Seduced By A Villain

2

“A clean pair of f*****g lungs?” My gaze halted on the cigarette in his hand.

“People who stand in the way to my money. I always find creative ways to get rid of them.” “Send me the bill,” I drawled.

“It’s not just monetary.” Luca kicked the pakhan’s skull sideways. “New York belongs to us. When you go around killing people in our zip code, it makes us look like we don’t have a grip on our own ground.”

“Where’s the lie?” My voice was distant and disinterested. “What the f**k was a Bratva boss doing deep in Camorra territory?”

“Family function,” Enzo ground out. “His nephew’s graduation. Igor asked for permission, which I personally granted. You made me look like an idiot.”

He didn’t need me to look like an i***t. He was doing a fine job by himself.

“I found him exiting your club,” I reminded him.

“It was a very emotional ceremony, okay?” Enzo said earnestly. “He took the nephew to have his first drink there. Adorable, if you ask me.”

“My beef with the Rasputins extends beyond geography and politics. I won’t stop until I kill the entire family.” I spoke around the cigarette. I didn’t smoke. Not very often, anyway. Here and there, and mostly weed. I was far too committed to my other vices— violence and greed—to pick up a third one. “And if they dare set foot in this city, I sure as f**k am going to take advantage.”

“Let’s hope your beef with them extends into the afterlife, too.” Achilles slapped my back, nearly making me cough out a lung. “Because next time you take liberties in Camorra territory, I’ll smoke your ass like a pork’s butt.”

“Considering they’ve been eyeing New York for years now, you’d be a fool to intervene.” Talking sense into the Ferrantes was the equivalent of f*****g a roadkill into resurrection, but just like a wayward squirrel, something compelled me to try.

“New York’s ours,” Luca snarled.

“Is it?” I marveled. “I own the Bronx, and the Russians have been buying Manhattan land for years now. What you have with them isn’t business, it’s a hostile takeover.” I spat out the cigarette. “You’ve been losing prestige for a solid decade. Once you lose the Upper East Side, the empire falls. It’s already decomposing. Why do you think your father hasn’t picked any of your sorry asses to replace him yet? You reek of weakness.” I managed to keep my irritation out of my tone. Just. “Give me a blank check to finish the Russians off.”

“You want us to think you have our best interests in mind?” Luca took a drag of his cigarette, wafting the smoke sideways. “After all this time?”

I’d known these fuckers since I was fourteen. They aged like a fine corpse.

“I’m killing them because of my own personal vendetta.” I cracked my neck. “Our interests happen to align, that’s all.”

“What business do you have with them?” Luca propped his winged boot on Igor’s skull.

A locked jaw and a jaded stare were my official response.

“You’ll have to kill a s**t ton of soldiers before you get to Alex Rasputin.” Enzo tapped his lips.

Igor’s son. Bratva’s second-highest rank. The next pakhan.

“Don’t threaten me with a good time.”

“That’s a big-ass operation you got there.” Achilles scrubbed his knuckles over his cheekbone. “Even if we let you go on your deranged quest, you don’t have the manpower.”

“I could use a helping hand.” I arched a meaningful eyebrow.

“No way are we getting ourselves into a full-blown Mafia war.”

Luca shook his head. “Not my circus, not my monkeys.”

“Fine. Stay out of my way, then.”

Achilles mulled my words over, the menacing glint in his eyes sharpening. “My problem with your proposition is twofold.”

I stared at him impassively, knowing another f*****g TED Talk was about to ensue. Goddamn Italians and their love for words.

Achilles didn’t disappoint.

“One, we’re the ones who’ll get the brunt of it when Alex gets fished out of the Hudson River,” he said.

That was an easy fix. I could kill him anywhere on the map. “And the second?”

Achilles pushed off the wall, stalking over to me and crouching down so our faces were an inch apart. He was one gruesome motherfucker, with a face even a blind mother couldn’t love. Rumor had it every inch of his flesh was scarred, burned, or both; every part of his body from the chin below was covered in elaborate ink.

“I still haven’t punished you for killing Filippo,” he rasped.

Not this s**t again.

Ten months ago, I offed one of the Ferrante soldiers when I kidnapped a woman he was watching over. Pure collateral damage. Nothing personal.

“I already told you. I thought he was cannon fodder, not the family pet.”

“Would that have changed things?”

Not really. But people—even sociopaths—liked to play the what-if game. To ponder the alternatives for the path their lives had taken.

“I’d have aimed for the heart, so his face wouldn’t look like Irish stew.”

The Camorra loved open-casket funerals. Seemed a bit ambitious considering their occupation if you asked me, but no one f*****g did.

“Che palle.” Achilles slapped me with the side of his gun, sending my face flying sideways. My boredom morphed into impatience. I really needed to go check on my businesses.

“You’ve been a thorn in our side for far too long, Callaghan.” Luca produced his own gun from his holster. c****d it.

Who was he kidding? If he wanted me dead, I wouldn’t be here, listening to their lecture. Death was a luxury they didn’t offer me. Instead, I had to watch their meltdowns on loop.

“Nah, man. I say if the Irish and Russians want to off one another, we should let them,” Enzo suggested gleefully. “Muoia

Sansone con tutti i Filistei.”

“Enough with the chitchat,” I growled. “Just do what you have to.”

“Enzo. Knife,” Achilles ordered. Enzo glided toward us, disposing of his knife in Achilles’s open palm. The latter grabbed a fistful of my hair, tilting my face upward. Our eyes met.

“You know.” Achilles pressed the blade to the center of my neck. The tip traveled upward, toward my chin. “The bullet you put in Filippo’s head came out of his eye socket. We never found his eyeball.”

Eyeball it was, then.

Not a terrible loss. I’d seen enough of this world and hated it and everyone in it.

“Filippo was close to me as well.” Luca jammed his fists into his pockets. The blade of Achilles’s knife trekked north, sailing across my cheek and toward my left eye. “But you’ll be no use to me completely blind. I’ll take my favor some other time.”

“Your sainthood’s in the mail,” I drawled, never breaking

Achilles’s stare.

“Right or left?” Achilles asked.

“Your pick.” I hitched a shoulder up. “But do it in the next five minutes. I have underground casinos to run.”

“Your next stop is the ER, shitbag.”

If I had a sense of humor, I’d laugh. Getting my eye plucked out without anesthesia wouldn’t even rank as the fiftieth worst thing that happened to me in my twenty-eight years on this planet. “Losing an eye will have its perks.”

“Is that so?” Achilles took the bait.

“For one thing, I’ll no longer have a 20/20 vision of your Freddy

Krueger face.”

Achilles’s nostrils flared, rage rolling off him like lava. “Occhio per occhio, dente per dente. Open wide, motherfucker.”

I didn’t flinch. Not when the edge of the knife poked the side of my eye, forcing its way into the socket. Not when it pried my eyeball from the depth of my skull. And not when I felt it sliding out of the hollow space. I remained still, muscles lax, posture languid, shoulders rolled back. The picture of calm and tranquil.

That was the thing about me. I never flinched.

I. Never. f*****g. Flinch.

They called me Deathless for a reason. I enjoyed defying my own demise.

My eyeball was now sliding completely out of my body.

The room was lethally quiet, save for my labored breaths. Achilles held my eyeball between his fingers and cut the six muscles that connected it to my brain, then the sheath of optic nerve attaching it to my brain. He stepped back.

Hot, thick liquid decanted down my eye socket to my cheek. I licked it with an easy smile. Tremors ghosted my spine and arms, my body’s reaction to the shocking invasion, but I welcomed the discomfort, making it a part of me.

I was very good at enduring pain. Very good at distributing it, too. I was going to get Achilles in the next round. Touch something of his and destroy it so thoroughly he wouldn’t be able to recognize it for what it once was.

I had the patience, will, and time. The only thing I lacked was morals.