Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4 – Will

The fucking punk ass Jamie was tied up and left in a warehouse until I could get to him. I knew that if I went in hot I would kill the bastard before I got any information out of him. And I needed to know who had it out for Shay.

When Jamie came to work for me a few months ago I tolerated his idiocy because good marksmen were tough to come by and he was one of the best. I’m what you would call an assassin, butcher, hired gun, hitman, killer. It really doesn’t matter what you name it, I kill people for a living. And I am damn good at it.

I don’t have a traumatic backstory nor am I a war vet. I’m not suffering from PTSD or have mommy issues. I fell into the work via my Uncle Scotty. I was always a skinny lanky kid who usually faded into the background. When I graduated I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life and my uncle asked if I would come out and help him on a job.

I think I threw up three times on the first mission. Scotty told me to grow a pair of balls or go home. You can guess the route I chose. That was years ago and now Scotty is retired on his millions and I am running the show. There is one thing that he taught me above all else.

“You can’t have feelings, kid. You have a steady head and a killer shot. You are a machine. You go in, get the job done and get out—no traces, no clues.”

I had lived by this and it served me well. I had several healthy offshore bank accounts and a crew of snipers that did not miss. When Jamie approached me three days ago with this job I assumed it was like others he had brought my way.

His cousin had mafia ties and I assumed that it would be another stupid fuck that stomped on the wrong toes. You can imagine my horror when I opened the file and saw her—Shay Montgomery.

Her hair was a little shorter than she wore it in high school. Then it had trailed down her back and now it was just below her shoulders. The thick reddish-brown waves that I have always wanted to sink my hands into. She was thinner than she used to be as well.

My eyes traveled down the file and in detail I read what the girl I had fantasized over a million times had been doing all these years. It was nothing good. Shay had made one bad mistake after another.

The innocent girl I knew would never have gotten wrapped up in partying and drugs. I wondered if she even knew that she had pissed off the mafia. I also wanted to know why. Needless to say, I took the job. But instead of killing her, I made sure that we brought her to a safe place—alive.

I was breaking the cardinal rule. I didn’t even think I had a fucking heart anymore, but I must have something in there somewhere because I could no more harm that girl than I could my own mother.

Jamie was a complication I knew I would have to deal with. I had planned on making it painless. That was until he hit Shay. Now I wanted the bastard to pay.

I flipped the light switch and walked into the cold warehouse. A single bulb illuminated Jamie’s bruised and bloodied face.

“I’m sorry, boss.” Jamie’s one eye that wasn’t swollen shut tried to focus on me. “I knew I wasn’t supposed to touch her. I fucked up. I’m sorry.”

He was practically begging, and it turned my stomach. I wondered if Shay had begged him to stop hurting her, and I felt a rage so intense race through my body that I had to take a moment to control myself.

“Who wanted the girl dead?” I bit out the words slowly, so he could hear them.

He looked confused. “I don’t know, boss. My cousin didn’t tell me that part.”

“What is your cousin’s name?” I pulled out my gun and stroked the cold metal.

Jamie blanched. “Fuck, please, boss! I’m sorry! I fucked up, please don’t kill me!”

“Who?” I asked again, feeling impatient.

He shook his head and I lifted the gun and cocked my head to the side, wondering just where I wanted to put my bullet.

He shits his pants, which wasn’t surprising, men often did before you killed them. The fear expelling all bodily secretions. Jamie was blubbering now, something about his cousin Vinnie.

“His last name?” I demanded and shoved the gun against his temple.

Jamie shook his head. “I can’t tell you.”

“Is his name more important than your life?”

I knew that this question gave him second thoughts. I also knew that he was considering his chances of me actually letting him live. If he thought he had a chance at survival he was stupider than I originally thought.

“Please boss, don’t kill me! I didn’t know you had a thing for the girl. I didn’t know.”

Had a thing for the girl—that seemed almost too ridiculous to consider. I didn’t have a thing for Shay Montgomery. It was a fucking obsession and I would do anything to keep her safe. And that is why I didn’t hesitate to pull the trigger.

His brains splattered out the other side of his head and he slumped down in his ties—dead. I turned on my heels and walked away, not looking back once. At the door, I called Marco and told him to send the cleaners in.

When my cleaning crew was done there would be no sign of Jamie or what had happened. An FBI forensic scientist wouldn’t be able to trace a speck of blood. They were that good. The best in the business, and they belonged to me.

I had little to go off of. A cousin named Vinnie in the mafia was akin to a needle in a haystack. Shit, half of the mob could answer to that name. I got into the black town car and signaled the driver to take me back to the mansion where Shay was hidden. I trusted my crew implicitly. Mostly because they knew that they would end up just like Jamie if they crossed me.

Maybe I didn’t have a heart after all.

I had to be missing something. Back in my office, I went over Shay’s file again, trying to find the missing link. I had men watching some of the people that had been close to her.

There was a chick named Emma that she had often worked with and even was her roommate for a short time before Shay was taken into custody for the drugs. I was having the hardest time tracking her down.

Her new roommate Stacy, I had a guy watching her and she was clean. There was another few watching that billionaire Elliot Brand and his wife, Mandy. I didn’t seriously think they were involved. But the police did and that was enough to rouse my suspicions.

Brand had never been involved in anything shady in the past. But that didn’t mean that his wife hadn’t put a hit out on her former best friend. I had to make sure.

Then there was Mandy’s sister Kim and her husband, Nate. She had the biggest reason to hate Shay. Not only had Shay fucked her husband while they were married, but she gave the testimony to put him away in the murder. Maybe Kim was out for revenge?

All of these different theories I kept rolling over in my mind. I knew that one of them would screw up eventually and when they did I would be there. And that would be the end of them.

Shoving the file back into my desk, I locked the drawer and got up. It had only been a few hours since I had seen Shay and I needed another fix.

Shit.

Don’t feel.

I’m a machine.

With that thought, I made my way up the stairs.