My Underboss Sold Me Out To A Corporate Death Squad — He Didn’t Realize My New Assistant Was The Grim Reaper

Part 1

You don’t survive the underworld by making jokes.

But when I hired a quiet woman in a faded denim jacket to be my personal shadow, everyone laughed.

They thought she was a punchline.

They stopped laughing the night six armed hitmen walked into a private room at the Belmont Hotel and only she walked out.

I hated Thursdays.

Thursdays were for accounting.

It mostly consisted of sitting in a windowless room, listening to men with thick necks lie about why their envelopes were light.

Today was worse than a standard Thursday because I had to replace Tyler.

Tyler had been my personal shadow for five years.

He was built like a brick wall and completely devoid of independent thought.

He stepped out of my armored car on Tuesday morning and caught three ounces of high-velocity lead in his chest.

I survived only because his massive frame jammed the car door shut as he fell.

Now I sat in the back office of a high-end meatpacking facility I used as a front.

My underboss, a walking ulcer named Dan, was parading replacements through the heavy steel door.

The door creaked open, and I waited for the heavy thud of combat boots.

Instead, I heard the soft, almost imperceptible squeak of worn rubber soles on concrete.

Standing in the doorway was a woman drowning in an oversized surplus field jacket that had seen better decades.

Her hair was pulled back into a severe, messy knot.

She just stood there perfectly still, her hands resting easily in her pockets.

She looked bone-deep, soul-scraping tired.

“I’m not lost,” the woman said, her voice flat and devoid of any inflection.

“The sign outside said walk-ins for security logistics, and I need a job.”

I leaned back in my leather chair, studying her muddy hazel eyes.

She looked at me not as a feared boss of the city’s largest syndicate, but the way someone looks at a delayed train.

“My name is Megan,” she said, keeping her eyes on me.

“I don’t drink, I don’t sleep much, I don’t ask questions, and I need the money.”

My syndicate was currently in a slow-burn turf war with the Robinson brothers.

Car bombs were replacing handshakes, and paranoia was the currency of the weak.

But looking at the endless line of identical gorillas waiting outside, a cynical humor washed over me.

I told Dan to give her the job.

Dan froze, insisting I was joking since the Robinsons were taking shots at me in broad daylight.

I stood up, grabbed my coat, and asked Megan if she drove.

She said she drove, and I told her not to get me killed because it ruins my week.

Three weeks later, the joke was wearing thin, mostly because Megan refused to act like one.

She was simply a ghost that haunted my periphery.

When I held meetings in dimly lit restaurant booths, she stood in the corner.

She didn’t look away when I casually broke a man’s nose with a heavy glass ashtray over a gambling debt.

She watched a man bleed on a Persian rug with the same detached interest as someone watching paint dry.

It was completely unnerving.

I asked her one night if she disliked blood while we were sitting in the VIP section of a club I owned.

“I don’t have an opinion on it,” she said.

My laugh was cut short by the sound of shattering glass.

Across the VIP room, one of my jumpy mid-level earners named Greg was screaming at a rival associate.

The static of impending violence filled the room.

Greg kicked his chair back and reached into his tailored jacket.

I braced myself for the deafening crack of a gunshot.

But Megan was already gone from my side, slipping through the panicked bodies with frightening efficiency.

By the time Greg had his revolver clear, Megan was standing slightly behind his right shoulder.

She grabbed his wrist and drove the heel of her palm sharply into his elbow.

There was a sickening snap that was audible even over the heavy bass.

She slammed his face downward into the heavy oak poker table before he even had time to scream.

The entire VIP section went dead silent.

Megan calmly picked up the dropped revolver by the trigger guard and placed it on the poker table.

“He was going to shoot the dealer,” she said quietly.

I realized with a sudden, icy clarity that I had accidentally bought a weapon of mass destruction.

A week later, the Robinson brothers called for a sit-down at the Belmont Hotel.

The premise was peace, but the reality was a firing squad.

Dan argued against going, calling it a kill-box.

I told him weakness breeds ambition, so we brought three of our best hitters, and Megan came as my shadow.

We rode the high-speed elevator to the forty-second floor penthouse.

Sitting at the head of the glass dining table was the oldest Robinson brother.

He was dead, his head resting in a pool of drying blood.

The peace offering hadn’t been a trap set by the Robinsons.

It was a trap for both of us, set by someone else.

A suppressed gunshot thwipped through the air.

The hitter standing to my left folded in half, a neat hole appearing in his throat.

Blood sprayed across the expensive wallpaper as chaos erupted.

More suppressed fire rained down from the mezzanine overlooking the dining room.

I drew my gun, diving behind a marble pillar just as bullets stitched across the plaster.

There were at least six shooters holding the high ground in a devastating crossfire.

Two heavily armed men in black tactical gear advanced from the left flank, moving to outflank us.

Before I could line up a single shot, a shadow detached itself from the wall, and I watched my unassuming new assistant move toward the heavily armed mercenaries with terrifying speed.