Chapter 2 - The Scar Behind the Ear
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"Let go of my arm," Jade said. Her voice didn't rise. It dropped an octave, dead-flat and icy.
Scar-Brow chuckled, looking across at the second bodyguard for approval before squeezing harder, expecting the bone to creak and the skinny waitress to whimper. "Didn't hear the magic words, sweetheart."
Enzo leaned back against the red vinyl booth, his cold smirk lingering as he waited to see whether the waitress would cry or beg.
Jade did neither.
Instead of pulling back against the enforcer’s grip—which every untrained victim did—Jade stepped six inches into his reach, rotating her trapped wrist toward his thumb’s weak point while slamming the bottom of the scorching-hot glass coffee pot in her right hand straight down onto the bridge of his wrist.
SHATTER!
Boiling black coffee and jagged Pyrex exploded across Scar-Brow’s hand. He let out a howling roar of agony, his fingers springing open as scalding liquid blistered his skin.
Before the first shard of glass hit the floor, Jade pivoted on the ball of her left foot.
The second bodyguard across the table lunged upward, his hand diving beneath his leather jacket for his 9mm Beretta. Jade didn't let him clear leather. She snatched the heavy glass maple-syrup dispenser off the edge of the table and whipped it sideways across his temple, then grabbed a fistful of his wet hair and drove his face straight down into the Formica tabletop with a sickening crunch of broken cartilage.
He slumped sideways onto the bench, out cold.
Scar-Brow, blinded by fury and scalded skin, swung a wild,bone-crushing left hook aimed at Jade’s jaw. Jade ducked beneath the punch with liquid, lethal grace, drove the heel of her palm upward into his solar plexus, and kicked the side of his knee out until the joint popped, dropping the two-hundred-and-forty-pound enforcer howling onto the greasy linoleum.
And then Enzo Moretti moved.
He was ten times faster than his men. Rising from the booth like a striking panther, his left hand shot out to catch Jade by the throat while his right hand reached for the custom titanium blade clipped inside his waistcoat.
Jade didn't hesitate. As Enzo’s fingers brushed her collar, she trapped his extended left wrist against her collarbone with both hands, dropped her center of gravity below his hips, pivoted a hundred and eighty degrees into his stance, and used his own forward momentum to launch the six-foot-three mafia boss clean over her hip.
BAM!
Enzo slammed flat onto his back on the checkered diner floor, knocking the wind from his lungs as her knee came down squarely across his sternum—and in her right hand, snatched from his own waistcoat pocket during the throw, was his opened titanium folding knife, the razor point hovering half an inch above his jugular vein.
That was when the diner froze.
And that was when Enzo Moretti looked up past the blade into her blazing green eyes, saw the exact modified Sambo-and-Krav-Maga counter-throw she had just executed, and slowly smiled.
"Wait," Enzo murmured softly from the floor, ignoring the steel tip dimpling the skin of his throat. His slate-gray eyes shifted two inches to the left—where Jade’s hair had pulled loose from its bun during the struggle, exposing a tiny, faded black-ink tattoo tucked right behind her left ear lobe: the Roman numerals IX, crossed through with a single razor scar.
Jade’s breath caught in her throat.
Instantly, she jerked back off his chest, tossing his folding knife onto the counter ten feet away as she scrambled to her feet, pulling her chestnut hair down to cover her ear.
Down at the end of the diner counter, Scar-Brow finalmente managed to drag his Glock 19 out of his waistband with his unburned left hand, thumbing off the safety with a snarl as he aimed it straight at Jade’s chest. "I'm gonna paint the wall with your brains, you crazy bitch—!"
"Rocco," Enzo said calmly from the floor.
Rocco’s finger froze on the trigger, trembling with rage. "Boss, she just—"
"If you pull that trigger," Enzo said, rising smoothly to his feet and brushing a speck of diner dust off the shoulders of his bespoke charcoal coat without taking his eyes off Jade for a millisecond, "I’ll bury you under the harbor pilings before sunrise. Put the gun away, pick up Marco from the booth, and wait in the car."
Rocco stared at his boss as if Enzo had lost his mind, then looked at the unconscious second guard bleeding onto the ketchup bottles. Swallowing a curse, Rocco holstered his Glock, hauled his groaning partner over his broad shoulder, and stumbled out into the pouring rain.
Inside The Rusty Anchor, Mack the cook was already halfway out the back alley door with Jenny right behind him, leaving Jade standing completely alone across the counter from the deadliest man in Massachusetts.
Enzo walked slowly over to the counter, picked up his titanium knife, folded it with a crisp click, and laid a crisp hundred-dollar bill beside the cash register for the broken coffee pot.
Then he looked directly at Jade.
"Eighteen years ago," Enzo said, his voice a low, lethal purr that cut straight through the hum of the refrigerator units, "the Russian syndicate in Brighton Beach ran a closed boarding program in upstate New York for orphaned kids they trained as couriers and close-quarters bodyguards. They numbered them one through twelve behind the left ear. Number Nine burned the compound down when she was eight years old after killing the head instructor with a kitchen knife—and vanished into the foster system."
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Jade’s blood turned to solid ice in her veins. Her hand slid slowly under the counter lip toward the sawed-off shotgun Mack kept taped beside the register.
"Don't bother reaching for the twelve-gauge under the counter, Number Nine," Enzo murmured, leaning both palms on the laminate and looking straight into her soul. "Mack keeps rocksalt shells in it for kids stealing hubcaps. And you and I have a lot to talk about—starting with why Viktor Volkov just offered two million dollars in Manhattan yesterday for anyone who brings him the girl with the Roman numeral nine behind her ear."
