Free The Assassin's Prayer by Mark Allen Page B

lighthouse
beacon could be seen sweeping the sky with metronomic regularity. Behind a huge
oak desk in front of the window sat Frank. Two plush leather chairs sat in
front of the desk. Much to Kain’s disgust, one of them was occupied by Silas.
    Frank
gestured toward the remaining chair. “Have a seat, Kain.” He then motioned
toward the fully-stocked wet bar in the corner of the office. “Care for a
drink?”
    “No,
thanks,” Kain said, pointedly moving the chair away from Silas before sitting
down.
    Frank
wore a black-on-gray Italian suit that hung on him with the precise lines that
only an expert tailor can provide. He leaned forward and folded his hands on
the glass-topped desk. His hands were flawless, professionally-manicured, and truth
be told, looked rather feminine. But looks can be deceiving. Kain knew that
Frank’s hands, so soft and fragile in appearance, in reality were strong as
iron and brutally unforgiving.
    A
few years ago Kain had watched those hands literally beat a man to a pulp. The victim
had been identified as a traitor within the organization and Frank had used
those manicured hands to relentlessly smash the man’s body, again and again and
again, the meaty thuds echoing off the walls of the shed-cum-torture chamber.
The blows had rained down like the wrath of God until the flesh split and bones
broke and the traitor’s face had been reduced to a mess of quivering jelly, horrible
moans creaking from the cavity of mangled meat and shattered teeth that had
been the man’s mouth. Only when the man no longer resembled a man—a slab of
beef in a slaughterhouse looked more humanoid—had Frank wrapped his seemingly
soft, weak hands around the traitor’s neck and crushed the life out of him. Kain
distinctly remembered the wet crackle of cartilage as the man’s throat
collapsed.
    Frank
buckled right down to business. “Kain, I have to tell you, nice work on the
Perelli job. You earned this.” He flipped a plain white envelope across the
desk as if dealing a card. It slid across the glass surface and into Kain’s
waiting hand. “It’s all there.”
    Kain
slipped the cash into his pocket. “Heard you had another job for me.”
    “You
heard correctly,” Frank said. “Tomorrow night I have a yacht bringing in a load
of guns. My sources tell me the Perelli family is going to try to hijack the
load when it reaches the marina. Naturally I’ll have men on the yacht itself,
but I want you at the marina, on the ground, running interference if anything
goes down.”
    Kain
wasn’t sure he had heard right. “Did you say the Perelli family?”
    Frank
nodded. “You know how it is … you stomp on one motherfucker, another one pops
up to take his place. They’re like damn weeds.”
    “So
who’s running the show now?”
    “The
wife,” Frank replied. “Rene Perelli.”
    “And
she’s making a play already? Have they even buried Perelli yet?”
    “Just
put him in the ground this morning.”
    Kain
shook his head, recalling how Rene had cowered on the couch while he executed
her husband. “It doesn’t make sense. The Rene Perelli I saw does not have what
it takes to pull a retaliation together this fast.”
    Silas
joined the conversation. “Maybe you misjudged her. Or maybe watching her
husband get snuffed helped her grow some balls.”
    Kain
sent him a withering, shut-the-hell-up look.
    “She
wasn’t even supposed to be home that night,” Frank said. “That’s why we didn’t
include her or the kid in the stats package. Had I known, I probably would have
had you take her out too.”
    “And
you know I wouldn’t have been able to do that,” said Kain.
    Frank
sighed. “Yeah, I know. You and your precious code.”
    The
code.
    Kain’s
code.
    The
Assassin’s Prayer.
    God,
let not my bullet or blade shed the blood of innocents.
    Karen
had written that for him on the night he revealed to her that he was a Company
assassin. He had been afraid that she would leave him, but she had