Page 1 of Kill Shot

The Eye of an Artist

Nico

Nicolas Gutierrez leaned back on his stool and frowned at the canvas. Hours of laboring over the easel had yielded yet another disaster of a painting, ruined by the ugly shit in his head.

What was supposed to be a calm city nightscape had turned into a violent depiction of his inner chaos. And, as usual, he never caught the shift until it was too late.

He loved painting, but God, he hated it just as much.

With a sigh, he dropped the brush, wiped his hands on a paint-caked rag, and started pacing the room.

This was always the problem with stakeouts. When you had to wait around for something to happen, you had to find ways to occupy yourself. Give him too much of that, and agitation crept in fast. Then the itch to paint soon followed.

This shitty apartment didn’t help, either.

Nico scanned the small living room, hating everything about the place.

It was cramped and barren, with a single grimy window at the end of the hall that barely let in enough light to cut through the gloom.

The longer he sat in this place, the more the walls pressed in on him. Like they knew he didn’t belong there.

Fortunately, he only needed to camp out here for a few more days. At least if everything went according to plan.

Peering out the window, Nico checked to make sure that the line of SUVs was still dominating the street below.

Sure enough, the Diamond Brotherhood’s hired guns were still watching over their precious little heir.

What a joke.

Word was that the brat was working on some research paper, poking around the neighborhood to interview tenants like it meant something.

There was a particular one the boy seemed to like.

Caroline. An old lady living across from Nico’s building with all four generations of her family in a single unit.

Nico huffed, shaking his head. A bead of sweat trickled down his neck, gliding over tan skin inked in tattoos.

This really had to be the fucking joke of the century. With his daddy’s money, the kid could’ve just thrown fat donations at whatever bleeding-heart nonprofit he wanted. That would’ve done more good, no? So what was he trying to prove, exactly? Pretending to care? Playing poor for a day?

That boy would never work a real job in his life. Pablo Altamirano would see to that.

Qué pinche desperdicio . What a damn waste. Clearly, the kid got his brains from his mother—if he got any at all.

Nico checked his watch. They should be getting ready to leave right about now. Even if the spoiled brat didn’t want to leave his charity work, his bodyguards wouldn’t let him linger.

Nico resumed his pacing once more, in dire need of an outlet for his energy. Painting obviously hadn’t worked, hadn’t even come close to clearing his mind.

Fuck. Just a little longer, and he’d finally make them bleed for what they did. Just a little longer.

Revenge wasn’t some vague idea anymore. It was right there, pulsing under his skin, just within reach.

It had been two decades since Pablo Altamirano and his Diamond Brotherhood ripped everything from him. They’d painted the walls of his uncle’s house with the blood of his mother, his sisters, his tío, and anyone else unlucky enough to be under that roof.

They’d turned that home into a slaughterhouse, with bodies strewn across the compound like trash. And for what?

If it was a statement Pablo and his Diamond Brotherhood wanted to make, if it was for territory and power, there were other ways to do that than trying to erase an entire bloodline.

His uncle had been more than just blood, he’d been a father and a protector, the only real family Nico had known. And they’d butchered him like an animal.

His mother. His sisters. All of them. Gone.

Nico had only lived because he’d passed out in the laundry room with the door shut, curled beneath piles of fresh sheets after playing too hard that night.

If he hadn’t fallen asleep there, or had stayed up in his room like he was supposed to, he’d have been one more cooling corpse for the cleanup crew.

He was twelve years old then. Innocent and happy. He’d gone to sleep with sticky fingers from candy and a belly full of arroz con leche. Only to wake up to a massacre.

What a fucking story, huh? Vaya, qué pinche historia, ?no?

But now? Now the wheel was turning.

He exhaled slowly, forcing his heartbeat down. Rage wouldn’t help—not yet. He needed to be patient. After all, he’d spent all this time waiting and preparing, securing all the resources he’d need to go against Pablo Altamirano. A few more days wouldn’t change a damn thing.

This was only the beginning. Just the first step in a long, brutal game of vengeance.

It would start with the son, then he would ruin the father as well.

He would make Pablo Altamirano watch his legacy rot. Just like Nico had watched his whole world burn.

Everything would be as painful as humanly possible.

There was no other option.

Once more, Nico looked at his painting of a severed head drenched in crimson oil paint, and an even deeper surge of disgust welled within him.

What a vile thing it was.

He would be better suited to painting dismembered corpses and scenes of horror than anything idyllic, but for the life of him, he had no idea why he thought he could be a Claude Monet. He kept trying to delude himself, and he knew it.

No matter what he tried, his brutish thoughts always intruded. He didn’t want to portray such gruesome emotions so vividly, but he never had a waking moment when his mind was not consumed by such thoughts. How could he not put them to paper when he lost himself in the art?

For just a moment, he allowed himself to imagine a future where he might be able to paint with a clear and peaceful mind. He pictured a world where he could sit down in the sunlight, sketch out his thoughts, and end up with a pleasant scene of a sleeping family or a breathtaking glimpse of nature.

He would love it. He would love it very much if his mind could just stop for a second and paint the beautiful New York skyline at sunset.

But reality came crashing in as he looked outside and saw his target being hastily escorted from the tenement across from his.

Surrounded by hardened veterans of the underworld, the boy looked comically out of place.

From Nico’s research, he knew that Sebastian was twenty-one, but he looked like a sulking teen being chastised.

Nico shook his head.

No, there would be no peace in Nico’s future.

Getting revenge would only be the beginning, and on the nights when he was not haunted by what he had done, he would still be looking over his shoulder, sleeping with one eye open.

He would never know a moment of peace for as long as he lived, and there was no changing that.

All he could do was accept his fate.

Nico almost turned away to mark down the exact numbers of men and cars, but then a raised voice caught his attention, pulling him back to the scene.

Down on the street, Sebastian Altamirano was having an argument with his bodyguards. It was impossible to make out the exact words, but he was clearly protesting their overbearing presence.

Perhaps the brat had a spine after all. Good for him, but even better for Nico’s plans.

Hmm …

Nico observed him some more. Cuffs would look good around those tiny wrists. Hell, better a choker around that spoiled neck of his. Bet Sebastian Altamirano would also cry when Nico squeezed the last breaths out of him. What an interesting sight that would be.

Inevitably, the boy was forced into the back of an SUV and then the entire convoy took off down the street, leaving the impoverished neighborhood empty and silent, back to the boring garbage it was.

A loud rap sounded on the door.

“Come in,” Nico said absently.

The door quickly opened and closed, and by the familiar scent that wafted in, he didn’t have to turn from the window to know it was his right-hand man.

“They’re all gone,” Lucas reported.

Nico nodded. “I saw. We’ll have him by the end of the week.”

His second didn’t say anything, but he didn’t immediately leave either. His hesitation made Nico finally turn and give him a questioning look.

Lucas was a harsh and rugged man, scarred by the life they lived.

The black tunic T-shirt he wore with tight-fitting black jeans clung to his lean, muscled legs.

His brown hair was slicked back, with a part to the side.

His eyes, always assessing. He looked cold on the outside, but Nico knew that deep, unending passions stirred within the man as well.

“Is there anything else?” Nico asked.

Lucas gave him a long, hard look, his calculating eyes taking on a different sort of glint. Then he shook his head and slowly made his exit.

Nico knew exactly what that look meant. It was a goddamn invitation. “Stop me,” it said, “Ask me to stay.”

Pathetic.

The poor bastard still hadn’t accepted that they had very different expectations for their fun time together.

They’d never been a thing. Not really. Teenage lust had bled into their twenties, sure, but Nico had ended it the second Lucas started wanting more than just a good fuck, talking about feelings , about us like there was ever an us.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was when Lucas had gone after one guy Nico had flirted with at a bar and left him with a black eye and a couple of broken ribs.

Nico wasn’t into that obsessive shit, and even now at thirty-two, he was still not into that shit. That was the thing about relationships. They made people weak. You want to break someone? You go after who they love. It’s the easiest way to destroy them.

Lucas would understand one day though, and until then, all Nico could do was be resolute.

To be fair, he couldn’t blame Lucas much.

After all, Nico had slipped. He’d stared too long at Lucas a few nights ago, maybe two seconds more than necessary, and Lucas had seen it and decided it meant something.

He’d started acting like it was the resurrection of a goddamn spark from the dying embers of their past.

Now Lucas was showing his own signs too, coming into Nico’s space more times than necessary, and saying shit with his eyes he didn’t dare speak aloud.

But Nico didn’t acknowledge any of it. Not because Lucas wasn’t an attractive man. Nico’s cock just didn’t stir for the man like that any longer.

Al final, fue lo mejor. It was for the best.

The door clicked shut, leaving Nico alone again. He exhaled slowly, dragging a hand down his face as his mind slipped back into darker territory.

He finally had the quiet he needed to map out every step of the plan. And yet his thoughts wandered.

He couldn’t help picturing that young boy standing up to his father’s men. Didn’t he know how fucking stupid that was? Didn’t he understand what kind of monsters lurked just around the corner?

But of course he didn’t. He was young and stubborn. In other circumstances, Nico would have wished him well, that he might learn his lesson without any permanent consequences.

And in the back of his mind, in a place so deep that Nico wasn’t even willing to acknowledge it, a part of him wondered if things might’ve been different if his life had been… normal. Hell, even the thought made his skin crawl with shivers.

If his uncle hadn’t died. If his mother and sisters hadn’t been slaughtered. What would his life look like now?

Maybe he would’ve been an artist instead of the monster they’d made him.

Maybe that’s why painting still clung to him, because it belonged to the boy who existed before.

Whenever he touched the brush to canvas, he was no longer El Monstruo or El Diablo , not any of the fucking names they’d branded him with as a high-ranking member of one of the most notorious gangs on the East Coast.

When he painted, he was simply Nico . The pure, innocent, untouched boy who once dreamed of eating pan dulce on the porch and playing fútbol barefoot in the backyard with his friends.

But even then, he still couldn’t rid himself of the demons in his head.

Nico huffed a bitter laugh.

The end of the week couldn’t come fast enough.