If The Seas Catch Fire(4)
And besides, he only committed murder under three circumstances. One, when it was a paid hit, because even for an independent contractor, saying no to the Mafia was a death sentence. Two, when he was in actual immediate danger. Three, when the mark needed to be removed from the Mafia chessboard so Sergei could push them all one body closer to extinction.
The goons technically hadn’t put him in immediate danger, but they posed a threat to Sergei and the handful of other hired guns in this town. They’d also seen his face. They’d brought Mafia business too close to where he conducted his business. They’d had to go.
That wasn’t to say his life as a stripper and his life as a contract killer never crossed. Quite the contrary—he had a very select group of contacts who met him at the club, and through a series of coded comments, gave him work that paid a hell of a lot more than making horny bankers pant. He deliberately handled his transactions there, hiding in plain sight. No one but his contacts ever saw his face, and none of the macho Mafia *s would ever suspect a sometimes flamboyant gay stripper of being the hitman equivalent of the boogey man. The assassin they told their children about when they wouldn’t behave.
What they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
And he wanted to get back to the club tonight, but he still had one more mess to clean up.
Sergei tilted the rearview down and studied the Italian’s still form. What little he could make out in the darkness, anyway. There was no telling exactly who the semiconscious Italian was. Well-dressed—that was not an off-the-rack suit—so he probably wasn’t just some random wise guy. Involved enough with La Cosa Nostra to take a ride in the trunk of a Cadillac and have his ass kicked in a back alley. But his name? His role? What he’d done to earn a beating like that? Anyone’s guess.
Sergei’s best bet was to let him go. Besides, the guy could be someone he actually wanted alive. Not that he wanted any Mafiosi alive, but some needed to keep breathing while Sergei continued pulling strings to move people into position within the families’ hierarchies. Once the dominoes were in a row, they’d all fall in good time, but for now, some of them needed to stay alive until the pieces were in place.
He opened the car door. “Time to go.”
The Italian groaned softly and struggled to sit up. Sergei helped him, and with some cursing and grunting, the wounded man made it out of the car.
Once he was on his feet, he leaned against the car, clutching his side. “Fuck…”
Sergei gave the man a quick down-up. This was the first chance he’d had to actually look at the guy, and surprisingly the Italian wasn’t one of the greasy, weathered *s he was used to seeing. Even with the blood and the bruises, he had a much prettier face than most of his kind. The streetlights picked out a few strands of silver in his otherwise jet black hair, but he couldn’t have been older than forty. Mid-thirties, maybe.
And he probably had that lightly tanned olive skin like the other Mafia scumbags, but between his sickly pallor and the blood and sweat glinting beneath the milky light, it was impossible to tell.
Sergei shook himself. “You need a hospital.”
The man spat blood on the pavement. “No f*cking hospitals.”
Stubborn idiot. Hospitals routinely called the cops when people came in with signs of assault and battery. When well-dressed Italians came in with signs of assault and battery? Nobody called nobody.
“You could be bleeding internally.”
“I’ll take my chances.” He shifted, wincing. “But I’d rather not stay out here.”
Sergei bit back some profanity in his native tongue. The less this guy knew about him, the better.
“Listen.” The Italian groaned, holding his side protectively. “If you’re gonna shoot me, just f*cking get it over with.”
“If I was going to shoot you, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. What’s your name?”
The Italian lifted his head enough to meet Sergei’s gaze. “Who wants to know?”
Sergei rolled his eyes. “The guy who’s going to decide whether you wake up tomorrow in a hospital, a jail cell, or a morgue.”
He blinked. “Domenico Maisano.”
Sergei’s blood turned cold and he muttered, “You’re shitting me.”
Maisano laughed, but then grimaced, and managed to croak, “You’ve heard of me.”
“Yeah. I have.” Sergei knew that name well. This guy was the nephew—more like adopted son—of Corrado Maisano himself, the boss of the powerful Maisano clan. A contractor like Sergei, who worked with all three of the big families, had to tread carefully. He had no way of knowing if he’d just interrupted a sanctioned hit, albeit a sloppily executed one. If it wasn’t sanctioned, and by some chance, someone figured out he’d been the one to finish the job, he’d bring the wrath of all three families down on his own head.
Son of a bitch. All he’d wanted to do was get all this crap away from the club so the cops wouldn’t come knocking on doors. Now he had Domenico f*cking Maisano on his hands.
“Can you walk or not?” he asked sharply.
The Italian groaned again. “I don’t… I don’t know.” He tried to take a step, but stumbled, and when Sergei caught him, the man gasped. “Fuck. That hurts.”
“You got a phone?”