Part 1 (1/2)

Skewed.

The Mercenary Series.

Marissa Farrar.

Three Months Earlier.

V.

Let's get one thing straight.

I am not a nice person.

I'm not the type of woman who greets her friends with a kiss and a hug-after all, doing so would require actually having friends. I don't cry at sad movies or books. I don't give a s.h.i.+t about flowers and cards on my birthday. On the outside, I fake it so people won't guess that, beneath the pretty eyes and tattoos, I'm hard as ice. I can smile and nod in all the right places if I have to, but I'd rather not.

Like I said, I'm not a nice person.

My name is Verity Guerra and I'm the daughter of the most ruthless mafia don in New York. I was seven years old when I saw my first body. I was sixteen when I first hurt someone badly enough to be hospitalized, and nineteen when I took my first life.

Turns out, it wasn't to be my last.

I'm standing with a gun in my hand and another at my head. Two women kneel before me-my mother and my sister, both with faces streaked with tears. My mom, still young at forty-two, my sister only seventeen. If I don't shoot one of them, we all die. Problem is, I'm the one who has to decide who receives the bullet.

How can I?

My mother?

Or my sister?.

If I don't kill one of them, we're all dead. That's the deal, and I don't doubt for a second that the man holding the gun to my head will go through with it. I hate him with a pa.s.sion, and I consider swinging the weapon around and firing one single bullet in the hope it will kill him, but I know I cannot. He has other men surrounding us, men who are also armed and won't hesitate to kill us all. If I fire the shot, I've sentenced us all to death.

If I make a choice, two of us will live.

We're in an empty warehouse, harsh, fluorescent lights overhead, a concrete floor beneath my feet. Outside of the warehouse walls, I hear the low drone of the city, the constant background noise of traffic and sirens that is inescapable in New York. Above that are my sister's quiet sobs, as she kneels with her hands behind her back, her head down, her eyes squeezed shut.

”Please,” my mother begs the man holding the gun to my head. ”Don't do this. They don't deserve-”

He cuts her off. ”Shut up, wh.o.r.e. This is all your fault.” He turns his attention back to me. ”Time's running out, Verity. Tick, tick, tick ...”

The muzzle of the weapon he holds jams hard against my temple, and he motions to his men to do the same to my mother and sister. All three of us are going to be shot if I don't do as he asks.

Choose. Choose between the only two people I actually give a s.h.i.+t about in this world.

My finger is rigid around the trigger, my heart lodged in a tight, painful ball in my throat. I can't do it, I can't do it ...

But I must.

”Now, Verity!” he roars at me, and my sister gives a cry of fear.

I've always prided myself that my heart is cold. But right now it's breaking. Not that you can tell from the outside. I haven't cried since I was a child, and even now my eyes are bone dry, though they burn with unshed tears. I learned a long time ago that crying didn't get me anywhere, and it wouldn't do anyone any good now, either.

My hand trembles, causing the weapon to shake. I can't look at them, can't stand to see the begging in their eyes. I need to shut myself off from it, take my heart and lock it in a metal box and throw away the key.

”I'm sorry,” I say.

And pull the trigger.

Chapter One.

V.

”Hey, a.s.shole,” I shouted across the s.h.i.+t heap I worked in. ”Get your G.o.dd.a.m.ned feet off the bar.”

The redneck in the cut-off jacket blew me a kiss, but removed his feet. I was amazed he'd gotten them up there in the first place, considering the amount he'd been drinking. I should have probably cut him off, but I couldn't be bothered with the fight I knew he'd give me.

With a sigh, I wiped off the s.h.i.+ny mahogany surface with a damp rag and collected a couple of empties. One of the regulars motioned to me for a refill, so I poured him another shot. Cigarette smoke filled the air. No one was supposed to smoke in public areas anymore, but the patrons here never took any notice of that rule. It wasn't as though the police even cared. In this backward little town, they were probably more bent than the perps they arrested.

”Hey, Johnny,” I called out to my boss, a guy in his mid-forties, who was also working alongside me that night. ”Mind if I take my break?”

”Sure thing, Viola,” he yelled back over the music and raucous laughter coming from a group of guys near the pool table.

”Hey, I told you not to call me that. It's Vee, remember?”

Viola. Ugh. The name made me want to puke. It was from Shakespeare. I didn't know if whoever chose my name was trying to be funny, but I was about as far from being Shakespearean as it was possible to get. Some people in the program were allowed to keep their first names, and sometimes even their initials, but it was considered too dangerous for me to do so.

I grabbed a drink and headed out through the back of the bar and out into the alleyway behind. The unpleasant tang of stale alcohol, mixed with a hint of old urine, filled my nostrils. The alleyway was shrouded in darkness apart from the light which illuminated the rear of the building, and the light from the streetlights at the far end. To my left were a number of large industrial trashcans, the cool of the night preventing them from adding to the not-so-lovely aroma of p.i.s.s and booze in the air. At the end of the alley, the street brightened, and I watched as several vehicles drove by on the main street, only catching glimpses of them as they did so. Female laughter sounded, and then a young couple pa.s.sed by, arm in arm, and vanished again, unaware of me watching them walk by.

I dropped onto the step leading down to the ground from the back door and took a swig of my drink-straight bourbon which burned a fiery path down the inside of my throat and then settled to warm my stomach. I drank most of the time, but managed to get it to a level where the pain was dulled, but I was still able to function like a normal human being-well on the outside, anyway. I wasn't stupid. I was perfectly aware the alcohol was my way of coping with the disaster my life had always been, but it had been made so much worse since that day. I tried to exist with the memory of what I did. That was the best I could do, but I'd never go on to live a normal life. How could I? I was haunted by the knowledge I killed someone I loved, and it wasn't something I'd ever get over. I was broken inside, and I couldn't be fixed.

It didn't matter anyway. I just needed to make it through the next few months in order to get my revenge. After that, I could die and no one would care. Especially not me.

A sc.r.a.pe sounded from the opposite end of the alley, tearing me from my thoughts, making all my muscles stiffen. I held my breath, my ears straining, and I peered into the night.

Was someone up there, hiding in the dark?