Page 2 of Intense (Beneath The Blaze #3)

FINN

Present day…

Song- Psycho Killer, Talking Heads

T aking another drag of my cigarette, I lean on the railing. Eyes fixed on the target.

Currently he’s on floor ten of this high-rise. Doing some kind of home workout in his boxers.

Blinds up. Lights on. Fucking idiot.

You never know who is watching you from the shadows.

Should I let him finish working out or dancing? Whatever the fuck he’s doing, before I kill him?

I often wonder about my last moments. I’d want mine to be with my brothers, drinking a beer in Dublin. Not prancing around in my boxers at midnight on a Wednesday, trying to burn some calories, like this asshole is.

I check the time on my Rolex.

Go to fucking bed, buddy. I have a life to get on with.

“Are we going in yet?” Rowan asks from beside me.

“Not yet.”

“What, are we letting him finish his routine?” Reggie, Rowan’s identical twin brother, grunts from the other side of me.

I used to work mainly on my own. But these two dipshits have become like the extended family I didn’t ask for. And they’re exactly as you’d expect of Irish twins. Reggie is the serious one, and Rowan, the batshit crazy one.

“Yeah. I need him asleep for what I have planned this time.”

“Right,” Reggie says.

Their preferred method of killing is more of a spectacle. Brutish. Mine? More methodical. Evil. I’ve spent years training to save lives, but it’s also meant I can perfect the most painful deaths.

And these cunts deserve it.

Flicking my cigarette into the water, I stand, securing my flat cap.

“Does he seem like a mafia boss to you? Or a leader of any kind?” I ask the twins, already knowing the answer.

Something seems off.

Rowan frowns, looking back up at the dancing man in the window.

“Not really?”

“Hmm.”

Drago, our hacker and man behind the scene, is certain this is our last target. Following on from my brother, Conan’s, Decadence Chase, we have located and killed the first eight targets easily. But this one was fucking hard to find and landed us in Ohio of all places.

“You think it’s not him?”

I grunt.

“He is the man who entered Abigail.”

But is he The Preacher? The man Abigail warned me about as she set off for her new life.

“He will never let me go. He’s evil. I’m not safe in the United States.” That’s what she told me, breaking down into hysterics. Enzo has contacts in Italy, so we made an agreement with him to have her sent to Italy to live.

But her words have bothered me ever since. ‘The Preacher’ didn’t appear on any of her paperwork. We can’t find shit about him.

She showed me her brand, the italic PR carved into her forearm. That fear in her eyes—it was real. As I look up at this balding, dancing man, I know it ain’t the leader of whatever organization she was a part of. Something deep in my bones tells me it’s something far bigger.

“What you thinking, Finn?” Reggie asks.

“That, we have to make sure this death doesn’t come back to us. I’m not sure about this place.”

I rub my stubble on my jaw. I got a bad feeling about this, and I never ignore my gut. I did that once, and that ended up killing me at age ten.

I shake my head, not wanting to remember that time of my life. I buried it with them.

Rowan nudges me. “Hey, the light’s gone off.”

I shoot him a look, warning him not to touch me. It makes my skin fucking burn. Only my brothers can get away with it, but only just barely.

He takes a step back.

I keep my eyes fixed on the building, watching my prey, waiting to pounce. When the lights don’t turn back on, I know it’s time.

A buzz spreads through my body. This is my true calling in life.

“Remember the rules. You stay outside and keep watch, just let me do my job, aye?” I flick my eyes between the twins.

Rowan grins. “Yeah, yeah. We know, Dr. Finn.”

In the thick of the night, we make our way to the building, and I slip on my leather gloves and pull down my hat.

“How the fuck we getting in?” Reggie asks as I approach the keypad.

Pulling out the white card from my jacket pocket, I hold it between my fingers and roll my eyes at Reggie.

“While you two were busy stuffing your faces with burgers, I was being productive.”

I slipped it out from one of the resident’s pockets while having an exchange with them about what kind of fucking horse I should buy next for my nonexistent ranch.

Swiping the card, the door clicks and I push it open, heading straight for the elevator. We squeeze inside. All three of us are bulky and over 6’3”.

“Well, this is cozy,” Rowan chuckles.

“I heard you two sleep in the same fuckin’ bed still?” I tease, arching a brow.

Reggie sighs.

“Jesus fucking Christ. We don’t fuck each other, that would be disgusting. We simply fuck the same woman. Our dicks do not touch,” Reggie clarifies.

“Yeah, I don’t even look at his cock!” Rowan exclaims.

I chuckle.

“Great. Thanks for clarifying. So you prefer the Eiffel Tower situation?”

They both shrug.

“Lots of different positions we can use,” Reggie tells me, deadpan.

I’ve had my fair share of threesomes. Normally with two women, though. And never, ever, with one of my brothers. But the twins, the dynamic? Reggie the dominant, scary one, and Rowan the cheeky, probably sub. I can see why women are into it.

“Who has the bigger dick?” I bite back a grin.

I know this whole sharing thing is a joke between us all and that it riles them up, particularly our grumpy Reggie.

“Me,” they say in unison.

“I know for a fact, identical twins doesn’t always mean dick size. I’m a doctor, remember?”

Rowan rolls his eyes. That makes me clench my fists.

“Fine. Reggie has a bigger dick, lengthwise. Only just. Mine is girthier. And pierced.”

My own cock shrivels up. Ouch. I have a freakishly high pain threshold, but that doesn’t extend to my cock.

The elevator pings open on the tenth floor, and I rush out. I don’t particularly want to be thinking about them two fucking someone while I kill a man.

The twins get into position on either side of the door, and I start to pick at the lock, jabbing the metal into the hole until it clicks.

“See ya on the other side, fuckers,” I whisper to them.

The room is silent as I step inside, closing the door behind me. It’s modest. Clean. Boring. Only confirming my suspicions. This is not The Preacher. Merely one of his lackeys.

But Enzo wants him dead, so Luke Taylor will be dead. Rules are rules. Any man who enters a woman into our Decadence games dies. Luke entered Abigail into Conan’s Chase. So here I am, like I am for every kill.

They enter these women thinking it gives them a chance to become part of the elite in the mafia world. Little do they realize, all it does is send me into their homes in the middle of the night to kill them. Poetic in a way. They do get a new life, just in hell.

I wait, leaning against the doorframe to his bedroom. He’s sprawled across his mattress, mouth slack with sleep, a faint wheeze rattling in his throat. Pathetic. I stand there a moment, taking him in—how ordinary he looks, how easy it is to end a life that once thought itself untouchable.

Because he did believe that, that’s why he tried to use Abigail, his damn girlfriend, as a sacrifice to get a ticket in to Inferno.

I draw the syringe from my pocket. Rocuronium. It’s rapid and reliable. I step beside him, my gloved hand presses against his jaw, tilting his head just so. He doesn’t even stir when the needle breaks skin, only exhales a sleepy sigh as if he senses nothing.

But he will.

I watch the seconds count down in my mind, my pulse steady. When the drug takes hold, it’s not like he jolts awake. No, it’s subtler. His eyes flutter, then widen with a clarity I savor. I relish this part.

He tries to draw in a breath, but the muscles refuse him. I hear it—the hitching, the ragged choke of air caught somewhere he can’t reach.

I know what this feels like, being so vulnerable at the hands of someone more powerful than you and not being able to do a single thing about it.

I kneel beside the bed, my face inches from his. I want him to see me. To know.

“You’re still here,” I murmur, my voice low, almost kind. “That’s the curse of this one. Fully awake. Nothing you can do.”

I tap his cheek and grin.

His pupils blow wide, fixed on mine. His chest jerks in shallow spasms, diaphragm locked in paralysis. I can feel the panic rolling off him. He tries to scream, but there’s no sound. Only that wet, futile rattle.

Air hunger. The most primal terror there is.

I rest a hand over his sternum, feeling the weak flutter beneath. He’s drowning in the open air, and I am the only witness. His heartbeat thunders, then falters. His lips go purple. His eyes, pleading for a mercy I don’t possess.

I slit his throat with a single, clean stroke.

A ritual more than a necessity—a small mercy, I suppose.

And I make sure to do it while the heart is still pumping so the arterial blood splashes across the sheets, stark against the dull beige.

I work quickly, pressing the fentanyl patch to his skin, letting the overdose soak in. Insurance for the coroner’s report.

And for good measure, I give him matching slices across his wrists, leaving the blade in his limp hand.

I stand back to admire my work. There’s an elegance in this artistry.

He never really knew how close death had been. Not until it was too late to beg. Not that it would have helped his cause.

I don’t believe in second chances.