Prologue
The Castro, San Francisco
He slipped into the club through the alley door.
The throbbing music vibrated through his body, adding to the nervous tension already flowing through his limbs. He made his way down a dark hallway that smelled like stale beer and sex, keeping his eyes trained on the flashing lights coming from the main room.
He stepped inside the cavernous warehouse filled with sweaty, writhing bodies swaying to the heavy beat. Disco lights overhead gave flashes of body parts. A sliver of a white smile. A shimmer of a sequined blouse. A slice of red-painted lips.
He paused in the doorway to gain his bearings. Then he turned so his back was to the masses and quickly checked his phone. The find your phone app he’d hacked into and modified revealed his target was across the dance floor against the far wall.
The area to his right harbored a bar where bored bartenders might remember his face. To his left was where the DJ and his two cronies had set up their gear. Both areas flanking the dance floor were well lit—the brightest spots in the club. He doubted anybody would give him a second glance, but just in case, he would take the most direct route—straight across the crowded dance floor.
He knew he was justifying his actions. He knew that what he really wanted was the electric spark from brushing up against so many bodies. A crowded dance floor was an excuse to have his flesh pressed up against someone else’s—someone who would never allow that to happen in any other situation.
It had been a long time since he’d had to pay for that kind of skin-on-skin contact—after all, now he had a regular girl who wanted it as badly as he did—but that didn’t mean he took it for granted.
The anticipation of what he was about to do also filled him with a special energy—a burst of adrenaline and endorphins that made him feel invincible. The smell of perfume and deodorant mingling with body odor, the flashing lights and bodies undulating, and the bone-rumbling beat of the deafening music seeped into every fiber of his being. It was intoxicating and made him feel electric.
He wove through the mass of unwashed bodies, inhaling deeply as he brushed by each one. He had nearly reached the edge of the dance floor when he spotted his target. A mop of curly black hair blended into the dark wall behind the young man. The target’s head was bent down over a bright phone screen, fingers tapping away.
Keeping his eye on the target, he stepped clear of dance floor and made his way to the wall. The target didn’t notice him. Soon, he was standing directly beside the young man, who didn’t look up from the screen or seem to register the new presence beside him.
Without looking directly at the target, he scanned the people nearby including the dance floor crowd a few feet away. Nobody was watching. Nobody cared.
Inside his deep coat pocket, his fingers clenched and unclenched around the knife’s smooth handle. He was about to take the knife out when a woman approached from the dance floor.
Her hair was damp around her face from dancing, small tendrils sticking to her temple. She wore a black strip of fabric as a skirt and a tight, red tee-crop top that hugged her curves and revealed a tight and tanned abdomen. Her eyes were huge orbs and her lips full under a regal, Roman nose.
Two leopard-print sandals with stiletto heels dangled from her fingertips where she held them by their straps.
“Excuse me?” Her voice was nearly inaudible against the throbbing music. The young man didn’t look up. She tried again, impatiently tossing her hair. “Hello? Excuse me?”
Her sleek thighs were inches away from him, but the target didn’t notice her until she nudged him with her knee, her bare leg touching his thick jeans.
When the young man looked up, his eyes grew wide.
She said something else. He gave her a blank look. She leaned down near his ear and shouted, “Can I put my sandals under your chair while I dance?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. She tucked the sandals under his seat, straightened, and was gone. The young man stared after her for a second and then dipped his head back down to the phone.
The man clutched the knife again, relieved that his were the sort of looks that rendered him nearly invisible to women like that. He’d been less than a foot away, and she’d never even given him a glance. If she had, her gaze wouldn’t have lingered on him. He didn’t mind. It was his super power.
It was how he was able to do what he did so well.
And now it was time for him to implement that art, to employ his expertise.
He leaned over slightly and jabbed the knife into the back of the target’s neck in one smooth gesture, severing the spinal cord at the brain stem. The blade went in so deeply that his fingers on the handle touched skin. He gave one expert tug on the knife to extract it and then quickly stuck it back in his large pocket. The victim’s head slumped forward. He pushed it back so it rested on the wall behind them.
It was a lethal technique that had taken him years to perfect.
It involved plunging the knife between the vertebrae, cutting through the disc to sever the spinal cord. The person didn’t die instantaneously but would effectively seem dead, unable to move or speak for the few seconds they remained alive.
It took strength, along with skill. His daily regimen of pullups had served him well.
Only now, after several successful kills in less public settings, was he confident that he could pull off this type of killing in such a public arena.
With hooded eyes, he surveyed the rest of the room. He didn’t find a single pair of eyes that met his and nobody quickly looked away.
He stepped three feet forward onto the dance floor and became one with the writhing mass of sweaty humanity.
CHAPTER ONE
The Tenderloin, San Francisco
The sky to the east was just blushing pink when I drained the dregs from my coffee mug and stood, turning around as I stretched so I could also take in the view from my rooftop terrace.
To my right, the skyscrapers in downtown San Francisco no longer glowed in the dark, but were morphing into tall, gray monoliths slowly being swallowed by the fog bank rolling in. Behind me, a few miles away, lay the Pacific Ocean, stretching to what felt like infinity. Soon, the fog devoured even the sun. My rooftop perch was transformed into a shadowy, shrouded oasis.
In the silence of the morning, I went through my daily ritual. I counted my blessings, saying what I was grateful for out loud. Each day, I named at least five things. It rarely varied. The first three were the same every day: My boyfriend James. My dog Django. Rosalie.
I wasn’t sure how to categorize Rosalie.
The seven-year-old who lived with us was a special blessing. But I never knew how to refer to her. When I introduced her to others, I simply said, “And this is Rosalie.”
Nobody asked for clarification. And I wouldn’t have given any. It was complicated.
What could I say? This child is the daughter of the most powerful cartel boss in the world? She lives with us because she has nobody else? I will kill anyone who tries to take her away from me?
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
