Table of Contents
Prologue
Epilogue
Salvatore
Eva
Also by the Author
About the Author
Romance Novels to your Email
Abducted
Alexis Abbott
© 2017 Pathforgers Publishing.
All Rights Reserved. If you downloaded an illegal copy of this book and enjoyed it, please buy a legal copy. Either way you get to keep the eBook forever, but you’ll be encouraging me to continue writing and producing high quality fiction for you. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imaginations. Any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, are entirely coincidental.
This book is intended for sale to Adult Audiences only. All sexually active characters in this work are over 18. All sexual activity is between non-blood related, consenting adults. This is a work of fiction, and as such, does not encourage illegal or immoral activities that happen within.
Cover Design by Wicked Good Covers. All cover art makes use of stock photography and all persons depicted are models.
More information is available at Pathforgers Publishing.
Content warnings: mafia violence, unprotected sex
Wordcount: 60,400 Words
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Contents
Prologue
1. Salvatore
2. Eva
3. Salvatore
4. Eva
5. Salvatore
6. Eva
7. Salvatore
8. Eva
9. Salvatore
10. Eva
11. Salvatore
12. Eva
13. Salvatore
14. Eva
15. Salvatore
16. Eva
17. Salvatore
18. Eva
19. Salvatore
20. Eva
Epilogue
Also by the Author
About the Author
Romance Novels to your Email
Prologue
He’s getting closer.
At first I think it’s all in my head, that I’m just imagining the footsteps behind me picking up speed to match my pace as I walk to the bus stop. But my heart is pounding, because I’m all alone, and there’s a man behind me. Following me.
I just finished my Saturday night shift at the sports bar where I work weekends. It’s a few minutes before midnight and the sky is dark, nearly pitch-black, punctuated only occasionally by the greenish glow of a streetlamp overhead. But this is the seedy side of town, and most of the streetlights are burned out. When things go wrong, big or small, on this side of the railroad tracks, the city doesn’t care to fix it.
Those of us who live over here are so far down the list of priorities, we might as well not exist.
So I’ve gotten used to it. The rushed half-jog to the bus stop after work in the eerie darkness. Sometimes, when I’m lucky, I can convince one of my male coworkers to walk me there as protection. Most of the guys at the sports bar are tall, broad-shouldered. Former high school athletes and bouncers.
Those types.
But tonight, my usual escort was busy flirting with some girl at the bar. Whatever. That was his prerogative. I’m sure they got tired of walking me to the bus stop and never getting more than a hug and a smile of gratitude in return. And that’s how it is in this world: you get what you give. So tonight I thought it would be okay, just this once, for me to make the long walk myself.
Except I was wrong.
This is not okay.
Someone is behind me, following me, and has been for at least five or six minutes. And now that he’s keeping up with me, his footsteps matching mine as I break into a jog, I know it’s serious. It is no coincidence that we happen to both be on the same route in the middle of the night. He’s trailing me and I have nowhere to go.
Terror grips my heart as I try to pick up the pace, my feet aching with every quickened step.
For my job at the sports bar, I’m required to wear high heels that “make my ass and calves look good,” according to my sleazy boss, Howie. And that’s all well and good when I’m in the bar. I can walk in heels, no problem. But this is Rochester, New York. It’s the ninth of December, and it’s snowing like crazy. Usually I bring a pair of snow-friendly boots to change into, but tonight I was almost late for work and had to rush. So now I was dashing through the snow in four-inch heels, my feet freezing and my heart pounding, because holy hell, there is someone chasing me!
I glance back over my shoulder and see a tall, thin figure following after me. He’s jogging with a slight stoop, like his back isn’t quite straight. Maybe an older guy? But what kind of old man chases young women down the street at midnight?
I trip over a chunk of ice on the sidewalk and go flying, landing on my knees, skidding across the snow and ice with a little shriek of terror. It hurts like hell, my work pants soiled and tearing at the knees. “Shit,” I cry out as I push my hands into the freezing cement, hurrying to get back on my feet.
My follower is running now, trying to take advantage of my fall.
Adrenaline pumps through my veins, pushing me on. I jump up and kick off my heels, then break into a flat-out run down the street. I’m only wearing tights under my pants and a pair of thin socks, so my feet are aching with the cold underneath.
My lungs burn with every breath of chilly air, my knee throbbing, my head pounding with fear. What does he want from me? Is he trying to mug me? Or... worse?
I am not about to find out. It’s only another block now to the bus stop. I can make it.
My feet are starting to go numb and I’m losing my traction, sliding on the squeaky snow and icy pavement in my sock feet, but I keep on running. No matter how much it hurts, no matter how many pebbles and stones and ice shards stab my bare feet, I’m not going to be captured by the terrifying man!
But my heart nearly stops as I see the bus up-ahead, pulling away from my stop. It’s come early. Just by a few minutes, but early enough that I’m going to miss it. Not only is that my ride home, it’s my only chance of escape from the man chasing me. The other people that would be waiting there my only hope of help.
“No, no, no!” I cry out, tears blurring my vision I leap over a big shoveled-up pile of snow and go sliding again.
“Please! Wait! Come back!” I scream out, my voice sounding ragged as I struggle to keep my breathing even. The bus is picking up speed, oblivious to my desperate plight, while the man behind me gains momentum.
I look back again and shout, “Leave me alone, you creep! I have mace!” I lie, trying to fumble with my purse, like I really might put out his eyes with pepper spray.
He doesn’t answer. He’s dressed in all black, the hood of his puffy jacket pulled over his forehead far enough to cast his entire face in shadow. I can tell from his slightly hobbling gait that he is, in fact, an older guy. But that’s about all I can figure out. And for an old man, he sure seems to be in pretty damn good shape, keeping pace with me.
No. More than that. He’s gaining on me.
I look around frantically, wondering where I can go to hide. Even though I live and work on this side of town, I don’t have a lot of friends nearby. Well, actually, I have almost no friends. I keep to myself. And with how many hours I work between my two jobs and overnight nursing classes, I don’t have time to build relationships. Which means I don’t know anyone in these apartment buildings.
The police station is blocks and blocks away. There are no reta
il businesses in the neighborhood. I have nowhere to go. I turn and see a long, dark alleyway to my left. Before I can second-guess the decision I bolt in that direction. I don’t know what my plan is. I don’t know what I’m going to do. The only thing in my head is this voice clanging over and over again: RUN. RUN. RUN. DO NOT STOP FOR ANYTHING.
As soon as I run into the shadows of the alleyway, I cry out in pain as something sharp pierces through my sock and through the numb sole of my right foot. Tripping, instinctively babying my right foot, I fall to one side and slam into a brick wall, then crumple down to the freezing cold ground. In the faint light, I can make out hundreds of glittering glass shards from a shattered bottle of malt liquor. I wiggle back against the wall next to a stinking dumpster, cradling my right foot, which is bloody and searing with pain and cold. I try to blend into the darkness, hoping my assailant won’t find me, by some miracle.
He comes bolting into the alley and looks around, breathing heavily. My heart is pounding so loud I fear it might give me away. It’s like an overwhelming rushing sound in my ears. Surely he can hear it. Surely he can smell me. Smell my fear.
He walks slowly along, looking from side to side. As he approaches, he kicks the glass shards with his heavy boot, and some of the glass comes flying my way, clattering against the dumpster.
His breathing gets closer, deep and steady, as if he didn’t just chase me at full speed for two blocks. He’s calm, toying with me.
He kicks more glass, closer to the dumpster, and with two more steps, he’s going to see me.
Crunch goes the glass under his heavy boots, his pace slow as I shiver in the snow, trying to hold my breath, trying not to give myself away. A light buzzes to my left, as if struggling to emit light, keeping us both in the dark until a small flash of dim, overhead light gives me the sight of him.
He’s huge, his body imposing and terrifying, and I catch just a hint of his malicious grin which turns my heart cold.
He’s spotted me.
He reaches for me and I fumble around for a weapon of some kind. I desperately grab a larger chunk of sharp glass and begin flailing at him with it, shrieking as he wrestles to get to me. I kick at him with both feet, screaming.
“Help! Help me, please! Somebody!” I wail, tears burning on my cold cheeks.
I get a few good swipes in with the chunk of glass, but my attacker is wearing too many layers. I can’t even actually cut him. It’s so dark and I’m so exhausted, my whole body freezing cold. My feet ache. One of them is bleeding. The man grabs me by the shoulders and slams me back against the brick wall, my head bursting with pain and dizziness.
“Don’t,” I sob weakly. “Please.” My mind racing with a million thoughts of what happens to young women in dark alleyways when at the mercy of cruel men.
Somewhere it occurs to me that something smells like the hospital. Like the ward where I once shadowed an instructor for nursing school. What is it? What is the smell? It’s slightly sweet and cloying. It makes my nose wrinkle even as the world falls dark around me.
Tapioca. It’s tapioca.
And then something else is pressed against my face, my nose and my mouth. I try to suck in a deep breath, but when I do, the alley falls away and everything goes black.
1
Salvatore
Mercy is not an emotion I feel.
I stalk through the smoky living room of the penthouse apartment, listening to the sound of the rain pattering against the windows over the low, pained groaning on the ground.
There’s a gun in my hand, one bullet left, and the blood spilled from the other five is on my hands, literally. It’s also staining my black clothes and running in thin streams on the tile floors. I loom over the carnage in the room like the Grim Reaper himself, my dark eyes scanning the bodies on the ground for signs of life.
Two of the men never made it out of their seats and lie slumped on the table. One got up to run, and his brains are splattered on the wall-length windows. The man who was coming out of the bathroom has his throat slashed open, slumped over the corpse of the one man who had been fast enough to draw his gun and try to shoot at me before I blasted his hand off and put a second bullet in his heart.
The doorman lies behind me, his one eye open and staring as blood runs out the knife-hole I put in the other eye.
A minute ago, the apartment had been full of some of the most powerful men in my corner of New York City, enjoying a pleasant evening with drinks and probably a little chatting about work. They were men who trusted me. Men who paid me. Men who relied on me.
And I just slaughtered them like the pigs they are.
Even as I approach the one survivor who is slumped against the wall, blood running from the shot in his gut, agony on his face, I feel no remorse. No regret.
The glassy look in his eyes tells me that his vision is getting blurry. Fear comes over his face as he realizes I’m approaching him, and I can see him fighting to stay awake.
“Y... you,” he struggles to say, disbelief in his voice. “Angel of Death.”
My title.
My six and a half feet of height looms over his form, clad in a matching black turtleneck, leather jacket, leather gloves, jeans, and shoes. My eyes that these very men have called blacker than a moonless night glare down at him.
“I... please,” he croaks, trying and failing to raise a hand to me.
I look at his meaty hand covering the hole in his stomach, hearing the disgusting squelch of blood as his hand twitches and he winces. He’ll bleed out in a matter of minutes without medical attention.
“Anything,” he says in a hoarse whisper. “Money... women... power?”
I simply move my head side to side, my face still as a statue.
They should know better than to bargain with me, after everything they’ve had me do, after knowing about every soul who has begged me for mercy in the past.
And they all begged for their lives more convincingly than these people.
The only question on my mind is whether to put him down now, or let him suffer.
At my silence, his lip quivers, and he gives his head a feeble shake before managing a final sentence.
“At least... tell me why.”
I raise my pistol, aiming it at his paunchy face, right between the dull, piggish eyes. My mind is made up. Not even the satisfaction of letting these pigs feel pain is worth leaving loose ends. My reputation is well-earned.
“No,” is the only word I give him before I pull the trigger, and a final silenced shot fires. I watch his body twitch for a second when the fresh hole appears in his head, and then, all is still.
As silently as I came in, the Angel of Death sweeps out of the building, not a soul spotting me in or out.
My sleek, black car tears down the highway like a shadow over the next four hours. Soon, the great glowing lights of New York City are shrinking behind me as I head northwest, upstate.
Streetlights flash by me overhead through the windshield. I catch a glimpse of the shining blood still on my leather gloves. At a gas station halfway through my journey, I take them off along with my jacket and seal them in a bag in the back of the car. I’ll dispose of them later, with the rest of these clothes. I have several outfits identical to it in a small suitcase in the trunk. I slip on a less intimidating red hat and big fishing glasses, and I go inside to buy a coffee and a little food with cash. I don’t want to be obvious to the cameras.
I wonder how long it will be before they come looking for me—either the police or the mafia.
I won’t be going back to New York City anytime soon. Maybe not ever.
Finally, hours after midnight, I get off the highway and am soon driving through the woods and poorly lit roads.
I pass a sign for Seneca Falls, a deer with one antler standing frozen beside it as my car blazes by. It’s a small, sleepy town south of Rochester, not the kind of place people bother to stop very often.
And it’s going to be my home for a while.
Af
ter a short time, I turn off onto a dirt road, and halfway to my destination, I pull the car to the side of the road and turn it off.
This will be the only night I can’t bring the car all the way down the road.
I will need to be stealthy just one more time tonight.
Even though I’m used to smooth streets, my footsteps are silent as I stalk down the gravel road for half a mile. There’s the faintest bit of moonlight to guide my way. I move through the woodland road like I was born on it.
Sometimes, I wonder if my nickname isn’t a coincidence. Maybe I am god’s own Angel of Death, visiting this world to bring the end to people whose time has come.
I’ve done my job efficiently all these years. So efficiently that even if I were an angel, I doubt that my massacre tonight could wash away my sins.
A crack of a smile comes across my dark face. Maybe this world is my hell.
Finally, I come to my goal at the end of the winding road.
It’s a big white farmhouse that looks like it might be abandoned. It’s old, but that just proves how sturdy it is. There’s a barn in the backyard that’s even more run-down than the house, and I can only guess it was turned into a shed years ago and forgotten.
I crouch down and move up to the house, low to the ground. There’s a light on in the kitchen, but that doesn’t tell me anything: it could mean the owner is awake, or it could mean he just left the lights on.
I slip up to what I imagine is the bedroom window, and I peer inside. There’s enough light coming from the hallway to show me the bed is empty. Carefully, I put my hands on the window and push up slowly.
Abducted: A Mafia Hitman Romance Page 1
