Page 1 of Diamond In The Rough

PROLOGUE

Once upon a time, there was a soldier.

A man whose sole purpose was to enforce the rules set down by his father, and watch over the family to keep them safe from those who would prefer they sink to the bottom of the ocean.

Micah Malone was the third-born son of a powerful mafia don. There were five boys in total, but Micah was the quiet one. The observant one. Unlike Felix, the second oldest, who was brash and loud, and Archer, the fourth, who was sneaky and determined. Tim, the oldest and most stoic, was supposed to become the next don, until he left town. Last was Cato, the baby and the family clown, born many years after the others.

Considering his competition for the position of ‘family enforcer,’ was it any surprise Micah was chosen?

He doesn’t wholly enjoy his role… but he’s good at it.

Where the others stomp their way through life, Micah moves in silence. Where some of his brothers might start a war, Micah is the brother who would end it.

Likely with bloodshed and loss of life, but nevertheless… the war would be won, and arms would be laid down.

Micah is the soldier who struggles most with humanity. He was trained to kill, and to not think much about it.

Put plainly, Micah is an executioner, has been since boyhood, and his father, judge and jury.

If Timothy Malone the Second condemned a man to death, Micah was the gun. If Timothy ruled that a business deal had gone bad and blood was to be spilled, even in his youth, Micah was the blade. If Timothy wanted to make a point and smear the streets of New York to assert his dominance, Micah was the assassin. And if an order was handed down by the man who fucked and killed to ensure his sons’ existence, then Micah was to repay that debt by killing another.

The first few were hard on the child’s psyche. To take a life felt like taking out a loan. It was inevitable that, someday, the lender would come to collect. But in the meantime, he had a job to do.

And just like with any job, over time, tasks become mundane. Flip a burger, or slit a throat… comparable, if a man—a boy—could simply flip that switch in his brain to make it so. Sweeping floors, or washing blood from concrete… same.

It was a matter of mental fortitude. So, for the sake of survival, that boy came to add a very important ability to his skill set; compartmentalization.

It was just a job, after all.

Some fifteen-year-olds clean bathrooms at the local truck stop for their pocket money. Micah Malone pressure-washed gray matter from a bunker floor. Regular high-schoolers learn computer programming, if that’s what they’re into. Micah learned how to bypass home security with a brush of his fingertips and enter a residence to take care of the tasks his father set out for him. Most teen boys attended parties and lost their virginity with the head cheerleader after a game. Micah learned new ways to torture a man—slice his skin open, destroy bones until they became paste—and, when the need arose, he was provided women to fuck for his pleasure.

If one set aside the depravity, abuse, and general horror, Micah’s life might even have been considered blessed.

He had money, after all. Power. Sex. And four brothers who had his back no matter what.

But as with all things that go up, they must eventually come down.

At just seventeen years old, with a rap sheet already consisting of dozens of bodies that would never truly be tallied, Micah was ordered to murder another: a boy who had stood up and defied the man who considered himself the most powerful of them all. Timothy Malone the Second ordered his son to execute his younger brother.

And that, despite his inhumane, compartmentalized, machine-killer’s brain, was a line Micah would not cross.

Even if he had the skills. Even if he could switch off his morality and view his target as just another man who had wronged a powerful mafioso. Even if Micah could pick a fight with Archer and find himself excessively pissed off, this was not an order he would fulfill.

And because of it, he was punished.

Before he’d even turned eighteen, Micah traded his life for that of his brother’s.

That was the day everything changed.

1

MICAH

SOME THINGS ARE BETTER LEFT UNSAID

Iwander along Wall Street in New York City and scan the road around us. I watch the cars that putter by, and study those parked in timed slots.

Some folks drive clunkers and wear thousand-dollar suits, while others drive a fuckin’ Maserati but wear sweatpants. It’s all relative, really. But it’s easy to tell who has actual money and brains, and who pretends they do.

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