Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 79833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
He opens his mouth, but no sound comes out. His lips flap like a fish on dry ground.
I nod at my men. Four each grab an arm and a leg, spread-eagling him.
“Front or back, Kearney?” I ask, straightening. “On which side are we holding you down?”
Before he can utter a word, Giorgio lifts his knife and stabs it right into the center of Kearney’s chest.
My men jump back.
“What the fuck, Giorgio?” one of them says.
A series of maniacal blows follows as Giorgio loses his shit and stabs the man on the bed until his upper body is a punctured mess covered by strips of blood-drenched silk.
We all stand there, shellshocked and splattered with blood.
His chest heaving from the exertion, Giorgio stumbles when he stands upright. He wipes a forearm over his brow, smearing blood over his face.
“Fuck,” someone says.
Giorgio spits on the corpse. “Nobody fucking messes with us.” He turns to the men. “Wreck the house. Take everything that’s valuable. We have to make it look like a robbery.”
With that, he walks from the room, almost tripping over his own feet.
The men look at me, waiting.
“Do it,” I say, gnashing my teeth.
We don’t have a choice now.
They jump into action. One starts in the bedroom, going through the closets, while the others spread out through the house.
I hold back the last one before he walks through the door. “Get some gasoline from the garage. Empty the gas tank of the car if you must.”
He nods, knowing what he must do.
We can’t risk leaving any evidence.
When that’s out of the way, I go after Giorgio and find him on the front lawn smoking a cigarette.
I slap the cigarette out of his mouth, sending him back two steps. “What the fuck happened in there?”
He smiles. “You’re getting soft, De Luca.”
I shove my finger in his face. “You’re getting fucking reckless.”
He mocks me with that smile. “I did what my father wanted us to do.”
“Your father didn’t want to shine a big fucking spotlight on us, and that’s exactly what you just did.”
He shrugs. “We had to make an example of Kearney. That’s how it works.”
Then he shoves his hands in his pockets and saunters away.
Bristling, I pick up his cigarette and dial the team leader, who’s waiting by the cars, with instructions.
Glass explodes somewhere.
I lift my head. Orange flames lick through the bedroom window. The smoke detectors won’t go off seeing that my guy is still overriding the system that’s connected to the alarm, but the neighbors may notice the blaze once it reaches the roof.
I count the men as they leave the house. When the last one is out, we jog along the path with the stolen goods and cut across the beach. The tide is coming in. In the next few minutes, it’ll wash away any prints we leave in the sand. From there, we swim through the sea until we’re close to the cars.
We strip in the shallow water. One of my men already waits with a plastic bag to collect our clothes and shoes. Another hands out towels, sweatpants, hoodies, and one-size-fits-all plastic swimming shoes. While we dress, the team leader sorts through the loot from Kearney’s house. He puts all the jewelry and waterproof electronics in a bag and throws the rest in the sea. We split up, me heading to an abandoned site to burn the clothes and the others back to the city. The leader will drop the stolen goods under some bridge in a shady part where they will quickly disappear. I take Giorgio with me, not trusting the fucker to go straight home.
He sits next to the fire in a dripping puddle with water running from his hair and down his back, staring into the flames while I do the work. I wait until everything is more or less ashes, which is difficult since it’s wet, and pull on a pair of protective gloves and rubber boots before I pour acid over the lot. Giorgio buries his face in his forearm, choking on the fumes.
When it’s done, I haul him up by his arm and manhandle him to the car. We drive in silence to Luigi’s place. I had to inform him about what had gone down before destroying the burner phones.
Luigi paces in the library when we arrive. He hobbles over to us, leaning heavily on his cane, and backhands Giorgio hard enough to make his head fly to the side.
“Fucking idiot,” Luigi sneers. He stabs a finger on his temple. “Do you have any braincells in there?”
“I got rid of the evidence,” I say.
Giorgio did what he did. It’s too late to change it. I don’t believe in wasting energy. The only course of action is damage control.
Giorgio glares at his father. “I did it for you. It should make you proud.”