A faded green awning, a neon shamrock flickering in the window, a wooden sign that read O'Malley's in peeling gold letters. The kind of place that had probably been a neighborhood institution once, before time and neglect and Cormac O'Shea had hollowed it out.
I sat in the back of the SUV, watching the entrance through tinted windows. Yegor was beside me, checking his weapon with the calm efficiency of a man who'd done this a hundred times before. Two more vehicles idled behind us, my men waiting for the signal.
Midnight in Queens. The street was empty, the windows of nearby buildings dark. Even the usual sounds of the city seemed muted here, as if the neighborhood itself knew what was coming and had decided to look away.
"Thermal shows eight heat signatures inside," Yegor said, studying the tablet in his hands. "Two near the front door, one at the back, five clustered in the main room. Cormac's in there—we've confirmed his vehicle in the alley."
"Civilians?"
"None. The locals cleared out an hour ago. Word travels fast in this neighborhood."
Good. I had no interest in collateral damage. This was personal, but it would be handled professionally. Clean. Efficient. Final.
I nodded, my eyes still fixed on the bar. Somewhere inside, Cormac O'Shea was drinking, laughing, planning his next move against the woman I'd married. He had no idea what wascoming. No idea that his nephew-in-law was sitting fifty feet away, preparing to end his miserable existence.
"Teams in position?"
"Alpha at the front, Bravo at the back, Charlie covering the perimeter. On your signal."
I checked my own weapon—a Glock 19, familiar weight in my hand—and chambered a round. The sound was crisp in the silence of the vehicle. Beside me, Yegor did the same.
"Remember," I said. "Cormac is mine."
"Understood."
I took one last breath, letting the calm settle over me. The stillness before violence. The quiet before the storm.
"Let's go."
***
We moved like shadows.
Alpha team hit the front door first—a breaching charge that blew it off its hinges, followed by flashbangs that lit up the interior like lightning. I was through the door before the echo faded, my weapon up, my senses sharp.
The two men at the entrance went down before they could draw their guns. Clean shots, center mass. They crumpled without a sound, their bodies hitting the floor in tandem.
Behind me, my men fanned out, securing the room with practiced efficiency. Shouts erupted from deeper in the bar—Cormac's people scrambling to respond, too slow, too late.
I moved through the chaos like I was walking through water. Everything felt slowed down, crystalline. The smell ofgunpowder and spilled beer. The crack of weapons fire. The thud of bodies hitting the floor.
A man came at me from the left—young, panicked, his gun hand shaking. I put two rounds in his chest before he could pull the trigger. He fell against a table, knocking over glasses that shattered on the floor.
Another one emerged from behind the bar, shotgun raised. Yegor dropped him with a single shot before I could react, the man's body spinning backward into the rows of bottles behind him.
"Clear!" someone shouted from the back.
"Clear!" Another voice, from the kitchen.
The main room was a slaughterhouse. Bodies sprawled across the floor, blood pooling on the worn wooden boards. My men moved among them, checking pulses, securing weapons. Professional. Thorough.
But I wasn't looking at them. I was looking at the man cowering behind the bar.
Cormac O'Shea.
He was older than I'd expected—late fifties, with thinning red hair gone mostly gray and a face mapped with broken capillaries. The face of a man who'd drunk too much for too many years, who'd let his body go soft while his soul went rotten. His eyes were wide, terrified, darting between me and the carnage around him.
"Wait," he said, his voice high and thin. "Wait, we can talk about this—"
