by Bethany-Kris
ONE STEP AFTER ANOTHER
The After Another Trilogy, Book 1
BETHANY-KRIS
National Sexual Assault Hotline: 800.656.HOPE (4673)
Chat Online: online.rainn.org
CONTENTS
ONE STEP AFTER ANOTHER
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
OTHER BOOKS
Copyright
1.
Luca
LUCA saw ghosts everywhere. He figured that was to be expected considering he’d spent the better part of his days for a half of a decade chasing one. Now, whenever he found something that he could connect to his past, even when doing the most mundane things, he couldn’t help but see the ghosts of what used to be.
But seeing what used to be often led Luca down the road of wondering what could have been as well. Very few good things came from what ifs; the past couldn’t be changed, after all. Only the present and future. Chasing ghosts had also taught him that fact. A blessing and a curse.
“Sue the assholes for malpractice,” the guy to Luca’s left at the bar said to his friend in a suit. Well, they were both in suits. As was every other man in the bar and the connected ballroom of the hotel. Suit number one continued his chat with his friend, sipping on top-shelf bourbon, clearly knowing nothing about the law when he muttered around the rim of his glass, “Kid catches a virus while in the hospital unrelated to the illness they were admitted for. Sounds like something the hospital should have to answer for.”
“That’s what I said—”
“But not something you can sue for,” Luca spoke up, drawing the attention of the two men to where he sat on a barstool. “Not rationally, anyway. The virus would have needed to cause significant harm to the kid. Medically or otherwise. It didn’t—you said it yourself. Catching a virus because somebody coughed too close to him and didn’t wash their hands doesn’t fall under gross negligence. He had a few extra days in the hospital. Missed a test and a game. Another round of antibiotics and he was out of there. Big deal. You’ll pay more for the lawyer and court costs than you would if you paid the original hospital bill. Waste of time.”
Placing his lowball glass to the bar top, he pushed it closer to the other side for the bartender to pick up on his way by. One drink. That’s all he afforded himself when he was working. Which was something he had to get back to, the entire reason he was there at the hotel during a political fundraiser, and he didn’t really have time to entertain further distractions.
“Who the hell are you?” suit number two with the receding hairline and the wrong legal opinion asked.
At the same time, the guy’s friend asked, “How would you know?”
Luca pointed at the first man, replying, “Me? I’m nobody.” Then, to the other man, he added, “Five years of law school. But an ounce of common sense and all those forms the hospitals make you sign upon admittance that waives liability for almost everything except actual medical malpractice would have told you that. You know, had you taken the time to read them. Nobody does, do they?”
And saved Luca the trouble. Sometimes, he liked being an asshole, though. No real reason. At least it helped pass the time. The time was now up.
Standing from the stool, Luca reached for the blazer he had set on the empty stool on his other side. Usually, he preferred leather and a hoodie over a suit and tie, but there was no way in hell he was getting into the fundraiser looking like any other fuck who walked in off the street.
“Should still sue the bastards,” muttered the one man. “What do you got to lose, Greg?”
Luca shrugged on his blazer. “Hell, his money to waste. I suppose if he’s got enough money to be here—five-thousand dollars a plate for this event, right?—then he’s got the cash to blow on frivolous lawsuits that clog up the justice system. But hey, whatever gets you off. I’m not one to judge.”
“Excuse—”
Luca didn’t bother to linger long enough to hear whatever bullshit the guy planned to say, and the buzzing in his pocket gave him a reason to turn his back when he pulled the phone out and answered the call. He hadn’t checked the caller ID, but the second he heard the voice on the speaker, he wished he had.
“Puzza here,” Luca said.
“Son,” Zeke greeted.
Not unkindly.
It also didn’t have to be. Just hearing his father’s voice was enough to put Luca on edge. Usually, because Zeke’s kindness was almost always followed by the man’s—
“Dinner at your mother’s favorite spot tonight. Did you forget?” A second of silence followed before his father added lower, “Again.”
Disappointment.
The kindness was simply respect, and it always came before the disappointment. How his father showed or voiced that disappointment varied, but the end result was still the same.
“I didn’t forget. Work,” Luca explained, moving away from the bar and into the crowd of people milling between there and the ballroom where the tables had been set up for the pay-for-play political bullshit that he wasn’t there to entertain. Yeah, he bought a plate to get into the event, but that had little to do with his intention to vote or which party he planned to pull for in the upcoming election. “Something came up. I talked to Ma.”
“But not me which meant I showed up to find you weren’t there. I appreciate the effort to let Katya know you wouldn’t be joining us, but less that you couldn’t take thirty seconds to call me and give me a heads up.”
“Why? Then, we couldn’t have this pointless conversation, Dad. You know how much I like our back and forth when I’m on a job. It really puts me on my game.”
“Luca.”
Shit.
It didn’t matter that he was a thirty-year-old man out on his own who answered to no one but himself—most of the time—his father came from a different generation. Really, an entirely opposite world. One that demanded respect at every turn and that he wanted Luca to join by jumping in with both feet and open arms.
The world of Mafiosi, that was.
Cosa Nostra.
A long time ago, Luca planned to do exactly that. Join the family business. Follow in his father’s footsteps to hold one of the highest seats in the Donati criminal famiglia. Then life got in the way.
The past.
Those ghosts.
“Sorry,” he told his father. The respect of the matter; Zeke expected it and even if he did see Luca’s lack of involvement in the mafia as a failure on his part, he was still his father’s son. “But something came up. I couldn’t put it aside. Might be my only chance to—”
“Find whatever you’re chasing this week,” his father said, his tone rough with annoyance. “Who are you working for this time? Or is the better question, what are you looking for?”
“Wrong questions, right words. Who am I looking for,” Luca returned, “and I’m not at liberty to say.”
Well, he was.
Could.
But he didn’t because Nazio Donati—the man who he answered to for this specific job—didn’t like having someone else’s nose in his business. Regardless of his status as a made man in the mafia alongside Luca’s father. Considering Naz was also Luca’s best friend—and married to Luca’s little sister, Rosalynn—and
this was a job he had been unable to complete since he started tracking things and people years ago ... well, what did it matter?
His father wouldn’t care. It wasn’t what Zeke wanted Luca to be doing, and that’s really what it all boiled down to at the end of the day.
He also no longer had time to fuck around. The beep of his other phone—an untraceable burner he replaced every two weeks just to be safe—said his night was just about to get started.
“I’ll call you back,” Luca said.
“No, you won’t.”
“Okay, I won’t. I will, however, make it up to Ma for missing dinner tonight. That can either satisfy you or not. I don’t have the time or the give a damn to keep going back and forth with you about it right now.”
“Luca—”
“Sorry for the attitude. Again.”
Except he wasn’t.
At all.
Luca didn’t bother with an appropriate goodbye. His father should have figured out how the phone call was going to end two minutes ago when they first started it, anyway. Replacing the one phone with the other in his pocket, Luca checked the most recent message.
Confirmation of sighting—cameras at the front caught an arrival of someone matching your Penny’s description. Matches the old picture I have. Except the hair. It’s black.
Black hair.
Probably a wig.
Luca replied, Keep watching the cams. Let me know direction and/or floors.
The next response came fast, before Luca could even turn the corner to get a decent view of the front entrance to the hotel.
Got it, Keys wrote. A black hat hacker named Keys, funnily enough. Like computer keys. As if that wasn’t ironic at all. He kept the guy on call for quick jobs, and the occasional deep dive search of the dark web when Luca couldn’t find what he needed on his own.
Tonight, he had the guy working his magic on the hotel’s security system because a bead he had on a source from months ago suggested his current active mark would show up at the hotel fundraiser after arriving back from a trip overseas.
Why, he didn’t know. Where had she been—another question he couldn’t answer. There were too many unknowns when it came to the ghost he’d been tracking for five long years. She was the entire reason he had stumbled into his current profession, actually.
Every time someone left a clue or a lead popped up, it was scrubbed away as fast as it appeared. Like it hadn’t existed in the first place.
But wasn’t that the point of ghosts?
They didn’t exist.
They couldn’t be seen.
Thing was—Penny Dunsworth wasn’t a ghost. Living, breathing ... heart beating. She was just as real as him or anyone else in the world. She was simply harder to find.
Luca knew her once. So had his friends ... family. The young woman they invited into their world and life, someone they bent over backward to help and protect, until she just up and disappeared one day.
For no reason.
With no trace.
They wanted to know why—or rather, Luca’s friend did. Nazio and his wife couldn’t accept that Penny left on her own. Not considering her history and what led up to her eventual disappearance. Luca wasn’t inclined to believe it either which was why he kept looking.
Even when Penny, a ghost of what they knew her to be, made it particularly hard. She couldn’t hide everything. Or the people she worked for couldn’t, anyway. Which was how he found himself at the hotel. And her supposed connection to an organization based in Nevada known only as The League.
He couldn’t confirm it. That was the kind of the point, he suspected. Not that it stopped him.
Finding the unfindable certainly made Luca a good living, and it kept his head above water. It gave him something to do when his leads on Penny ran dry, and he had to wait for something else to pop up.
But that flash of pin-straight black hair under a large brimmed hat just beyond the entrance of the hotel said his lead on her was currently red-hot. In five years, the closest he had ever been to coming face to face with Penny Dunsworth had been ... never. He was always minutes too late, or entirely off the mark.
He wasn’t about to let this chance slip through his fingers. He owed it to his friends to find the woman they had taken in as one of their own. So they could finally know why.
Right?
Time to get to work.
2.
Penny
“MISS Carter, whenever you’re ready.”
Regardless of how many times Penny Dunsworth used aliases—many times over her five years as an assassin working for The League—she had never really become accustomed to the revolving door of identities. It was part of the job. Expected, even. Yet, hearing another name that wasn’t hers still took Penny a second to answer.
“Thank you,” she told the driver currently holding the right side, rear passenger door open. “We won’t need further help, or the car.”
“I was told to be here at twelve to—”
“Excuse me,” Penny said, stepping out of the vehicle and turning her back to the man as she grabbed the edge of the car door. It forced the driver to move, but also allowed the other passenger in the rear seat to exit as well. “Hurry. We’re not drawing attention here, Delilah. Remember?”
Compared to Penny’s form-fitted black gown, matching hat—that was better suited for the beach than the formal dinner and event happening a few doors away inside the Manhattan hotel—Delilah’s white get-up was quite a sight as she left the vehicle. Well, Delilah wasn’t her real name, but it was what her papers said, and Marise liked the option when Dare handed over the five different identifications for the job. Choices were always good.
Today, Marise was Delilah. Penny was Georgina. And none of it was true.
The skirt of Marise’s white gown, made up of layers of chiffon, ruffled in the wind but not much. The silk cloak with the large hood that kept her blonde hair and most of her face hidden from any view up above—camera angles, mostly—kept the loose layers of the gown from blowing wildly.
Side by side on the street, Penny and Marise probably appeared to be total opposites. She towered over the girl’s four and a half feet by a foot and half in her patent leather pumps. Their gowns were a contrast in both color and style. Even their hair—Marise with blonde curls, and Penny in her pin-straight black wig—couldn’t be more different.
And yet despite those obvious physical differences, if anyone asked, the story was simple—Penny was Marise’s mother. Or ... the identities they had taken on were a mother and daughter pair, for that matter.
On the surface, anyway.
Beneath that, well, things were a lot darker. As was usually the way in their business. A person couldn’t play with monsters and never come face to face with one, after all. In all her twenty-three years, it was one lesson Penny almost wished she had never learned. Thing was, if she hadn’t learned it, then she wouldn’t be who she was now.
“Miss Carter, this way, please,” said the man in a three-piece black suit with coiled wire hanging down from the comm in his ear. He held open the front door of the hotel while another man, dressed similarly, stood a foot back in the entryway. Definitely not hotel security—more likely part of the team for the father of the man Penny would soon be visiting upstairs in a suite.
Penny smiled. “Absolutely. Delilah, follow me.”
Her partner on the job said nothing but didn’t hesitate to trail behind Penny who followed the two men dressed in black. The men didn’t speak to each other, or the women walking only two feet behind. Or to any of the many people milling about in the large entry of the upscale hotel. Music and laughter filtered in through the open doorways of the bar and ballroom decorated in lengthy, sheer drapes.
Penny took all of it in. And barely even moved her head to do it.
Besides, it wasn’t like she hadn’t been to a dozen of these kinds of events when she was younger. A wealthy family, too much privilege and power ... of course, she had been dres
sed up and dragged to things exactly like this just because it was good for their last name to be tied to it all.
Not that she cared to think about it.
She never did.
Liar, her mind hissed as a hundred memories passed through her brain, making her heart beat harder and her chest tight. She was a liar because she thought about it too much.
Penny had just become better at hiding it. The League helped with that. Not that she was willing to admit the training they put her through had helped beyond anything more than teaching her how to kill another human in fifty different ways.
“Step inside,” the man to the left said as he and his partner came to a stop near the elevators. Only one was already open and waiting.
Penny moved into the open elevator at the far right of a bank of four. Marise didn’t need to be told to follow, nor did she raise her head enough to allow the cameras outside or inside the elevator to catch more than a shadow or the curve of her lips. The same way Penny’s hat kept her face from view despite it not really going with the outfit.
Win some, lose some.
“Floor eight, right?” Penny asked, smiling at the suits waiting outside.
“Floor eight. Suite eight-oh-one.”
She knew that, too.
At least the assholes could feel like they were really doing something more than just delivering a man’s fetish.
Penny hit the button for the appropriate floor and waited until the door closed before she hit another. Two floors lower than the eighth. “You’ll be fine—just get the hell out of here and make sure they don’t see you leave, huh?”
Marise passed her a look. “What if he has someone waiting up there? Another one of those assholes in a suit—one with a gun?”
That was cute.
Funny, even.
She could do these jobs alone except for when she couldn’t and needed a decoy. Say like another assassin who, when dressed up a certain way looked younger than she was. As far as Penny knew, Marise was somewhere in the range of eighteen years or so. About the same age Penny had been when she walked into The League five years earlier with a black folder in hand and no idea what would come next.
