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I snake my other arm around his waist and haul him towards the alley's entrance, keeping the gun jammed up under his chin. He stumbles alongside me, too terrified to resist. I can feel the wild hammer of his heart where his back is pressed to my chest, the shallow rise and fall of his panicked breathing.
I've never been this close to a mark before, never felt the heat of their body or the drum of their pulse. It's strangely intimate, this forced proximity. Like cradling a bird in your hands, feeling the delicate bones and frantic heartbeat. Knowing you could crush it with one squeeze.
I guide him out of the alley and toward the sleek black Lexus idling by the curb, its engine a discreet purr. The car is as nondescript as they come, just another anonymous vehicle prowling the midnight streets. But like everything else in my world, its appearance is a carefully crafted lie.
I wrench open the rear door and shove the man inside, keeping my grip on his collar to prevent him from bolting. Not that he'd get far if he tried. Even if he managed to slip away from me, my uncle has eyes all over this city. There's nowhere he could run that we wouldn't find him.
I climb in after him, never letting the gun waver from its bead on his head. He scrabbles backwards across the buttery leather seat, putting as much distance between us as the confines of the car allow. Which isn't much.
I tap on the privacy screen and it lowers soundlessly, revealing Gio's profile as he sits at the wheel. My bodyguard and driver is a slab of solid muscle stuffed into a black suit, his shaved head gleaming in the glow of the dashboard. He flicks his eyes to the rearview mirror, taking in my disheveled passenger with a raised eyebrow.
"We got a problem, boss?" he asks, his gravelly voice carefully neutral.
"No problem," I say, my tone making it clear there's to be no further questions. "Just drive."
Gio nods once and puts the car in gear, pulling smoothly away from the curb. I settle back into the leather seat, keeping my eyes and my gun trained on the trembling man beside me. He's wedged himself into the far corner of the car, his arms wrapped around his knees like a child trying to make himself smaller. As if that could save him from what's coming.
"P-please," he whispers, his voice cracking on the word. Tears spill down his cheeks, catching on the fine stubble along his jaw. "Please d-don't hurt me."
I feel a flicker of something in my chest, a twinge that might almost be pity. I crush it ruthlessly, the way I was taught. The way I've always done. There's no room for mercy in my world, no place for soft emotions. They'll get you killed quicker than any bullet.
"Shut up," I tell him flatly. "I'm not going to hurt you."
Yet, my mind whispers. I shove the thought away, tightening my grip on the gun. The man flinches at my movement, a muffled whimper escaping him. He presses himself harder into the corner, as if he's trying to meld with the leather.
"W-what do you want from me?" he asks, his eyes darting from my face to the gun and back again. "I won't tell anyone, I swear to God. I didn't see a-anything!"
I let out a humorless chuckle, shaking my head. He really has no idea who he's dealing with, does he? If I had a dollar for every time some poor fucker pleaded the Fifth before I put a bullet in their brain, I'd be a very rich man.
"Sure you won't," I say, my tone dripping with sarcasm. "Just like you didn't see me ventilate that guy's skull back there, right?"
His face goes even whiter, his breath hitching in his throat. He looks like he might puke, his complexion taking on a distinct green tinge. I feel a flare of annoyance, my lip curling into a sneer. I'm a fucking hitman, not a nursemaid. If this civilian is going to spew, he'd better not get any on my fucking shoes.
The car purrs through the rain-slick streets, the glow of the streetlights painting the man's terrified face in alternating stripes of orange and shadow. I keep my gun on him, my eyes never leaving his face as I study him in the shifting light.
He's younger than I first thought, probably mid-twenties at most. Too old to be called a boy, but still soft in all the ways that men like me can never afford to be. His hair is the kind of artfully tousled that takes time and product to achieve, the curls just long enough to flirt with the collar of his t-shirt. He's got the kind of pretty, almost delicate features that some guys go for - all big eyes and full lips and high cheekbones.
Not my usual type, but then again, I'm not exactly in the market for a quick fuck right now. I'm just trying to figure out what the hell I'm going to do with him, this witness I should've capped the second I laid eyes on him.
The standard procedure for this kind of situation is simple: Take the liability out of play, make the body disappear, carry on with business as usual. I've done it more times than I can count, erased lives as easily as scuffing out a cigarette. It should be no different with this man, this insignificant speck who had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong fucking time.
But for some reason, my trigger finger feels frozen. Oh, I keep the gun leveled at his head like a good little murderer, but the cold calculation that usually flows through my veins has sputtered out. Looking into his guileless, brimming eyes, I feel a twinge of something perilously close to doubt.
It's fucking absurd. I'm Enzo Vitale, the most ruthlessly efficient killer in the Chicago Outfit. I've been putting bullets in skulls since I was old enough to wrap my fingers around a trigger. Mercy, compassion, doubt - these things should be foreign to me, burned out by years of blood and brutality.
And yet.
Those goddamn eyes bore into me, watery and pleading but still so fucking green. In their verdant depths, I catch a glimpse of something I haven't seen directed my way in a very long time. Maybe ever. Something that looks almost like hope.
Like this stranger, this trembling civilian with a dead man's blood splattered across his sneakers, is searching for some scrap of humanity in the monster holding him at gunpoint. As if he believes there's something in me worth appealing to, some faded shred of decency hidden beneath the designer suit and the cold steel of my .45.
It's laughable. It's fucking tragic. It punches the air from my lungs and chips at the ice encasing the withered lump of flesh I used to call a heart.
No one has ever looked at me like that. Like I'm something more than just a well-dressed nightmare, a boogeyman who stalks the wicked underbelly of the city. Even the women and men I take to bed avert their eyes when my clothes come off, unwilling or unable to meet the void in my gaze.
But not this man. Even with tears streaming down his face and my gun kissing his temple, he doesn't look away. He keeps those impossibly green eyes locked on mine, terror and revulsion and a guttering flicker of hope swimming in their depths.
It's the hope that undoes me. That hairline fracture in my ironclad resolve, the chink in the impenetrable armor of Enzo Vitale, mafia underboss and soulless killer.
