The familiar voice was the steel that had me metaphorically picking my heart and stomach up off the floor. In the literal sense, my eyes, urged by an eagerness that I could never understand, demanded that I look and find.
The thoughts I’d had earlier rushed back to me, making me lose my breath.There had to be something else out there. Something…more than this. I wondered, and not for the first time, if this life I'd chosen—this path that I'd taken—had killed something inside of me.
To dispute this, everything I’d ever lost seemed to rise from the ashes, and then my eyes found his, and I was alive.
The boss had arrived.
Aniello “The Titanium Candle” Assanti.
His name echoed inside of my head, as if I’d screamed it from the darkest recesses of my mind.
Ani-yiello. Ani-yiello. Ani-yiello Assanti.
As his name continued to reverberate, the voice in my mind pronouncing his name with a perfect Italian accent, I watched as he walked toward me with the two men who usually accompanied him. Quentin King and Abe Ruth.
Quentin and Abe were not a direct part of Murder for Hire, Inc. If I had to guess, they were the equivalent to whatever friends were in this business, and they were exclusive members of Club D, which meant that, even though they didn’t work for Murder for Hire, Inc., they were stillsomethingin that life. They had to be to gain entry to this exclusive club.
This faction of Murder for Hire, Inc. was run by the Italians, that much I knew. Aniello Assanti was the boss of it. He doled out death sentences for money.
He was also the boss of me—of all that went on inside of these walls.
Aniello, Quentin, and Abe stopped right before they came to me. I couldn’t hear them over the chatter from the dining room, the light music playing, and the drumming of my heart, but I’d been around them enough to know that they were probably discussing what time they’d meet in the dining room after they did whatever they came to do.
Quentin and Abe both nodded after Aniello said something to them, and a second later, the two men disappeared.
A hostess came out and said something to Aniello. Probably that his guests were waiting. He nodded to her, and a second later, he was surrounded by three men in custom-made suits with glasses full of whiskey in hand.
Right away, I knew the men surrounding him were Italian. There was this thing they did if one made man needed to be introduced to another made man. The man doing the introduction would say “amico nostro” while introducing the new member. It meant “friend of ours.”
It was something the Italians did with one another, and it was a formality that held weight and was expected in their world. This was what seemed to be happening with the four men. One of the men was being “introduced” to Aniello.
After the introduction was made, the four men started toward the dining room. The three Italian guests went ahead of him, but Aniello lingered a step or two behind, his pace slowing even more as he went to pass me.
I would have tried to control my breathing, but I refused to move, to even close the small part of my mouth, too afraid I’d miss the scent of him in the air as he walked by. There was something about him that instinctually made me want to breathe him in.
It was insane. The most manic thing I’d ever thought about, much less ever felt.
Aniello Assanti was a man who was as icy as his reputation as a cold-blooded killer.
He rarely looked at me—and if he did, it was with indifference, as he regarded everyone else.
He never smiled.
He never laughed.
He never blinked.
He didn’t seem human under the custom-made suits he wore.
Did he bleed?
Did he breathe?
Did his heart even beat?
I had no fucking clue, but every time he walked into the room, it was like everything in me became aware that something…electric moved through the air. To a heart like mine, it felt a lot like a shock, something that sent oxygen back into my lungs and a rush of adrenaline through my bloodstream.
He was a man who killed people for a living, but he did the opposite to me.
