(C) 2016 Pathforgers Publishing.

All Rights Reserved. If you downloaded an illegal copy of this book and enjoyed it, please buy a legal copy. Either way you get to keep the eBook forever, but you’ll be encouraging me to continue writing and producing high quality fiction for you. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imaginations. Any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, are entirely coincidental.

Cover Design by Michelle Keep. All cover art makes use of stock photography and all persons depicted are models. This book is intended for sale to Adult Audiences only.

All sexually active characters in this work are over 18 and all sexual activity is between non-blood related, consenting adults.

More information is available at Pathforgers Publishing

Content warnings: Violence, Mafia, Bad-boy, Hitman

Wordcount: 55,000 Words

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Thank you to my friends and fans. Without you, I'd have nothing. Special thanks to Joshua for being able to see me through the darkest days, being my editor / biggest fan, and making this book a reality.

Just one more hit, and the night is mine.

Of course, that’s easily said. But a hit is not always easy. It takes calm and composure when the world is chaos, when any one little thing can go wrong and send the whole mess spiralling out of control. It takes control over your actions, a steady hand, the death of anxiety, because worry does you in every time.

For those reasons, and more, amateurs tend to do a hit from far away. Or if they don’t have the equipment to snipe someone from a distance, they haul out a gun, fire like crazy, then run in a mad dash to get away.

I’ve never done a sloppy hit like that, not about to start now.

This guy I’m after is too good for that to work anyhow. He’s either always flanked by bodyguards, or in the middle of a crowd. I know this because I’ve been following him for weeks. Planning my move. He’s good, shakes things up, not much of a fixed schedule, but like all men with power, this guy has his vices. Vices he doesn’t even trust his own bodyguards to keep quiet.

For the third time this week, I walk behind him as he makes his way through a busy crowd down the street. This guy -- a trumped up millionaire from Florida who made his fortune selling coke to college kids, who enforced his reign by brutally beating punks who couldn’t pay, and is now here in my city, offing people left and right -- he deserves to die.

He’s balding, even though he’s only in his thirties. A life of constant paranoia will do that to you, stress you out. But at this point I’m just annoyed he’s dragged my ass around New York for weeks, doing my best to look inconspicuous, to blend in and not seem like I was watching. I’m sick of this shit stain, and ready to wipe him clean from the city.

So as he slipped out the back of the Italian mob owned deli and heads through the crowds down a side alley, I’m grateful.

I can finally end this.

But the alleyway is barely five car lengths long, a gun won’t do here. No, I have to go in personal.

My black shoes are shiny, fancy looking. But they’re quiet. And for a moment, we’re just two well-dressed men taking a shortcut to any passerby. But my window of opportunity is narrow.

My heart skips a beat, and it’s like time slows.

I’m gonna kill you, you son of a bitch.

But I can’t hurry. Smooth steps, my hand reaching into my charcoal grey coat. And out comes the knife. It doesn’t gleam, doesn’t glisten. This one is a dull colour, but sharp. So sharp.

I close in on my prey, but he’s a canny guy, and he detects me, his head twisting about.

But I’m better than him. And it’s too damn late anyhow.

His turn only helps me, and I grab him about the mouth, his cries silenced. Now I gotta end this fast, before some person on either side of the alleyway walks by and notices us.

My knife slices through the air, and while I know it’ll make a mess of my coat, that’s the price to pay. The other options are too risky. I could stab him in the chest, but then he could block me, and though he’s stocky and overweight, he might have hidden strength that could mess up my blade’s arc.

The throat? Fuck, that’s for amateurs. A killer like me knows when you slice a man’s throat open, it’s a noisy affair. Blood gurgling sounds would fill the alleyway, his dying cries drawing all sorts of attention.

So instead, I go for the heart. Right between two of his ribs I plunge that blade, and I sink into his left ventricle. I know it, because I’ve done it before. Because I can feel the way the blade moves through that muscular flesh of a man’s heart.

This thug tries to cry out, tries to struggle away, but my blade slices clear through the center of his heart and into the right atrium.

He’s done.

All that’s left to do is to shift his body beside the dumpster, into the pile of trash bags. I can’t rush, even though at this point every moment puts me at risk of being caught a murderer. I hold his mouth shut until he’s completely limp, then dump him among the garbage.

Just another piece of trash.

The knife’s no use to me now. I can never use it again, because it’d tie me to this killing, so I leave it in him. I look down and see that the blood spurt stained my grey overcoat, and that’s what I’d expected.

Two grand down the drain.

I slip the coat off me, casually, as if it was just getting too warm for it, and I carry on down the alleyway. I wrap the coat up with my gloves and dispose of both a few blocks down the road in a Salvation Army donation bin.

They’ll probably wash the evidence clean and sell it to someone in no time.

But I’m done now. Another cold kill finished.

I need a drink and a woman.