Relentless: A Bad Boy Romance (Bertoli Crime Family #1) by Lauren Landish Page A

was going to use felt heavy in my hand, when suddenly, things started to go wrong.
    The target, supposedly a tweaker who never carried anything on him, spun at the sound of my approaching footsteps. Seeing the suit, he knew exactly who I worked for, and instead of running like I'd suspected he'd do, he reached for a pistol in the waistband of his pants. I barely got my gun up in time before he squeezed off a round, which ricocheted off the pavement, nicking my right leg as it whined by. I pulled the trigger, and his chest nearly exploded, blood bursting from his back in a massive spray that painted the side of the Pizza Hut in a crimson Rorschach diagram.
    The next day, after getting my leg bandaged up, was the most beautiful day I’d ever had. Each bite of my breakfast was the greatest meal I'd ever feasted upon, and each breath was sweet and perfect in my lungs. You want inspiration? I had inspiration, forty-five caliber inspiration that came in semi-automatic.
    When the lecture was over, Adriana had an hour to wait before her next class, a painting lab that almost always left her covered in enough paint that I thought she looked like she was trying out for a clown spot in the local circus. We hung out in the university library, where we could at least grab a quiet corner and I could keep an eye on the comings and goings. Adriana picked out a romance novel, of all things, and sat down reading. “Really?” I asked, seeing the illustration on the cover. “I figured you for a better quality of literature than that.”
    “Don't knock it until you try it,” Adriana said. “Besides, at least it lets me live vicariously.”
    I didn't know if her comment was aimed at me or just a general complaint about the situation she was in, so I didn't reply. Instead, I looked at my phone, wishing Adam would call. He was normally much more involved in keeping me updated, but other than the once-daily messages that boiled down to 'no news yet,' I'd gotten nothing.
    “Hey, Dan?” Adriana asked, shaking me from my thoughts and focusing my attention back on her. “Sorry.”
    “Don't worry about it,” I said. “Is there something you need?”
    “I know you're screening my emails, so can you pull up my system and see if I got any new ones? I'm expecting a message from my marketing professor on an assignment he gave while I was at home.”
    Nodding, I took the laptop, a brand new one that was scrubbed of any viruses that Vincent Drake's last message could have downloaded. The new one ran every email in a virtual box setup that was supposedly foolproof, although I bet that Adam could get past it if we had enough time.
    I pulled up the email client, which downloaded three messages. “Let's see—one from a Dr. Roberts, that's the one you want, I assume, a message from the university saying that if you want tickets to the next home football game you need to turn in your request for student section tickets by Friday, and . . . shit.”
    “What?”
    “Peter Gabriel,” I said. “Do I even need to tell you who that is?”
    Adriana shook her head. She knew the members and former members of Genesis even better than I did by now, and turned pointedly away from me, picking up her book from her lap and pretending to read. I stuck a headphone into the sound jack and opened the mail in the virtual box, hoping the system would hold. I didn't want to have to tell Carlo that we had to buy another new computer.
    The music was unfamiliar, and I'd spent the time over the past week listening to most of Genesis's famous songs. This one was different. The sound was more classic rock than what I'd expected, and the lead singer certainly wasn't Phil Collins. I assumed it was Peter Gabriel—I wasn't sure. The song was hacked and cut, the lyrics blended from different parts of the same song with a clumsy homemade transition, probably put together quickly on a laptop.
    It took me a second with how the lyrics were jumbled, but then it came to me. It was of