Chapter Three

LEON

I never miss.

No matter the target, the distance, or the chaos in my head, once I point my gun at my prey, I always hit.

But I just did, and it’s all because of a girl.

“Fuck!” I let out an angry growl before slinging my rifle over my shoulder.

Thumping footsteps echo behind me, and just then, Dante bursts out onto the rooftop, already ripping his mask off his face.

“We’ve been spotted,” he says in an urgent voice.

I knew this would happen the moment my assasination attempt failed. Tomaso’s men would be on our tail.

Without sparing another second, we bolt, our legs pounding against the concrete rooftop as we sprint toward the fire escape. We rush out of the building, cornering into an alley where Ivy and Kai are waiting for us with the engine of our getaway car already running. The cold air whooshes past us, biting against my skin as we near the car.

“Get in!” Ivy yells, and just then, I spot two of Tomaso’s men arrive at the back end of the alleyway.

I throw the rifle in first and dive into the back seat just as they begin to shoot.

“Shit!” I curse.

Dante slams the door shut behind me, and the tires screech loudly as the car zooms off. They fire a few more shots, and Dante and I duck as the rear windshield shatters.

“Fucking hell!” Kai spits before reaching out the passenger window to fire a few shots of his own.

Ivy maneuvers the car at high speed, so we manage to escape them before they can even give us a proper chase. With the city blurring past us as we get onto the highway and our enemies gone, the question of the night comes up.

“Someone want to tell me what the hell happened up there?” Kai snaps from the passenger seat, opening the laptop on his lap. “That was not part of the fucking plan.”

We’ve been going on missions for years now, with everyone having their own important role to play.

Kai was our tech guy. He was responsible for hacking into buildings and systems, finding the exact spot of our targets, and paving the way for the job to be done.

Ivy was usually the driver—she was the best one amongst us, fucking good at maneuvering other vehicles on the road and getting us out of sticky situations. But sometimes, she acted as the spy, the underground agent. Most people underestimated women. Pricks, the lot of them. She used that to her advantage.

Dante mostly stuck with me, doing groundwork, entering the field that required direct violent contact with our target. We acted as each other’s watchmen, looking out for threats while the other person worked. Like me, he was fast, strong, and resilient. But while he was more of a hands-on fighter, good at using knives, daggers, sticks…anything he could get his hands on, I was a better shooter. The best.

And like I said earlier, I never fucking missed.

“Leon missed,” Dante mutters like he still can’t believe it. “And then shit went sideways.”

I stare out the window, jaw tight.

I was supposed to kill Tomaso Rosetti tonight. My bullet should have pierced through his skull, the blood splattering on the person before him before his body collapsed to the ground. We had everything carefully planned. For months, we watched him. I watched him to the point where it became obsessive.

We studied his movements and waited for a slip-up in his security detail. He was mostly in Milan where his security was very tight. Our chances of succeeding were lower if we attacked him there. But when we found out he was in New York, we celebrated, because finally, we would kill him. He took his men with him everywhere, and the man never stayed in one place for long, so it was hard to pinpoint his exact location.

We finally got an opening when Kai hacked the booking information for his restaurant reservation. It was a reservation for two, and I assumed, we all assumed, that it would be a business dinner with one of his corrupt friends and business partners. Heck, I’d even planned to kill whoever he was having dinner with if they turned out to be someone I knew was evil.

But when she turned and my rifle scope zoomed in on her face, I froze like a fucking chicken under headlights. That expression when she looked through the glass, confused for a split second, but then her eyes widening a fraction like she saw death.

She looked just like him.

Those few seconds of hesitation unnerved me, and before I could gather myself to fire my shot, they’d already taken cover.

“…something else happened that we don’t know, bro,” I hear Dante saying.

Have they been talking about me? My mind has been elsewhere.

“There was a girl,” I finally say.

The car falls quiet as they all glance at me. Ivy’s eyes flash in the rearview mirror.

I clench my fists. “Tomaso wasn’t alone. There was a girl with him. Young. Maybe nineteen or twenty.”

Kai frowns. “So you didn’t kill him because of the girl? I don’t—”

“Tomaso has a daughter we never knew about.”

I let the words hang in the air for a beat.

“That’s bullshit man,” Kai scoffs. “We know the man, we’ve known him for years. Somehow, he has a, what, nineteen year old daughter that just materialized out of nowhere?”

I grind my teeth together.

“I don’t miss faces, and she looks just like him.”

Kai shakes his head. “That’s not possible. Tomaso doesn’t have a daughter. I’ve combed through every file and searched through every possible digital record about him. Not once did anything about a daughter pop up.”

“Then you missed something.”

Kai twists around in his seat to face me, his tone defensive. “I don’t miss, Leon.”

I lean forward. “Then explain her. Explain how, when she looked directly at my scope, all I could see was the eyes of the man who’s haunted my dreams. Explain what a young girl like her could be doing with a man like him in an expensive restaurant like that, and how his first instinct was to protect her when I shot at them.”

“Tomaso usually likes his girls very young,” Dante mutters beside me. When I fix him with a hard stare, he only shrugs. “Just saying. But you might be right.”

“I am right.”

“Okay guys, not now,” Ivy speaks for the first time since the argument. “We just survived an ambush. We should be deliberating and not fighting,” she says, swerving through a red light.

Silence fills the car except for the quiet tapping of Kai’s laptop keys. I can practically feel the tension buzzing in the air.

She wasn’t just some random girl. I feel it in my gut. Tomaso’s reaction, how fast he grabbed her, and the way his men shielded them as they rushed out of the room is proof enough. Tomaso is a selfish bastard. If she was just some girl, he would’ve let her die.

We pull into the underground garage of the penthouse. As soon as Ivy kills the engine, I’m out of the car. The others follow me up the elevator without a word. The doors beep and slide open, and I immediately step out, wanting some space to clear my head.

Our hideout is a sleek, high-rise space. Marble floors, floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook the city It is our headquarters but also serves as our home. It definitely doesn’t give homey vibes with its sharp corners, minimalist design, and the weapons hidden in several rooms. But it’s a far cry from the streets we grew up on.

Before I can head straight for my room, Ivy catches my arm.

“You okay?”

I pause, and my jaw clenches. “I’m fine.”

“You’ve got that look.”

“What look?”

“The one you had the night we found out Sister Augustine was dead.”

The night when it all started, when my murderous rage was almost too much to contain. The night I’d been filled with so much regret, wishing I’d killed Tomaso earlier instead of letting go and forgiving—though I never forgave—like Sister Augustine wanted.

I turn away. “It’s not the same.”

But it is.

That night, I regretted not killing him when I thought I had the chance. Tonight, I feel the same way.

She rubs her thumb over the back of my palm. “Maybe it wasn’t meant to happen today.”

She’s trying to comfort me, but I know she’s hurting too. Tomaso ruined all our lives. The Cosa Nostra did, and he is the ruthless Don in charge. But the journey is more personal for me, more than it can be for them.

He killed my parents.

“Let’s go inside.”

In the living room which Kai turned into his tech space, he already has his laptop hooked to the big screen. I collapse on one of the couches, and Ivy sits beside me. Dante passes me a bowl of popcorn. I give him a blank stare, and he shakes his head at me.

“Relax, bro. Your shoulders are so tense.”

Dante has a temper, and because of that, he tries so hard not to get angry or bothered about situations. I know he’s trying so hard not to let this fuck-up, my fuck-up, upset him.

I take the bowl from him and take a few bites, but my mouth is dry like sandpaper. I can’t relax, or ‘un-tense,’ my shoulders.

I need to know who she is and why the fuck we never knew about her until today.

The seconds turn into minutes, and then to hours, until finally, the monitor lights up with a photo.

The same girl, sitting in what looks like a dance studio, hair tied back, smiling.

“Gabriella Rossetti,” Kai reads. “Age twenty. Dance major at Montclair Academy of the Arts. Just moved to New York a month ago. Lives in an off-campus apartment her father, surprise fucking surprise, bought for her in cash. No public records prior to this year. I had to hack into the restaurant footage and run a facial scan on her,” he explains. “Homeschooled her entire life prior to now. Hidden like a damn secret.”

He zooms in on her student ID.

“Only child,” he adds. “And yeah, she’s his child.”

I stare at the screen.

Dante whistles low. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

“She’s our leverage,” Ivy says, her voice rising. “We grab her, torture her, and send the clip to her father. The bastard will be crawling on his knees.”

“No,” I say immediately.

Everyone looks at me.

“Not yet,” I add. “You saw how long it took us to plan for tonight. Months of tracking his schedule just to get one shot, and I still missed.”

Maybe it’s how bitter my voice sounds, but Kai sighs. “Everybody makes mistakes once or twice. It’s as much my fault as you think it’s yours. I missed that he has a whole child.”

I nod, feeling slightly better. Ivy was right. Maybe it wasn’t meant to happen today.

“He’ll be more on guard now that he knows someone is after him. He’ll double his guards, her guards. He might even take her back to where he’s been hiding her all these years, and we don’t want that. She’s our only leverage. His only weakness. We need to find a way to slip in and get close to her without drawing suspicion.”

“He’ll send her back to Italy,” Kai says, “if he hasn’t already.”

“If he doesn’t, then he’ll find her a bodyguard or something,” Dante adds. “That’s what I’d do.”

A lightbulb goes off in my head.

“That’s it. That’s how I go in.”

Ivy glances at me with a frown. “Don’t tell me you’re thinking what I think you are.”

My mind is already racing with possibilities for how exactly I’ll carry out my revenge.

“I have to become her bodyguard.”