Page 6 of The Mafia Assassin's Redemption-

“Fuck me!”

Harry screams and, with the gun still in her grip, runs.

I stagger off the couch, drunker than I thought. I run after her, up the stairs, through the door, and into the street.

I look around in the early hours of the morning. But the kid, Harry…

Is fucking gone.

TWO

harry

NEW YORK CITY, PRESENT DAY

Monsters don’t die.Good doesn’t overcome evil. It just sometimes wins a battle. But for every monster slain, another one grows in its place.

That’s not enough of a reason for me to stop my fight.

I race through the rain, car horns blaring as midday traffic builds. Rivers of water turn metallic, reflecting the lights of the brownstones and storefronts.

My chest relaxes when the church comes into view.

I rush up the stairs of the familiar old stone building, push open the wooden doors, and call out, “Father Luigi? I’m here.”

From the sacristy, the old priest, a little too thick around the waist from his housekeeper’s constant baking, walks out to the pulpit and leans on it, jangling the big brass keys at me. “You’re late, kid. You missed confession.”

“I’ll save it for next time; it’ll be juicier that way.”

He snorts and shakes his head. “Not if I already know what you’re up to.”

The good priest steps down and makes his way up the aisle as I breathe in the incense-soaked air. I push down the hood ofmy sweatshirt and smile as he squeezes my shoulder, passing me to lock the doors.

This routine is completely ordinary.

Like clockwork, I’m the pious church assistant who makes sure the church is clean, all the psalm books stacked neatly, the coffee and tea stocked in the sacristy for the church groups that turn up daily.

I do this work when the housekeeper’s left for the day.

I pray and live a quiet life in Alphabet City.

Miss Hazel White.

Ordinary. Boring.

The girl men don’t look at. The girl with God in her heart who’s bent on helping others.

I volunteer at all church events and outreaches, the soup kitchen, the shelter. I talk to runaways and those who need help.

But most of all, I fight the big monsters who lurk in the shadows.

That’s my biggest outreach of all.

Father Luigi pretends he doesn’t know and stays invisible, his focus on his flock and the important congregation members who like special evening services here and there.

He’s a good priest and I know a good priest or nun when I see them. I spent a lot of my life growing up with them before I came to live with my uncle at age seventeen here in New York.

Father Luigi’s services draw a good crowd, but a modest one, which makes his beautiful, well-fortified church in the West Village and its attached home with the high walls kind of questionable.