Page 3 of Break For Me
Alessandro looks at his hands. They are steady, but I see the tension in his fingers.
"I tried," he says quietly. "I prepped the kit. I had the scalpel in my hand. But when I looked at the wound, I didn't see a patient. I saw my husband dying." His voice drops. "My hands wouldn't stay still. I couldn't cut him, Rocco. I need someone who doesn't give a damn about him. I need a butcher."
The word hangs in the room. A butcher. Someone who can look at the gore inside Killian Kavanagh and see a problem to be solved.
I look at the photo. The doctor’s face is a closed door. He looks like he thinks he’s better than the men who pay his bills.
"You want me to ask him?"
Alessandro doesn't blink. "I want you to take him. Quietly. Get him to the safehouse in Garrison. The medic is holding Killian there until you arrive."
Take him. Like he’s a crate of whiskey. That’s my job. I’m the tool.
"And if he says no?"
"Make him."
Two words. Cold. Final. My little brother, the boy I used to protect from our father’s belt, is giving me permission to destroy a man.
I spent my life in the mud so he could stay clean. I went to prison so he could go to university. I became the monster so he could be the prince.
The prince is the one giving the orders now.
"Forty-eight hours," Alessandro says. "The clock is running."
I take the file and walk out.
The clinic is on East 72nd. Nestled between a designer boutique and a high-end skin care joint. The part of the city where doormen wear gloves and the dogs cost more than my first apartment. No signs on the building. Just a brass number and a camera watching the door.
I park my truck in a loading zone across the street. I kill the lights and wait.
Two hours crawl by. A black car pulls up at 9:10 PM. A man gets out, shoulders wide and blocky like a Russian soldier. He punches a code into the door and disappears inside.
Thirty minutes later, the door opens again.
Adrian Sterling steps out.
The photo didn't get it right. It didn't show the way he moves. Precise. Every step measured. His coat is charcoal wool, buttoned all the way up. His leather bag is slung over a shoulder. His hands are at his sides, fingers slightly curled.
He stops on the sidewalk and adjusts his glasses. He looks up at the sky. For a second, the mask slips. I see the hollows beneath his eyes. The way his mouth is pulled tight with a weariness that goes to his marrow.
He looks like a man who has accepted he’s never going home.
He turns east and starts walking. He doesn't look back. He doesn't check the shadows. He walks like a ghost through the city.
I have the security layout in my head. I know the guard rotations. I know the car he uses.
But I can't shake the look on his face. That one second of pure, raw exhaustion.
I open the file on the passenger seat. I look at his cold, clean face. Those surgeon’s hands.
I’m going to drag him out of his life. I’m going to throw him in this truck and force him to cut into a man who is currently leaking his life onto a safehouse floor. And if he fails, or if his hands shake like my brother’s?—
I close the folder.
My knuckles throb. My ribs ache. I have blood on my shirt and a job to do.
I’m going to break him.
