Page 83 of Inheritance

Toward Carolines’s room.

“There’s blood.”

No response, no acknowledgment.

I turned from him and followed the blood trail. My heels stuck faintly to the floor, the quiet tack of it almost deafening in the silence that had fallen over the house.

Her door was wide open and empty.

The curtains billowed gently in the breeze, the window thrown wide.

The sill was smeared with blood.

I stepped closer. My knees wanted to give out.

He’d come through here.

Whoever tried to kill Gabriel—whoever nearly succeeded—had climbed through Carolines’s window. The window I watched her leave partially open. The window I didn’t tell Gabriel she snuck out from to see Ivan.

The realization came slow, cold.

Cautiously, I leaned out the window.

Below, sprawled awkwardly in the hedges beneath the climbing vines, was the gunman. A mess of blood. His legs were bent the wrong way. Two of Gabriel’s men stood over the body, looking up at me as sirens wailed in the distance.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

“Hide his body,” I commanded. “And you, get up here and clean up this blood.”

They didn’t move. The sirens grew louder.

“Now!” I shrieked.

Gabriel

The cops only knew the Don was dead. The ones on our payroll gave me their condolences and left. The Feds didn’t, but they arrived hours after my father was zipped up in a bag and carried away, so we ignored their pounding at the door and their empty threats.

I had showered my father’s blood away. Drank more than I thought was possible. Smoked every cigarette and cigar I could find.

It was time to get to work.

The assassin’s body lay in front of me on the table—mangled and stiff. I didn’t recognize him. No tattoos. No markings. Just a face that meant nothing and everything.

His belongings were neatly arranged beside him: one handgun, a crumpled piece of paper with an address. No phone. No wallet. No name.

The folded body bag still sat unopened on the floor, waiting.

“No phone, no wallet. Just the note and the gun. That’s all he had on him,” Damien said.

“Have some men check every inch of the woods,” I replied. “He must’ve had a bag stashed. He came in light.”

“They’re already looking,” Damien muttered.

“Good.”

I turned to him. His eyes were red. Pupils like pinpricks. Jaw tight. Shoulders tense but sagging.

“What are you on?” I asked.