Chapter Three – Her Name Was Mercy
The thing about ghosts—they remember everything.
Even the people who tried to bury them.
The sniper didn't miss. That's what kept echoing through my skull as I drove across the city with the windows down and the city lights bleeding over the windshield like war paint.
He'd had the shot. Took it. But chose not to finish the job.
Why?
I knew one person who could find out. A name I hadn't spoken in seven years. Not since the exile. Not since everything went sideways in Belgrade.
Her name was Mercy Vale.
Mercy wasn't her real name. She'd earned it the same way I'd earned my scars—through blood, betrayal, and a cigarette smile that hid a dozen knives. Former CIA asset. Freelance hit tracker. Now retired, or so she claimed, living above a shitty jazz bar in Brooklyn.
I parked a block away. Walked up the steps, past broken neon and a bouncer who tried to stop me.
I gave him one look.
He didn't try again.
She opened the door wearing a silk robe and a pistol in her hand.
"Well, fuck me," she said, smirking. "I thought you were dead."
"I was."
"You get better?"
"Just meaner."
She stepped aside. I walked in.
Her place smelled like gunpowder and expensive perfume. Books everywhere. Framed photos with the faces cut out. A record player spinning low jazz like it was the soundtrack to someone's last night alive.
"Whiskey?"
"Information."
She laughed, poured two glasses anyway, and handed me one.
"What kind of trouble brings Luca fucking Romano to my door after seven years of radio silence?"
I took a sip. "The kind with a scope and a high vantage point."
Her eyes sharpened. She sat across from me, one leg tucked under the other, robe slipping just enough to be dangerous.
"Sniper?"
I nodded. "Inside the Romano compound. Glass shattered two inches from my head."
"That's a warning shot."
"Tell me something I don't know."
She drained her glass in one go and set it down hard.
"There's only five guys in New York who can pull a shot like that from that distance with that precision."
"Give me names."
She leaned in.
"Three are dead. One's in federal prison."
"And the fifth?"
A long pause.
Then: "Goes by the name 'Vulture.' Real name unknown. Ex-special forces. Works freelance for whoever pays the most. Last I heard, he was hired by a private group operating out of Manhattan. Quiet stuff. Corporate warfare, blood contracts, blackmail hits."
"Would he take a job against the Romanos?"
She smiled like it hurt. "He'd take a job against God if the money was right."
I stood, setting the glass down.
"You know where I can find him?"
"Not yet. But I can find out."
I headed for the door. She stopped me with a hand on my chest.
"You walk back into this world, Luca, you don't get to walk back out. You know that, right?"
"I never left."
She looked at me for a long second. Then, softer:
"You've got that look in your eyes again. The one you had in Belgrade. Right before the hospital. Right before the fire."
"And you still opened the door."
She smiled faintly. "I've always had a soft spot for doomed men."
Back outside, the air was colder. My phone buzzed again.
Text message. Untraceable number.
You're too late, Luca.
The family doesn't belong to you anymore.
I typed back:
Then come take it from me, coward.
No reply.
Just silence.
But not for long.
Because war was coming.
And I'd already buried the part of me that felt fear.
Her name was Mercy.
But she never gave any.
Neither do I.