Something’s bleeding through your ice.”
I give him a dry look, not hiding my irritation. “I’m the blade in the dark, not the fool who lays it down for a girl with soft eyes and a martyr complex.”
Logan smirks. “You telling that to me or yourself?”
I think about Logan’s bullshit remarks as I follow Calista to her building the next day, the snow crunching beneath my boots.
I need to end this—one way or the other. I need to letthemknow that I can’t fulfil the terms of the contract, and pay my way out of it, if I can. Or I need to meet the terms of the contract and stage an accident to end her life.
It won’t be a problem. It’s winter. It’s New York. Way too many people die crossing the street.
I’ve already found four perfect spots—no cameras, no corners, no witnesses—where a hit-and-run would look like bad luck, not murder. One bump, and Calista Ferraro would be just another casualty. Just another ghost swallowed by this city.
She stops at her building and turns as if looking for me.
She raises her hand, waving into the darkness, cutting through the falling snow.
I see her.
