One Reason to Kill (Escaping the Mafia Book 1)

by Evelyn Kiss

  “Santi!” I shout. When I free the ropes around his arms, I smack his cheeks. That seems to wake him up. He moans and sways his head, so I steady it between my palms while balancing the slick knife.

  “That’s kind of close to my face,” he whispers weakly.

  I sigh softly and let him go.

  “What are you doing?”

  “What does it look like I’m doing?” I gruff as I move around, slipping on pieces of his flesh so I can get a better angle at the ropes binding his ankles.

  “Saving my ass.” He chuckles softly, but it’s barely even a smile.

  “Yeah,” I manage to say without vomiting. “But it wasn’t me. It was Rosalie.”

  “She was here?” He sounds more alert now, which is good, because I swear I just heard someone coming.

  “We got to go, Santi.” I unravel the rest of the ropes and help him get to his feet, pulling his arms over my shoulders and hoisting him up with his help. “Can you walk?” As I look for a door that had not been used by Rosalie or the filet guy, I keep my eyes fixated on the walls and not on the open wound at Santi’s knee.

  He falters in his steps but lies through his teeth. “Yeah, it’s not so bad.”

  “Liar,” I whisper as we take slow steps. “You got to help me though. Take small steps.”

  “I’m heavy ... You should go.”

  He’s not going to play the hero card. “You are heavy, but it’s not the first time I’ve had your weight on me.”

  “Funny.” He doesn’t sound amused. He sounds winded and trying not too expel to much energy by talking.

  “Hold on to the wall,” I order. We couldn’t have taken more than ten steps. I’m not exactly sure how many more it will take until we get out of here.

  “We’re at Unita.” He rests one hand on the wall and the other on the wounds in his chest while I open the door and prop it open with my foot. “This has to be the basement. No windows.”

  Stairs. That’s what I see. I glance over my shoulder at him. “It’s okay, come on. We got to get you to the hospital.”

  He looks up at the set of stairs. “I’m going to slow you down. You go, get away from Old Ridge, and call Dax to pick you up.”

  “I’m not leaving you here.” I put his hand over my shoulder as I drag him out the door and distract him with questions. “What the hell did they do to you?”

  “Nothing.”

  I roll my eyes. Fine, we’ll start with me. “Why was I out?”

  “They hit you on the head, and then you woke up, and they drugged you.”

  We stumble onto the first step with ease. The second one takes a bit more effort. “Come on, one foot. Then the other.”

  “I can’t.” He coughs and scowls when he does. “I think my ribs are broken.”

  Third step. We alternate talking and stepping, so he doesn’t get winded. “Santi, why didn’t you tell them what they wanted to know?”

  I step, he talks. He steps, I talk. “They would have killed us, and I don’t care if I die, but I’d rather not lose someone I care about.”

  Fourth step.

  “Aww,” I play with him to encourage another step. “You care about me?”

  “Apparently.” He pauses to take a soft breath. Deep ones hurt too much. “When they threatened you, I wanted to rip them apart, but they tied me down when I broke through the zip ties.”

  Six more steps. We can do this. “How did you break the zip ties?”

  “Those were easy, but they fucking Tased me before I could get to you.” His free hand curls around his upper chest. “Three times.”

  “That explains why you’re acting like such a baby.”

  “That’s kind of fucked up.” He smiles, but it works and forces him onto the next step. I didn’t mean it, but I’ll tell him that once we are far away from Unita.

  “Guess you’re not tired enough to curse.”

  He nearly collapses, and I barely manage to hold him upright. “I got to stop,” he says about three steps from the top floor. Though all I see is darkness.

  “Santi. We got to go because they’ll come after us again.”

  “You go,” he says as he tries to hold himself up by the railing. “I will hold them off.”

  “Oh, right. What are you going to do? Fall on them? You can barely stand up.” I glance around and take my phone out of my back pocket. Still no signal. My eyes veer toward Santi, and I help him sit down on the step. “No offense, but I don’t like this self-sacrificing hero thing.”

  He glances up at me with a scornful look. “Seriously?”

  “We’re a team, so if you want to save me, you have to save yourself.”

  “I don’t need to stand to kill someone, Lexi.”

  “Are you trying to say you would kill for me?” I ask, looking over my shoulder, expecting someone to follow us with a gun or bring us back down. We are taking a long time, and I don’t know what’s at the top of the stairs.

  “I’d blow up the world for you, Lexi.” He rests his head against the black wall, dazing out of consciousness. “But maybe tomorrow.”

  Damn it. I check his pulse.

  It’s weak.

  Fuck it. I run up the last few steps to find a slanted horizontal metal door. I push it up with all my strength and find it easily flies back. I check my surroundings. It’s daylight, and we are in a small alleyway near the dumpster of some church. “What the hell?” I say as I hold my phone above my head.

  Whatever. I have cell signal.

  14

  Eskimo Kisses

  Santiago

  I wake up in the hospital with way too much shit on me. I don’t want any of this—not the IV’s, not the monitors, not the … Aw hell. My hand roams down my thigh to find my dick with a plastic tube sticking out of the tip and something taped to my leg. A piss bag.

  “Hey,” she whispers softly.

  My heart pangs against my ribcage at the sound of Lexi’s voice. The strange reflex happens again when she smiles at me. My head weighs more than it should, and I can’t sift through thoughts or the past.

  “Don’t touch that,” she chides, distracting me from my surroundings.

  “Don’t touch my dick?” I joke to keep the smile on her face. She looks stressed and exhausted, and not in a good way. “That’s twice I wake up with you in the same room as me.”

  She jokes. “Right? But you know what? I kind of prefer this time. There was a lot less douche-bag.”

  “You win on that.” I clear my throat and look around the hospital room to find a bag of clothes and some food containers. “Did you have a party in here?”

  “Gunner brought me food. They only let one of us stay with you, and since I insisted on being the one next to you, I got the prize. He was not happy.”

  Fucking Gunner. “Thanks for that.”

  She wiggles her nose in confusion. “Why? He was really worried.”

  I don’t want to get into my issues with Gunner when I’m lying down in a hospital bed. “I rather see your pretty face, then his ugly mug any day.” It’s the truth. I felt it despite the heaviness in my chest. “Even though you look like shit.”

  “Screw you.” She shoves the blanket back and carefully steps down from her bed, dragging the IV pole with her as she saunters over to me.

  My hand is still on my dick, as if touching it will keep it down. Every time I move, I’m acutely aware of the insert, and it’s a strange feeling. “I don’t think I’m supposed to get hard with the plastic extension.”

  “Actually, you can have sex with a catheter on.”

  “Really?” I ask playfully. “Because that whole sexy blue gown thing you’ve got going for you… shows a lot of leg.”

  She smirks and turns around. “It shows a lot of ass too.”

  Yep, that’s all I need. “So how do I do this? Because I’m all for sexing up the girl who rescued me from La Expansión.”

  “I don’t think your body’s ready for something that strenuous.”

  At that, I t
ry to prove her wrong and sit up, but my body aches to move, so I just move my head in her direction. “You’re probably right. Everything’s a bit foggy.” I rub my forehead. “Did you carry me up the stairs?”

  “No, you carried yourself up the stairs until you passed out again.” She takes a seat at the edge of my hospital bed within reach.

  My hands brush against her fingertips. “Why are you in a hospital gown?”

  “Turns out the conk to the head was a bit harder than they thought. I passed out as soon as we got here. Once the adrenaline rush wore off, I guess.” Her fingers trail over the back of my hand in soft strokes, soothing me.

  My eyes are glued to her hand. How easily she accepts touch. “How did we get here?”

  “Rosalie had a GPS pin on my phone and a number. I called it, and a car came around. They dropped us off where Dax was waiting for us, and he brought us here.”

  “Are we still in Chicago?”

  “We’re somewhere in Illinois,” she whispers. “You were in pretty bad shape; you lost a lot of blood, and the repetitive shocks didn’t help your central nervous system, but you’ll be okay.” She lifts the sheet up, exposing my thigh and revealing pieces of medical-grade gauze taped to my now shaved legs. “You’ve got about eighty stitches throughout your body and a skin graft on your knee.”

  “That’s all, huh?”

  “No, you have two fractured ribs on your right side. So, don’t move too much.” She sighs heavily as she brings my hand to her leg. “If Teagan’s mom hadn’t intervened, I don’t know what would have happened.”

  “I never saw her,” I reply as I watch her exhausted eyes study mine. “Did you tell Dax about Rosalie?”

  “No,” she whispers. “Teagan asked me not to.”

  “Where is Teagan now?” I don’t like the involvement or how close to Rosalie is getting. It’s not a coincidence that both Rosalie and her daughter know about Unita.

  “They should be outside in the waiting room. She was cursing out Isabella Santini last time I checked. The guy, the initiate, he didn’t make it.”

  He would have probably died anyway, not all of them make it through initiation.

  “They are going to broker a deal with Tony Astori to get his body back.”

  “And the drugs?”

  She shrugs her shoulders. “I don’t know, but Rosalie said she was coming for them, which made no sense, considering she was the one who told Teagan to steal them.”

  “Rosalie is dangerous, Lexi.”

  “She saved us.”

  “She’s a killer, Lexi. If you see her again, run.” Flattening my palms on the mattress, I use them to hoist myself up, but Teagan flicks me in the nose.

  “Stop that.” She grabs the remote hanging from the side of the bed and lifts the back of the bed into a sitting position. “You can ask for help, you know?”

  I smirk as my upper body is levitated slowly. When I wince from the pain in my rubs, she reverses the movement, decreasing the incline. “Yeah, but I’d rather ask you for a kiss.”

  “Are you thirsty?” she brings the water pitcher on the roll table to the side of the bed and pours some into a small cup. She brings it to my lips and tips it, slowly, so I can rehydrate them and familiarize myself with the feel of the liquid. She removes the cup. “More?”

  My hand comes up, curling around her wrist, and she brings the cups to my lips again. I take small sips until the back of my throat feels less scratchy. “Thanks.”

  She chomps down on her bottom lip as she refills the cup and places it on the table.

  “What is it, Lexi?” Obviously, her brain is going a mile a minute right now. “I’m guessing the conk didn’t deplete you of brain cells, so don’t be shy now.”

  She flattens her lips and shakes her head. “Do you deal with things like that all the time?”

  “No,” I admit. “We aren’t that hands-on, usually. A lot of stuff happens behind the scenes.”

  “So, I won’t have to see you looking like that again?” Careful not to touch me, she drops the remote and puts one hand on the other side of my legs, using it as leverage to hoist herself up.

  “I don’t want you anywhere near this life,” I say honestly. The pillow behind my neck slides down a bit, and she helps me by adjusting it. “You don’t get a say on which direction I take my life, Santi.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes.” She brings her lips down and very softly presses them against mine. Hesitantly, lingering above me, she whispers, “But you do get a choice on whether or not you want to travel it with me.”

  I knew she was trouble the day I tried to kick her out of my apartment. “I want to, Lexi, but Teagan and D—”

  “Teagan wants me out of the life, but I want to be in it, and the choice is mine to make.” Her lips come down on mine, kissing me as if she had never thought she would again.

  I don’t stop her. Because I really like the feel of her soft lips on mine and the way she maneuvers her body to straddle me. Her legs are spread wide; her thighs up against the sides of the hospital keep her from sliding off. Our crotches are aligned, but there’s way too much space between them for them to touch.

  “If I hurt you—“

  My lips are on hers again, shutting her up. Right now, I don’t care if she hurts me, I just need to feel her next to me. To feel her pulse on my lips and its echo in her breaths.

  Because there was a time when they kicked me down the stairs and took a boot to my ribs, that I stayed down. They made me watch as men carried her into the room and put her in the box. I broke through the ties when they threatened to kill her, and that’s when they Tased me. Repeatedly.

  I thought neither of us would make it out of there.

  But she surprised me. Just like I surprise her when my hand slips under her hospital gown, cupping her ass with my palm, and then sliding my finger between the swollen petals of her pussy.

  So fucking soft. I swallow her moans as my fingers dip inside her hot flesh and come out wet, fully coated with her arousal. It’s my turn to groan and her turn to swallow the pleas.

  I have to force myself to slow it down and circle around my favorite part of her body, the pleasure dome. Swirling and tapping just enough to get her hips moving and her body writhing. At my fingers insistence, without realizing it, she lowers herself down.

  The desperate desire to enter her fills me up, clawing at my insides and crashing over my senses. Pain matters little, but she stops me when she sucks in her breath and comes up for air.

  “Santi, if you keep pressing that call button, more than a nurse will hear me come.”

  Because there’s a tent between us, and it’s really fucking uncomfortable with the plastic tube twitching around under the sheets, I grunt my reluctance and remove my fingers. “This isn’t over.”

  Those three words light up her face, which in turn, lights up mine. I smile so wide it hurts my cheeks.

  “I’m surprised you stopped.”

  I slide my fingers down her wet pussy again, convincing myself to continue, but she carefully lifts up and away from me. “If I didn’t have something hooked to my dick, I’d be all for death bed sex.”

  “Shut up, Santi.” She rolls her eyes. “You’re not on your death bed.”

  “I know, but my dick feels like it. Look at it; it’s like a fucking fishing pole.”

  She winces at the idea of fish. “Too soon.”

  I quickly change the subject from the filet of thief game back to us. “Hey, that’s over, but this … this is starting.”

  She looks up at me through her long lashes, her fingers playing with the material of her hospital gown. “What do you mean?”

  “I didn’t want anything more than one-night stands, but you had to staple your damn bra on and call me on my shit, didn’t you?”

  She repositions herself back to the original position, sitting by my side but closer. “Maybe if you had less shit to call you out on, I’d be nicer.”

  “Nah, I kind of like
my girl and her snarky-ass comments.”

  “Your girl, huh?” She laughs softly and brings her forehead to mine.

  Fuck yeah.

  “So, you and me, Chains?”

  I nod and brush my lips against hers, sealing the deal. “Yeah, baby. I think we can give it a try.”

  She snaps her head back and clarifies, “Just you and me, right?”

  I run my clean finger down the bridge of her nose and drop a soft kiss to the button tip. “I’m not into sharing, so I think that’s the best plan.”

  She brushes the tip of her nose against mine in Eskimo kisses. “So, no secret relationship?”

  I’ve never Eskimo kissed anyone in my fucking life, but God, I love it. Love her brain, love her mouth— love the gentleness balanced by the sharp wit. I don’t know how we are going to do it, and how we are going to keep each other safe, but I exhale my apprehension and confirm, “No secret relationship, just a secret society.”

  Read the Next Book In the Series:

  Two to the Back

  Check out the series:

  Escaping The Mafia

  Escaping the Mafia

  ▁ ▄ ▅ ▆ EᔕᑕᗩᑭIᑎG TᕼE ᗰᗩᖴIᗩ ▆ ▅ ▄ ▁

  She’s Willing to Start a War For Love.

  Escaping the Mafia is not simple, especially when Isabella's father is known to chase enemies across state lines and obliterate them, so she has to be careful—and smart.

  This Mafia princess comes up with a deadly plan. One million dollars to any organized crime syndicate who will help her with her six steps to freedom. The smell of easy money brings different crime syndicates to her side, and with their help, she destroys her own family. Nothing like a little revenge on the open road to happiness.

  Each book is written by a different author and revolves around one of the deadly steps.

  One, distract. Evelyn Kiss

  Two, liberate. Cam Johns

  Three, eliminate. Nikki Belaire

  Four, escort. Sophia Peony