Prologue

TOMMY (Ricochet) O’SHEA

The alley smelt of piss and rotten food. Filth, debris, and refuse filled it. Completely at odds with the bright lights and trendy bars just a street away. I’d only be adding to the squalor before the night was out. Plus, trash always seemed to end up with more trash. I’d chosen the perfect night for doing what I intended to do. My captive had long since stopped pleading with me. He knew it was pointless. His pleas fell on deaf ears. He didn’t deserve forgiveness. Not for what he’d done to me.

It was a pitch-black night, with no moon to brighten the sky, clouds heavy in the sky. And it was cold. So damn cold that our breaths were blowing white with every exhale. ‘Not that he’d be breathing for much longer,’ I thought as I slid my knife along his throat, blood spraying in an arc across the dirty alley wall and ground. Dropping the dead weight of him at my feet, I waited as he bled out his last breath, a quiet echo in the darkness.

He was the last one. It had taken me years, but I’d found them all. Every last one. Every person who I’d thought was a friend and found family. The ones that had burned me and nearly killed me for nothing more than money.

Not that as an assassin I had many friends, but we’d worked together on enough jobs both as a group or sometimes in teams of two or three that there had been some trust built among us. At least there had been on my part. I guess I’d been wrong. Whereas I had a moral compass and code, they didn’t. Because money talked and they’d been offered enough to finish me off. I’d not seen it coming, and they’d nearly succeeded. It was unlucky for them I’d lived with violence for most of my life, that and they didn’t take into account that I was an O’Shea, and it took a lot to kill us.

With the last piece of my past lying dead at my feet, I knew it was time. It was now safe for me to go home to what little family I had left. Not yet, but I’d go to them soon.

Turning, I walked away, only stopping long enough at a local homeless encampment to drop off an item of clothing before moving on to the next one and doing the same until I came to the empty warehouse where I’d stashed my bag of spare clothing and my bike.

Changing out of the last bit of clothing, I bundled them up and dressed in my leathers and boots. Swinging my leg over the seat of my bike, I settled back, enjoying the feel of power thrumming beneath me. Slowly pulling out of the warehouse, I rode off into the night, only stopping long enough to toss the rest of my clothes off a bridge and into the Thames for it to do what it wanted with them.

I was a free man for the first time in a long time. And I was going to enjoy everything about it. It wasn’t long and I was riding out of London on the M25 just as the sky started to lighten. As I sped down the motorway, the sun rising at my back, I decided that I’d spend some time riding around the country before I went home.

Maybe this year I’d make it home in time for Christmas. I’d kept a check on my family from afar and from what I’d found out, it looked like my cousins were starting to settle down. It would be good to be amongst family again. Not right now but eventually.

With that thought, I accelerated around a slow-moving truck and took off down the motorway, wanting to enjoy the relative peace and the added benefit of there being not much traffic at this time of the morning for as long as I could.