Mafia Connections

Switch

The tall man in front of me obviously doesn't think much of me. His dark eyes look me up and down, taking in my small, skinny physique, before finally looking back at my face.

He scowls "I wanted a hitman not a child"

I raise an eyebrow at him. He himself is barely pushing twenty and he's got the balls to say I'm a child?

I shrug and swing back in the chair. "I'm a hitman alright" I tell him even though he doesn't look so convinced "Born and bred"

He snorts "I sense daddy issues"

I don't answer. I like being mysterious. The guys do too.

"So, Switch, you think you can take him down?" He asks me. I mean forward and study the picture in front of me. A young man, early twenties, with his arm around a red headed girl and a smile on his face.

"Why?" I ask him. "Why have you hired me?"

He frowns. "Can you do it or not?"

I sigh and lean back "I can. However, I like to know why first"

He growls and then snatches the picture back to his side of the desk. "She was my sister" he snarls "My baby sister and he shot her"

"So why don't you do it?" I ask him. A man in his position surely has the means to do the job. So why is he paying me?

He scowls, clearly not wanting to answer all these questions. "I told my mum I would stay out of it. And I did, then he opened his trap and started spouting shit. I can't get involved, not directly"

I look around. I know where I am. I'd have to be an idiot to not know. They disarmed me the second I walked through the doors and every person I've passed so far has been armed to the teeth. I'm in a mafia house.

I smile at the red head. "Well Arthur. It seems we have a deal"

****

I sit on the end of my bed and arrange the photos around me until I can see every one clearly. I've been doing weeks of surveillance, working out his routine, his boss's routine, his brother's routine, even his goddamn grandmother's routine. I need to know everything before I pounce.

The door opens as it has every night at this exact time. And never once has he knocked.

Arthur walks in and stands right in front of me. His massive frame blocking the light from the one lamp I have turned on in the room that he has been letting me stay in.

"Why isn't he dead yet?" He asks me. His voice has gradually softened over the weeks too. I even heard him laugh the other day.

"Hello to you too" I answer not looking up from the pictures that I can barely see in his shadow. "He should be by the end of the week" I pick up a picture to study. Him in a club called Angels, his arm draped over the shoulders of a girl with pink hair. She looks uncomfortable and young, maybe fifteen.

He stays silent, his face a stony mask, before he comes over and looks down at the pictures. I've never been this close to him before. Never close enough to smell the aftershave on him. It smells good.

I run my fingers through my dirty blond hair that's getting too long and brushes the top of my ears and sigh. "He's being robbed" he says pointing at the picture in my hand. I look down and see that he's right. The girls hand is in his jacket pocket.

Arthur laughs at this and then sits down beside me "So this is what's been taking so long?" He asks.

I nod and start to pick up the pictures. If I have any chance of taking him out within the week, I need sleep. He grabs my wrist and stops me. "Her name was Katherine" he says quietly "She knew something. Something bad. I think it killed her"