A Thousand Cuts (Underworld Kings)

Instantly, my gun was in my hand and pointed in the direction of the noise.

It took me a handful of seconds to focus on the figure in front of me, moments away from pulling the trigger. All I wanted was to kill; the need was so overpowering that I didn’t give a fuck about who it was, I just needed to end someone’s life.

But this figure was much smaller than I’d expected. The blurry shape became sharper, more defined the more I blinked.

“Cristian?”

The voice was small, childlike and barely familiar, but it stopped my finger from squeezing the trigger as I so longed to do.

Lorenzo was tall for his age. I’d always joked with him about being a basketball player because of his natural ability with sports and his height. He’d always been serious when replying, telling me his only future plans were to be like his father one day. The sentence had not been spoken with resentment but with pride. He and Isabella both adored their father and thought he hung the moon. Why wouldn’t he want to be like him?

It was as if Lorenzo had shrunk three feet since the last time I saw him. Tears were streaming down his face, and his entire body was trembling. His eyes were glued to mine, not the pool of blood on the floor. Not his brutalized and dead sister. My eyes flickered behind him, to the open door of a cabinet.

He was staring at me like I was the only thing in the room because he’d been there the entire time ... watching while they did that to her.

If I hadn’t already been numb as fuck, that might’ve brought me to my knees. Might’ve broken my heart.

But I didn’t have one of those.

Not anymore.

Officer Greg Harris

Greg Harris was tired.

Beyond fucking tired.

He’d just spent hours combing the Catalano estate with about ten other uniforms and three detectives, looking at the destruction caused by an unknown set of assailants. It pissed him off, this much manpower being allocated to what was essentially a mob hit. But he was nothing more than a uniform, the lowest cog in the machine so he didn’t have a say in the matter. He did promise himself that once he made detective, he wouldn’t be pandering to a fucking mafia boss.

Vincentius Catalano was untouchable. He didn’t know the specifics of why, but he did know that his superiors told him to steer clear of anything involving his family. To look the other way in almost every circumstance.

It was impossible to look the other way now. Not with the body count. Not with the mafia princess being one of the dead. The Don had been the one to place the call, since none of his neighbors were brave enough to call in what must’ve been multiple gunshots.

Harris had seen him, fleetingly, while walking the property. The man’s face was not tearstained, not ravaged in grief. No. His features had been blank, tight, his eyes stormy. Harris, who had seen a lot despite only being on the force for less than two years, flinched at seeing that man’s face. He hoped that they found those responsible for this before the Don did, because he was going to rip them limb from limb.

Then again, even if they did find who was responsible for this, Harris had no doubt they would be handed over to the Don. Such was the corruption in the department, such was the reach of the mob. But things would change. It would not be like this forever.

Harris had no sympathy for those lying dead throughout the lavish grounds. This was a consequence of getting into bed with a criminal. With a mass murderer.

It was the daughter that got him. Her white dress was torn to pieces, covered in blood. Her brutalized, naked body was unrecognizable due to the horrific amount of bullets that had ravaged her. It was overkill, shooting an unarmed innocent that many times. Her green eyes stared lifelessly upward, blood trailing from rosy, red lips. Her hand was outstretched toward the armoire her younger brother had been hiding in. It was likely she had hid him there, not having the time to go anywhere herself, the space too small for two people to fit. What a choice for an eighteen-year-old to face.

The violence of shooting her that many times turned Harris’s stomach, burning his throat with a renewed fury to end organized crime in this city. It was never the head of the families who got the bullets. Only those around them. The children.

Harris was not important enough to interview the Don himself, or his wife or the surviving son who was too traumatized to talk to anyone.

The list of suspects was long and varied, the department scrambling to get answers. They couldn’t even be sure it was more than one perpetrator, though it would take skill and familiarity with the family to pull that off if it was. There was no sign of forced entry, though the gate guard had been shot in the face. Which apparently happened after he opened the gate for the killers.