Chapter 2 - The Ghost of the Past
The heavy brass handle of the closet door clicked.
Time seemed to stop. I looked at the gun in Elena’s hand, then into her dark, terrifyingly calm eyes. My mind raced through decades of violence, trying to place her face among the widows, the orphans, the collateral damage of my rise to power.
“The Vargas family,” Elena breathed, barely a whisper as the door began to crack open. “Twelve years ago. You ordered the hit. But you explicitly told your men: no women, no children.”
My blood turned to ice. I remembered the night perfectly. It was the strike that cemented my rule.
“Marcus didn’t listen,” Elena continued, stepping in front of me, raising the barrel of her pistol. “He wanted to prove he was as ruthless as you. He killed my mother in front of me. I spent three years scrubbing your floors, waiting for the perfect moment to put a bullet in your head.”
The closet door swung open. A heavily armed man stepped into the darkness, his rifle raised.
Thwip. Thwip.
Elena didn't even flinch. Two suppressed rounds struck the man directly in the chest. I moved on pure, dormant instinct, catching his falling body before it could crash into the shelving. I lowered him silently to the carpet and stripped the heavy Glock 19 from his tactical holster.
I racked the slide.
“Marcus figured out who I was yesterday,” Elena whispered, stepping over the dead man. “He told me to leave the back gates unlocked tonight, or he would finish what he started twelve years ago. He thought I’d let you die to save myself.”
I looked at the woman I had ignored for three years. She wasn’t a maid. She was a predator who had just spent a thousand days patiently studying my every move, and now, she was handing me back my life.
“You want him?” I asked, my voice dropping to a gravelly, lethal register.
May you like
Elena’s eyes flashed with a cold, unholy fire. “I want him to know it was me.”
“Then let’s clean house,” I said.
