BAD BOY'S KISS: A Dark Bad Boy Mafia Romance

by Naomi West

  “Kat. I have to go on a mission tonight.”

  Her blood ran cold. No. Not a mission. Not now, when they were so close to escaping. Was he crazy? “Pistol, no,” she said softly.

  “I know it’s not ideal but—”

  “We’re leaving.”

  “Yeah. This is a way to get some money before we leave. A lot of money, Katrin.”

  “I don’t care how much money. I don’t want you risking your life. Not now.” Her voice was growing increasingly frantic, but she couldn’t stop it.

  “Sweetheart, it’s just one more mission.”

  She went to him, placing her hands on his shoulders and looking into his eyes. “Pistol, you don’t understand. You can’t. I’m—”

  “You don’t understand.” His voice grew hard. “I have to.”

  “No. Pistol, listen to me—”

  But he was already pulling out of her grasp.

  “Did you meet with my father?” she asked desperately. “What did he say?”

  “Just this last mission, Katrin,” he repeated, not answering her question. “Then we’re free.” He handed her an envelope. “If anything happens to me, I’ve written down some contacts. Places you could go.”

  Her jaw dropped. “What are you—”

  “Just take it. Keep it hidden. Nothing’s going to happen to me, but just in case—”

  “I don’t want you going anywhere you might not come back from.”

  “Please, take it.”

  She couldn’t.

  He set it on the table behind her and started to walk away.

  “So he says jump, and you jump?” She demanded, wiping her stinging eyes. She wasn’t going to cry. Couldn’t cry.

  He rounded on her. “It’s my choice, Katrin. Mine.”

  “It ought to beour choice now.”

  “What?” he snarled. “You think just because we fucked few times, we decide everything together?”

  “You said we were in this together. You promised you’d protect me,” she said through gritted teeth.

  “And that’s exactly what I’m doing.” He strode toward the door.

  Katrin’s heart sank with horror. The selfish bastard. And yet, as furious as she was, she was still terrified of losing him. The father of her unborn child.

  “Pistol please. Look at me.”

  He stopped but didn’t turn.

  “Look at me,” she repeated, voice raw.

  He turned.

  “Don’t go,” she begged, tears streaming down her face. “If you care about me at all, you’ll stay here tonight.”You’ll listen to what I’m trying to tell you.

  He gazed at her for a moment, and she felt that spark between them — the spark that had been there the night at the bar. That was there every time they made love. Every time they held each other afterward.

  Please, she begged silently.Don’t do this to me. To us.

  He lowered his gaze. “I’m sorry,” he said grimly. “This is the way it has to be.”

  He walked out the door, shutting it firmly behind him.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  It was a waiting game. These missions usually were. But tonight, Pistol couldn’t settle down. Being out here in the desert reminded him of the night he’d first encountered Leonard Smith.

  They were on the Mexico side of the border this time. Leonard Smith had assured them they wouldn’t have to wait long.

  All the Blackened Souls were on edge. Having Smith’s men here was throwing everyone off their game. Even Mica looked miserable, surrounded by Smith’s goons.

  Pistol looked around, trying to recall the night he and Katrin had ridden out to the desert and embraced beneath the stars. Trying to feel her warm body pressed against him, to hear her soft voice.

  I shouldn’t have left her like that.

  But it was too late now.

  “I’m so bored I’m about to poke this anthill, just to see what happens,” Deion said beside him, waving a stick at a small dirt mount.

  Pistol tried to grin. “Good luck with that, asshole.” He gazed around again. “Where are these damn Mexicans? I wanna get back home to my wife.”

  “You really do, don’t you?” There was a serious to Deion’s tone that made Pistol look around at him again.

  Pistol nodded slowly. “Yeah. I really do.”

  Deion clapped him on the shoulder. “Good man.” He sounded like he meant it.

  Pistol ever wondered if he could be. Be a good man. For Katrin.

  “You’re brave. You’re strong. You matter, Pistol.”

  You don’t know me.

  Finally, one of Smith’s men stood up. “I think I see something.”

  The others got into position.

  Pistol’s pulse raced. He looked around, but didn’t see anything.

  Suddenly, the Smith goon who’d first stood up whirled and fired his weapon.

  The bullet whizzed past Pistol and struck Deion in the center of the forehead. Deion collapsed backwards, eyes blank, a dark hole between them.

  Pistol stared for an instant in shock and horror, then spun around, gun drawn. All around him, weapons were being fired. Smith’s men were massacring the Blackened Souls. Pistol saw Bones go down, then Hap. He fired at a couple of the goons, who collapsed.

  Nearby, a shape he recognized as Mica’s stood and fired round after round at the man who’d killed Hap. But two other goons turned on him.

  “No!” Pistol shouted. But it was too late.

  Mica’s thin body jerked under a hail of bullets, and he collapsed to the ground.

  Pistol ducked behind a tall cactus. There was no shipment. Smith had set them up. Smith wanted to own the drug trade in this town, and to do that, he had to get rid of the Blackened Souls once and for all. How could Pistol have been so stupid?

  Did Kong know?

  No. Pistol would never believe Kong had willingly sent them to their deaths. Kong was a lot of things, but he was no monster.

  He sent you out that night Smith came to town. Knowing Smith might step in. Might try to get involved in club business.

  He stepped out briefly from behind the cactus and fired at a goon, then ducked back behind the cactus again. He heard a grunt, but wasn’t sure if the guy was down for good or not.

  Heart pounding, Pistol looked around. His bike was several yards away. He needed to make a run for it. The gunfire was winding down. He had no idea how many of his brothers were dead.

  He counted to three and bolted for his bike, zigzagging. He heard gunfire, heard a few bullets zing past, but he was almost there…

  Something slammed him hard in the shoulder, and he doubled over. The pain was white hot. His gun fell from his hand.

  I’m hit.

  He staggered on toward the bike, but found himself suddenly staring down the barrel of a gun.

  The goon grinned at him and took aim at Pistol’s forehead. Just then, two shots rang out, and the goon dropped.

  Pistol glanced in the direction of the sound and saw Mica, still on the ground, but with his gun raised. He smiled weakly at Pistol. Blood was running down his face and chest. His leather jacket was riddled with holes. “Brothers,” he gasped out. Then collapsed.

  There was no time to mourn. Not for Deion, or Mica, or any of the others. He had to keep going.

  Pistol staggered the rest of the way toward the bike and mounted. He could barely turn the engine over, weak as he was, but he managed.

  “He’s getting away!” A goon yelled over the roar. Pistol put the bike in gear and zoomed off across the sand. He had to warn someone. Kong. Ford. Hell, if anything had happened to them, even Jaws’s boys might help out in a pinch. They were rivals, sure, but they’d stand with the Blackened Souls on this one, Pistol was pretty sure.

  But most of all, he thought, leaning low over the handlebars and trying to ignore the blinding pain in his shoulder. Most of all, he had to get back to Katrin.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The junker began to sputter as Katrin neared h
ome. She sighed, eyes filling with tears of pure frustration. She’d gone to the grocery store because she’d needed something to do. Something to give herself some sense of normalcy, and to keep her mind off Pistol. So she’d roamed the aisles for close to three hours, taking things off the shelves and putting them back, reading the ingredients list on a box of Mediterranean Herb Triscuits, and watching parents with their children, imagining herself standing her someday, patiently explaining for the tenth time why they couldn’t get cookies.

  She’d pushed her cart through the baby aisle, where she had stared at the shelves of diapers and wipes, pacifiers and bottles. She had felt such warmth, such joy inside of her — a joy that had quickly been crushed by the knowledge that she had no idea how to keep this child safe.

  And now here she was with a trunk full of perishable food and a car coughing like it was on its last legs. Wheels. Whatever. Pregnant with the child of a man who might not survive tonight. For all she knew, when she stood in this aisle with her child someday, it would be as a widow. She pulled over and flicked her hazards on, then sat for a moment in the shuddering car. She pressed her fists to her eyes and breathed in.

  Damn her father. Damn him. And damn herself for being too weak to defy him.

  And yet, if I had defied him, would I have Pistol? This man I… I’m starting to care for.

  To lose him now would kill her.

  God, whether or not her relationship with Pistol went anywhere, it terrified her to think of losing the father of her child. To think of raising this baby alone. To imagine spending the rest of her life wondering what might have been. If he’d lived, would they have made a life together — a life that would last, not one built on lies and blackmail?

  She inhaled again and slowly let the breath out.

  She couldn’t exactly picture having a happy family with Pistol either. Couldn’t picture him picking out baby names and clothes with her. And yet the image of Pistol cradling a swaddled infant in his muscular, tattooed arms made her melt. Seeing him on his knees in the nursery, trying to assemble a crib, cursing the instruction manual. The idea of a world where she could come home from class at the university to Pistol and her baby — to a life free of her father, free from grief and fear — was so tempting that she ached for it to be real.

  What could she do about caring for someone as reckless and free as Pistol? You couldn’t chance people, right? Couldn’t tell them not to be who they were. But she knew — sheknew— that so much of Pistol’s brashness came, not from who he was at his core, but from fear. From a lifetime spent fighting to survive when his father was gone, when his mother not only couldn’t keep him safe, but was an actual danger to him.

  She didn’t want to tame Pistol, exactly. Didn’t want to bind him to a home and a kid and a wife he’d never wanted. But she did want to help him make peace with himself.

  A fine person I am to help him with that. I’m just as messed up as he is.

  The car was still growling and wheezing, but she needed to keep going. Both right now and in the days to come. She needed tokeep going.

  She put the car in gear and drove it slowly the rest of the way to the house.

  When she pulled into the drive, she was surprised to see a dark shape huddled on the front porch. Her heart began to pound. What on earth…?

  She turned off the car and yanked the key from the ignition. Leaped out and raced up the steps to the porch, her worst fear gradually solidifying into a terrible reality.

  Pistol was lying there, surrounded by a pool of blood.

  So much blood.

  She couldn’t even tell where it was all coming from at first. Then she saw it still oozing, bright and slick, from a circular wound in his shoulder.

  “Pistol!” she cried, dropping to her knees beside him. She shrugged off her jacket and pressed it to the wound. He groaned, but his eyes were rolled back, his face was far too pale.

  “Pistol — Jax — stay with me,” she murmured. “Stay with me. Look. Look at me, into my eyes. Good.”

  He’d made an effort to focus on her face. He was hearing her, at least.

  Damn, she’d kill him. She’d wait until he was fully conscious, and then she’d kill him. Hadn’t she told him not to go? Hadn’t she warned him it was—

  No time to think about that now. She focused on putting pressure on the wound and getting her husband to focus.

  “Jax,” she whispered. “You’re gonna be all right, but you have to stay with me.”

  He let out a soft groan.

  “Shh. You don’t have to talk right now.”

  He shook his head very slightly. “Keh … mmh … Kat…”

  “It’s me. It’s Katrin.”

  “Your f…” He stopped, wincing with pain. Katrin checked discreetly under the jacket. The bleeding was slowing, but it looked like he’d already lost far too much blood.

  “Jax, I think you need to go to the hospital.”

  “No,” he slurred emphatically. “Da—dangersss…”

  “Jax, what happened?”

  “You father.” His voice was still unsteady, weak.

  “My father?” Katrin’s heart pounded harder. “Did my father do this to you?”

  “Was a … a trap. He…” Pistol grunted, sucking in a breath as he tried to sit up.”

  “Jax,” she warned, but he was already pulling himself upright.

  “The bike is … in the garage. We gotta…”

  “I don’t care about the bike right now. I care about you.”

  “We gotta go.”

  “The only place we’re going is inside to clean that wound.”

  “Listen,” he insisted. Katrin winced at the bloodstains on the porch, but helped him support his back against the house. “He never … and then … betrayed us…”

  “Okay. We don’t have to talk about that now. I need to get you into the house and cleaned up.”

  “No!” His whole body shook, and his mouth worked for a moment without any sound coming out. “No time.”

  “This is non-negotiable,” she said, in her firmest voice. “You can’t go anywhere until you’ve been taken care of. Come on.”

  She helped him up. He was heavy, but adrenaline was on her side, and she supported him as they walked into the house. She sat him on the toilet lid in the downstairs bathroom and stripped his jacket and shirt off to get a better look at the wound. It looked like the bullet had made a fairly clean entry and exit. Thank God. Prying a bullet out of flesh went beyond her limited training.

  She fetched the first aid kit and cleaned the area carefully, remembering the first time they’d done this, the night he’d cut himself with the chef’s knife.

  Look how far we’ve come, she thought ruefully.

  He looked into her eyes as she bandaged him. “Thank you,” he whispered.

  She smiled softly. “You’re welcome.”

  He had some color back in his cheeks now. “Katrin. Your father…he’s he’ll know I got away. We have … have to go…”

  “So he’s behind all this?” she asked, anger rising in her.

  Pistol nodded. “Ambush. We got out to the desert, and … and his men…” He hissed sharply as she swabbed the wound’s ragged edges. “Just started shooting us like dogs.”

  Katrin’s breath caught. “Are the others okay?”

  “’Rango’s dead.” The words clearly pained Pistol more than any wound.

  She felt lightheaded. “Jax. I’m so sorry.”

  “Mica too. More. Didn’t see…”

  “So they’re looking for you now?” Katrin’s heart pounded so hard she thought her chest would burst. What was she supposed to do? With Pistol incapacitated, how would she defend them both from her father’s men?

  “Yeah.” He took her hand. His was slick with blood. “We gotta get out of here, darlin’.”

  She swallowed hard. “I don’t see how you can go anywhere in this condition.”

  He gave a shadow of a grin. “Back together five … minutes … alre
ady … bickering like a … an old married couple.”

  She smiled too, her face flushing.Like an old married couple. That ache was back. She brushed a hand over his scalp. “You’re a stubborn man.”