Rain drifted down in a thin mist, soft enough not to drown out the hum of the city but steady enough to blur the neon lights. Adrian Kane sat in the driver's seat of a nondescript black sedan parked across the street from a nightclub. His eyes were fixed on the entrance, though to any passerby he looked like another man waiting for someone to stumble out.
He was still, his face unreadable, his hands resting lightly on the steering wheel. He had already done the work. The rifle was broken down and hidden in the case beside him, the silencer wiped clean, the bullets counted and polished. Adrian believed in ritual. Precision was not habit for him; it was survival.
At eleven thirty on the dot, a man in a cream suit emerged from the club, laughing with two companions. The target. Adrian had studied him for days, memorized his habits, his arrogance, the way he liked to tip his head back when he laughed. He knew the man would pause at the curb to light a cigar before his driver arrived. It was always the same. People were creatures of routine, and routine was how Adrian Kane made his living.
He did not need to look through the scope to line it up. When the man paused beneath the streetlight, Adrian slipped the silenced pistol from the case, leaned slightly across the passenger seat, and pulled the trigger once. A muffled pop, a faint spark of blood blooming at the man's temple. He dropped where he stood. His friends screamed, their shouts carrying into the night, and the club bouncers rushed forward in confusion.
Adrian placed the gun back into the case, shut it gently, and started the car. By the time anyone realized what had happened, the black sedan was gone, another set of taillights merging into the chaos of the city.
For Adrian, there was no triumph in the kill. No adrenaline rush, no satisfaction. It was work. His life had been carved into this single purpose long ago, and he performed it with the quiet efficiency of a man sharpening a blade.
He returned the car to a garage the family kept under a different name, swapped into a second vehicle, and drove to the warehouse that served as a meeting place. The smell of oil and dust clung to the walls as he stepped inside.
Three men waited around a long table. One of them, Marco Valenti, wore a navy suit that strained at the buttons, his dark hair slicked back in a way that belonged to another decade. Marco was the voice of the family, though Adrian knew better than to call him the brain.
"You did well, Kane," Marco said, tapping the ash from his cigarette. "Clean. Quick. No noise."
Adrian gave a curt nod. Compliments were unnecessary.
Marco leaned back, his eyes narrowing. "Which is why I have something important for you. A delicate job." He paused, savoring his words like a man who enjoyed the taste of his own power. "Elena Moretti."
Adrian felt no shift in his pulse, though he knew the name. Moretti was a politician on the rise, carving out influence in neighborhoods that the mafia had long controlled. He had spoken publicly about cleaning up corruption, about cutting ties with criminal enterprises. That made him dangerous.
"The daughter," Marco clarified. "Not the man. She's his weakness. Take her out, and he will know who owns him."
The warehouse was silent except for the faint drip of water somewhere in the rafters. Adrian nodded once more. He had killed fathers, brothers, lovers. Daughters were no different.
"You'll find her easy to track," Marco continued. "She's soft. Thinks she can play at being a saint. Works at shelters, hands out food, touches the filthy hands of beggars. But she is still his blood. Do this right, Kane, and you remind Moretti of his place."
Adrian accepted the folder Marco slid across the table. Inside were photographs of a young woman with dark hair and striking green eyes. In one picture she was smiling, surrounded by children clutching bowls of soup. In another she stood at a podium, speaking into a microphone, her hand raised in a gesture of conviction.
He closed the folder without lingering. A job was a job.
That night, Adrian began his surveillance. He parked across from a soup kitchen in a rusting sedan purchased with cash, one of many disposable vehicles he cycled through. From the shadows, he watched Elena Moretti move among the people lined up outside. She carried crates of bread with both hands, laughing when a child tried to snatch a piece too early.
She looked nothing like the politicians' daughters Adrian had seen at galas and dinners. She wore plain jeans and a sweater, her hair tied loosely back, her shoes worn at the soles. She hugged the elderly, crouched to speak with the children, scolded the staff when they tried to give her the lighter duties.
Adrian's gaze never wavered. His training demanded it. Every movement of hers was catalogued, every gesture measured. Yet there was a strange friction in the air that he could not name.
He returned each day, blending into the crowd of strangers, studying her patterns. Morning at the shelter, afternoons in meetings with volunteers, evenings walking home alone despite her father's warnings. She had a stubborn streak, that much was clear.
One evening, as dusk settled and the streetlamps flickered on, Adrian followed at a distance. Elena carried a grocery bag in one arm, humming softly to herself. A stray dog padded after her, ribs showing through its mangy coat. She paused, crouched, and pulled a slice of bread from her bag. The dog wagged its tail wildly, devouring the gift before licking her hand in gratitude.
Adrian watched from the shadows. Something tightened in his chest, a sensation so foreign he did not recognize it at first.
He thought of the photographs in the folder, the cold command in Marco's voice, the unspoken rule of his existence. Targets were never people. They were assignments. Names, faces, habits, weaknesses. Nothing more.
But Elena Moretti's laughter echoed in his mind long after he had turned away.
That night, alone in his apartment, Adrian sat at the small kitchen table, the folder open before him. Her eyes stared back at him from the glossy photograph, green and unguarded. He set the photo down and rubbed his temples. He had known hunger once, the gnawing kind that scraped your bones. He had known what it was to be forgotten.
Elena gave herself to those people freely. She touched them without flinching, smiled without fear.
Adrian told himself it was irrelevant. She was still a job. But for the first time in years, he left the folder open on the table, the photo face up, as if some part of him could not bear to close it.
Adrian did not sleep that night. He stretched out on the bed fully clothed, staring at the ceiling, the hum of the refrigerator filling the silence. His body was trained to rest on command, yet his mind refused. Each time he closed his eyes, the image of Elena bending to feed the stray dog returned. He tried to push it away, to file it alongside the hundreds of other details he had memorized about past targets, but it lingered.
At three in the morning he rose, poured himself a glass of water, and stood by the window. The city stretched out in a sea of scattered lights, endless and merciless. Somewhere out there, Marco was waiting for his call, expecting a clean kill within days. The family would not tolerate hesitation.
Adrian understood this better than anyone. Hesitation was death. It was weakness, and weakness was what he had spent his entire life erasing from himself.
He opened the folder again and looked at Elena's photo. This time he forced himself to examine it clinically, tracing the line of her jaw, the distance between her eyes, the height suggested by her stance. Targets were patterns, not people. He repeated the words like a prayer.
Still, a question rose in his mind, quiet but insistent. If he pulled the trigger, would it silence the restlessness clawing at him, or would it only sharpen it?
By dawn, Adrian had already showered, dressed, and prepared his weapons for the day. He checked the silencer twice, then three times, though he had never made a mistake in his career. His hands were steady, his face calm, but beneath the surface he felt the faintest fracture, as if some hidden part of himself was shifting.
Before leaving, he slipped the photo back into the folder, closed it, and placed it neatly in the center of the table. He stood there for a long moment, staring at the closed file, as though daring himself to feel nothing.
When he finally walked out the door, locking it behind him, Adrian knew only one truth with absolute certainty. The moment he raised his gun at Elena Moretti, something inside him would either break forever or finally reveal what he had been running from all these years.
And for the first time in his life, Adrian Kane, the mafia's perfect killer, was not sure which outcome he feared more.