CHAPTER ONE
LEON
Everything went wrong the night I came face to face with Sofia Accardo.
Let me back up and explain why a mob princess’s first impression of me was a pistol aimed at her pretty face. First off, I wasn’t a nice guy. I went to the penthouse in Manhattan as a hired gun, paid to kill. I wasn’t humble, either. The name was Leon MacCarrick, third-generation American Irish, born and bred in New York City and proud of it. I was the best independent wet-work guy for the Sartini Family. An assassin, if you needed a fancier word than “hitman.” A killer, to put it bluntly. And I didn’t like to mince words.
My arrangement with the Sartini Family was simple. They hired me when they needed rivals offed and problems fixed with untraceable solutions. Or at least untraceable back to them. I always dealt with one of their capos in particular—a made guy named Freddy Russo. I wasn’t a made man and never would be. You had to be Italian to go full omertà. And the Irish mafia? They don’t do things that way, with secret ceremonies and making your bones and all that noise. Besides, New York wasn’t Boston, and the Italians ruled New York City. Always had. Probably always would.
I kept to the code all the same. Keep secrets; never snitch. Don’t kill civilians—which meant anyone not involved in the life was off limits—and especially important: never hurt women and children.
That was a problem because Sofia Accardo was very much a woman and very much inside the Manhattan penthouse where I’d been paid to assassinate everyone inside. So, yeah, everything went wrong the instant I kicked in her bedroom door and found myself aiming down the gunsights into the warm brown eyes of Sofia Accardo.
Accardo. I knew the name all too well. And I hated it.
The Accardo Family was one of the five mafia families of New York. According to rumors, they were even richer than the Sartini syndicate. Years back, the boss of the family, Giovanni Accardo, sent down orders to have my older brother killed.
Cal had been in the ground for almost a decade, but I hadn’t forgotten him or forgiven the man who’d ordered his death. None of the surviving MacCarrick clan had forgotten. Now I had a gun aimed in the pretty face of Sofia Accardo, the daughter of the man who’d had my big brother whacked.
“Who are you?” Her voice trembled, but there was no screaming, no crying. The shock on her face and the fear in those gorgeous eyes was easy to read, but she stared right at me. Looked straight into my eyes, not at the barrel of the gun in her face.
Slowly, I lowered the gun. She was unarmed and no threat. I glanced around the room before replying to make certain she was alone.
The penthouse master bedroom was luxurious and feminine. The open blinds gave a stunning view of the lights and buildings of West New York across the Hudson River.
No one else was in the room. That was good. It meant Sofia was the last person alive in the penthouse. I’d already killed the two men with silenced shots to the head as they ate in the kitchen. They were Accardo soldiers acting as bodyguards, both of them armed. These made guys or associates—I wasn’t sure which—made sloppy bodyguards. They’d never seen me coming.
I turned my attention back to Sofia. She was a few years younger than me. Maybe twenty-five, twenty-six. High cheekbones. Delicate eyebrows. Brown eyes a shade darker than the hair pulled back in a pony tail. Olive complexion. She looked a little like an Italian Audrey Hepburn. Prettier than I wanted to deal with, anyway. Attractive women who knew how beautiful they were always turned out to be a royal pain in the ass. Sofia had full lips, which I liked, but none of that Botox stuff that never turned me on. Too exaggerated. Like fake boobs. And what the fuck was I thinking of right now, in the middle of a job? Fake boobs? Shit, I needed to get myself squared away and focus on what was important.
Such as how this woman had said only three words to me and already she was a fucking problem.
I locked eyes with her again. She stared back with fear bordering on panic in those big, dark eyes… I’d never admit it, but seeing that terror in her eyes made me feel like a monster, and I didn’t like it.
“Who else is here?” I had to be certain I hadn’t missed anyone or that someone wasn’t on the way back from a trip to the nearest mini-market. I had an ulterior motive too. I wanted to see if she would lie to me.
“Just me, Jimmy, and Anthony,” she answered with a tremble in her voice that I didn’t blame her for.
No lies, then. Good. That would keep things simple if she kept it up. I’d already cleared the rest of the penthouse rooms and killed her two guards. Unless someone was hiding in her closet, the two of us were the last here.
“What do you want?” she asked when I took too long to say anything else. Her voice had gained a little strength. “Are you going to hurt me?”
“I should.” The cold menace in my tone made her flinch. She took a step back from me, but she didn’t run for the door. That was also good. I didn’t want to hurt her, even to keep her under control.
Shit. Why hadn’t I worn a mask? That way, she couldn’t have identified me even if I strolled out of here and left her breathing. If Freddy Russo had been in front of me right now, I would’ve punched that son of a bitch in the face for keeping this key info from me. It didn’t matter if Freddy was a Sartini capo or not. After I extricated myself from this fucking mess, the two of us were going to have words.
Sofia looked at the gun in my hand. The pistol was a HK45 Compact Tactical with a sound suppressor screwed onto the barrel. It fired .45 ACP rounds. I wasn’t aiming at her anymore, but a muscle in her cheek twitched as she swallowed hard. Her throat made a clicking noise, and her hands were clenched. I was sure she was trying to hide them from me because they were shaking.
She was a hell of a lot braver than I’d expected any spoiled rich spawn of a mob boss to be. Her eyes were intelligent, no matter how afraid she might be, and she clearly realized this wasn’t a good situation.
But she had no damn idea just how bad it was.
Two days ago, Freddy Russo met me in a bowling alley in Newark and gave me this job. Freddy handed over the penthouse address and told me that word had come down from on high. Everyone in the place needed to be silenced. Twenty grand was my cut. A third upfront, everything else after the job was done.
Since the pay was better than usual, I figured this was something the Sartinis didn’t want connected to them. Either that or they didn’t believe their usual triggermen could pull off.
Now I knew which of those two possibilities was the right one. The Sartini Family didn’t want to be connected to the murder of Don Giovanni’s daughter. I had no idea why they’d want Sofia dead because that violated all kinds of Commission rules and was likely to start a war.
There was clearly more to this I didn’t know, but the sweet money offer had been honey to lure me in. I knew who Sofia was, and someone in the Sartini Family was betting I’d gun her down because of the bad blood between my family and hers.
