Chapter 3 - Blood on the Ledger
By the end of the week, my life had completely unraveled and rewoven itself into a terrifying new pattern. I was no longer just serving whiskey to wealthy criminals at the Brass Lantern; I was standing three feet behind Vincent Kelletti at high-stakes poker games, underground auctions, and clandestine warehouse meetings in the dead of night.
Dominic Vale hated my guts.
He didn't trust me, he resented that Vincent had bypassed his security recommendations to hire a twenty-four-year-old waitress, and he made no secret of it.
"She's a liability, Vince," Dominic muttered as we stood in the dimly lit subterranean parking garage beneath Kelletti headquarters on a rainy Thursday night. "You're bringing a civilian into the inner circle because she knows how to throw a punch?"
"She didn't just throw a punch, Dominic, she disarmed you without blinking," Vincent replied without looking up from his phone as we waited for his armored town car to pull around. "And unlike half the men on your payroll, she isn't on anyone's payroll but mine."
Before Dominic could fire back, the air snapped.
Crack.
A silenced bullet ricocheted off the concrete pillar two inches from my left ear, showering my cheek with fine concrete dust.
Instinct took over before thought could interfere. I grabbed Vincent by the lapels of his suit jacket and threw him hard behind the reinforced concrete column, dropping low to the ground myself just as a second round shattered the driver’s side mirror of the approaching car.
"Sniper!" I yelled, scanning the upper catwalks of the parking garage. "Level three, eastern stairwell door!"
Dominic drew his Glock, but he was exposed in the open lane. "Get down, you idiot!" he roared at me.
"Cover my flank!" I snapped back, darting out from behind the pillar toward the rusted metal stairs before either of them could stop me.
Adrenaline roared in my ears, drowning out the ambient hum of the city. This wasn't a ring with padded canvas and a referee; this was concrete, lead, and survival. I hit the first flight of stairs at a dead sprint, taking three steps at a time, my boots ringing against the iron grating.
At the landing of level three, the heavy fire door was swinging slowly outward.
I flattened my back against the concrete wall beside the frame. A silhouette stepped out into the stairwell—a tall man in a black tactical hoodie, holding a suppressed Sig Sauer pistol, scanning the ground floor for Vincent.
I didn't hesitate.
As he turned his head toward the stairs, I lunged forward, slamming the barrel of his gun upward with my left palm while driving a devastating, short-range right hook straight into his solar plexus.
The assassin gasped, his breath evacuating in a violent rush. Before he could recover, I swept his legs out from under him with a textbook judo trip, sending him crashing hard onto the concrete landing. The pistol clattered out of his grip, sliding down the metal stairs.
I pinned him by pressing my knee into his chest and grabbing his collar. "Who sent you? Was it the board? Was it the Russians?"
The man coughed up blood, grinning up at me with yellowed teeth. "You're... you're too late... the package is already—"
Suddenly, a heavy footstep echoed behind me.
I whipped around, ducking instinctively as a heavy blackjack swung inches over my head. Dominic Vale stood at the top of the stairwell, lowering his weapon, his eyes wide with grudging shock as he looked at the unconscious assassin pinned beneath me.
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Vincent appeared behind Dominic a second later, breathing heavily, straightening his jacket. He looked down at the man, then up at me. There was no arrogance left in his expression—only absolute, calculating awe.
"Well," Vincent said quietly, stepping over the assassin's legs. "I'd say you're worth every penny of that waitress salary, Cassidy."
