𝐄𝐍𝐌𝐈𝐓𝐘 | 𝟏𝟖+

27

Lorenzo's POV

TW: Violence

• • •

Five years ago

New York. The place I still dread visiting.

Too many reminders of the coward I am.

My private jet landed an hour ago, and forty-five minutes of that hour were spent convincing myself I could do this.

I was never one to doubt myself, but looking into my mother's past has always haunted me.

She was a good woman, but even good people have their skeletons. It's almost like I'm digging into the forbidden.

I never knew my mother's parents—they died soon after her arranged marriage. They were murdered actually, and I have enough deaths to avenge.

My phone rings, and I annoyingly pick it up as I'm sitting in the back of a much too flashy limousine.

"Boss," I hear Ben speak, "our target is on the move. Do you want us to engage?"

"No," I quickly say, "I put a tracker on him in Hong Kong, I'll get him myself, I'm in need of a chase." I hang up, and order my driver to step on it.

Thirty-five minutes later, we arrive at a sketchy bar, and the way I'm dressed obviously catches attention. In a place full of men when exceedingly long beards and women with barely any clothes on, my suit had more cloth than everyone does combined.

When I enter, the smell of booze hits me, and it's oddly comforting, bringing me back into the depths of when I drank my sorrows.

I shake the feeling to get my head back in the game, and walk up to the bartender. I couldn't help but get intriguing stares—they're probably wondering what a guy like me is doing in such a neighborhood.

"What can I get for you, sir?" The bartender asks as he wipes down the table that stood in front of me. I looked at his piercings that covered most of his face and his dyed blonde hair.

"I'm looking for someone, Rhys Cohen. I heard he frequents this place." I know exactly where he is, but this is a tactic I learned from my father—one of the only things I learned. Always see who will lie for who. It'll reveal a lot.

"What? He in some kind of trouble or something?"

I hold back a smile, thinking of the exact kind of trouble Cohen is actually in, but avoid the bartender's question. "Where is he?"

"He's probably out back, taking a smoke."

"Thanks," I reach into my suit jacket, and take out a hundred dollar bill and place it on the table, "do you mind turning up the music a bit?" The bartender obliges, and I nod.

Making my way outside, the smell of cigarettes wraps around me. I see Cohen standing with his back facing me. I'll have the upper hand. "Cohen," I say, and he turns around.

Simultaneously, he says, "who wants to know?" He sees my face, and immediately takes off to jump over the fence that caged in the bar, but not before I swiftly take my gun from its holster, and fire a shot that hits his kneecap. The cigarette that was once in his mouth is now out on the ground.

"Fuck, man!" He falls then yells, and I can't help but wonder if I should shoot his other to see how much he can take. "Fuck! Who the fuck are you?"

I walk over to his body on the ground that's covered in more mud than grass. "You did a job for a man named Volkov, is that correct?"

"Why do you want to know?" He winces.