The silk of her dress was the softest thing I’ve ever felt, next to her skin. We had an hour before the doctors came in for their checkup, just to lie there, she in my arms, her cheek against mine. Sharing our breaths.
“I’m sorry about your father. He was a good man, in the end.”
Mimi didn’t say anything, but I felt her body tense against mine. It was still so new; too new for her to process. She needed her time, and I would be happy giving it to her. I’d be happy giving her as much time as she needed: her time and mine. There was nowhere neither of us had to be.
“Garret let me know you’re paying my medical bills.”
“He’s such a tattler. Like I said. New friends.”
“Thank you.”
Then she turned to me and looked at me seriously. Really seriously, for the first time in months. “For what?”
“Saving me.”
“Oh. Well, then consider us even.”
***
Another month of doctors, tests, and physical therapy - working my leg back into daily routines and getting over the fear I’d developed of putting any weight on it. Slowly, steadily, like a wall being built back up after someone’s knocked it apart with a hammer, my body builds back up until I’m at least a little like I was before everything happened.
Mimi visited every day I was in the hospital. Sometimes to stay and talk, sometimes to deliver something, sometimes just to run in and deliver the news. About the Family. The staff. Her father’s will. The plans she made to go to Vermont back when she thought she was leaving home for good. Her dream or the dream she’d chosen for herself of becoming a world-famous designer. A little miniature Mimi brought to the foot of my hospital bed like a new magazine every day.
And then we get to here. To today. No more hospital beds, hospital foods or hospital TV. No more changing bandages or physical therapy exercise, though I’ve got a prescription to see a local specialist three times a week for another four months. No more middle life. No more old.
Garret’s dropped off some keys to Nancy, which is a crappy old station wagon that’s been in the Clubhouse garage ever since I can remember. No one knows why it’s gotten that name but just try changing its name and you’d spark a riot. The thing is as ugly as a bruise, but it’s got an engine that will probably outlast most of us.
We drive out, Nancy and I, for the first time in four months. There’s still snow on the ground, but it’s the ugly mushy stuff you always bet before spring kicks in. And seeing as how I’ve missed most of winter, being holed up inside, I don’t mind getting a last burst of the cold. We’ll have what amounts to a summer, soon enough. I’m not in any special hurry to get there.
I drive carefully, keeping an eye on my leg to make sure it holds steady. After ten minutes I’m pretty self-assured: I turn out onto the highway and speed down, down, until I reach my exit.
We’re still a long way from summer weather so even though this is a Saturday the docks aren’t crowded. Just a few families, milling around and sipping hot chocolate from thermoses and paper cups. I park, get out, and find a bench that isn’t too wet with melted snow where I can rest. Walking without a support equals falling, and since there’s no way I’m going to be seen limping around town with a cane, this is my best option now.
“You know, I’ve lived here my whole life but the only two times I’ve ever come here have been with you.” Mimi sits down next to me. Her hair’s tucked into a green hat, and she’s wearing a coat that’s probably worth a quarter of my current income.
“Then you need to get out more. You’ve said so yourself.”
“Getting out.” She lifts one hand, flat, palm-up, and then makes a balance with the other. “And business. And getting a job. And being responsible.” The ‘getting out’ hand goes down like a sinking ship.
“At least you’ve got your priorities straight.”
“That’s just like something somebody clueless with absolutely no idea what it’s like managing a mob man’s estate would say.”
“So you don’t think you’re cut out to be a mob boss?” I put on a frown. “I was getting used to the name ‘Don Mimi.’ ”
“Then I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to disappoint you.”
“So that’s it then?” I say, more serious. “No more Family? What about the staff and the estate?”
“No more Family. Sold the estate. Pensioned the staff. Not a bad price to pay for your freedom, is it? And no guilt over job loss—most of them turned right around and became Cuchulainns. They’ve got a guy who came down from New York to run it. An old friend of Volker’s, from the sounds of it.”
I look at her, and she looks back. Really looks at me, with that fierce, penetrating, intense look certain people just have.
“I didn’t think you’d ever do it,” I say. “I thought you’d go around with this monkey on your back for the rest of your life. Congratulations, Mimi.”
She takes the hand I’ve put out and gives it two shakes like we’ve just settled our investments. “Thank you. It is a pretty big leap, isn’t it?”
“Especially for a show dog like you.”
“Now, Leon. You’ve gone and turned something nice into something rude. And for absolutely no reason.”
We turn back to the docks. A trawler is moving out into the bay. The first of the new season. Soon the whole place will be crowded with them, and it’ll be nose to hull. The gates begin to move. They make a churning, low noise and start to lower.
“And you’re still planning on relocating?”
“Soon as everything squared away here. Although to be really honest with you, I still don’t know where. I’d be bored to death in Vermont. And it’s cold! I need to get out of this for a while. Head south. Drive along a beach and have nothing in my face but sun and sea and breeze.”
“Sounds pretty boring to me.”
“I don’t give a damn how it sounds to you. I never asked for your opinion. And with no Family, you’re back to scraping gutters for the scum of the city, Mr. Big Shot. No more service for you.” She gives me a playful punch to my side—not the one with the bullet wound in it. “It’s a shame, really. I could have used you. But you’re too much animal and not enough gentleman. A girl likes having both, and a switch that controls what she has and when.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint. I don’t think I have any switches.”
“Oh, yes you do. You just don’t know where they are. You just haven’t been explored properly yet.” Back to me: her eyes fixed and still yet somehow, moving; slow moving, like a frozen waterfall. And with me trapped inside.
“And I guess I’m supposed to think you’re the one for the job?”
The trawler crawls through the crack in the water. The cameras go up. Fathers tug on the sleeves of their daughters and point to the large ships drifting through.
“Maybe,” she says. “Maybe you ought to consider this my job application. What would you think?”
“You want to know the truth?”
“I always want to know the truth about you, Leon. You really should know better by now. You’ve tried keeping it from me before and almost got yourself killed.”
“Then, honestly speaking, I’m worried that you’re too much of a pampered pooch to know that if you keep being curious and not careful, you’re gonna be facing a speeding car with no one to yank you back to safety.”
Mimi winds her arm back for another playful punch, but I catch it. Her fingers dissolve in mine. Then her lips. Her body. The thump-thump, thump-thump of her heart pounding like mad against my own, screaming out with all its got, and both of us begging for more and more of each other; more and more from this small cold world that’s tried so hard to take us out. And it’ll keep on being that way. I’ve got no delusions. No fantasies. No false promises. I know it, like Mimi knows it. There won’t be any rest for us—not until the day our bodies are in the ground. The hitman and the mob boss’s daughter. Two against danger. Two against the world.
THE END
<
br /> ABOUT THE AUTHOR
To receive release dates, exclusive content, and giveaways, subscribe to my mailing list at:
http://eepurl.com/b65K5r
I am grateful to have found my passion of writing stories with happy endings, and I am even happier that I get to share them with you. I write contemporary romances that are both sweet and a little sexy. I love second-chance love stories, smart heroines and strong heroes.
I live in Colorado with one great husband, two beautiful kids, and one golden retriever puppy!
If you enjoyed my work, please sign up to my mailing list. I appreciate every single fan I get, and I always send exclusive deals and promotions to everyone that signs up! Thanks for the support!
MORE BY SOPHIA HAMPTON
Hitman’s Lust
The Don’s Baby
RENEGADE by KARA PARKER
Chapter 1: Cash
The road is a funny thing. It can be as straightforward as a line going from one place to the next. And when it’s full of bikers like me, there ain’t a damn soul who looks outside the lines. Everyone’s too focused on their destination, where they’re trying to get to, not where they actually are.
But the road’s a fickle bitch. One minute, it’s that line, pointing a path towards where you’re going. Next minute, it’s a vicious circle, repeating itself over and over again, and every time you feel like you’ve figured out your path, something on the road sends you back, the destination now gone, as if it was a mirage.
Here in the desert, the road is scorched, parched, dying from baking in the sun, but with its last gasps of dusty breath, it’ll send you twisting this way and that. In the midst of a sunny day, beaming down orange on the cracked pavement, it waves around, glitters, sparkles, darkens. It fakes you out, leaves you desiring more, leaves you wondering how you ended up where you are. Most of all, it lies. It lies right to your face, and it doesn’t give a damn who you are or what you might want. It lies to serve its own damn self.
When you ride this road as much as I do, you know that that pavement is that circle, just the same goddamn loop over and over and over again. There’s only one real destination, and that’s about six feet under. But in this game, there sure as hell ain’t no pit stops or places to get off and stretch your legs. It’s only black tar and red dirt that stretches as far as your mind lets it.
I’ve been on the road far too long lately. Granted, it’s for a good reason—leastways, I suppose it is. Now that I’ve been with the Desert Knights for nearly fifteen years, I’ve earned my patch logging in these miles day after day. Like the Boy Scout, the obedient soldier with his orders and routes, I don’t ask questions, I just ride, pick up, ride, drop off.
A normal person doesn’t have the blood or brains for a job like this. Truckers I’ve met call it “road brain,” where your mind goes mush seeing only the yellow and white lines of the highway for hours each day. But I love it. I love riding next to my brothers as we zigzag in and out of the same traffic coming to or from Los Angeles. I love staring down the same men as they hand me their satchels and packs. And I love smelling the burn of the gas as I fill up at the same station every morning.
Today, however, is different from the rest. Leo and I are firing up the concrete like bats out of hell. Behind me, about a quarter of a mile back, are two enforcers from the Black Senators. They’ve been trailing us for an hour now, ever since we managed to pull off one of the greatest heists in Desert Knight history.
I can just imagine the reports back at their headquarters. Ricky Darcy, the kingpin and President of the Black Senators, was someone we all thought couldn’t be got. But when Brandon Walsh gave the orders straight from his daddy that I was to pocket their runs before it got to their distributors, I didn’t tell them it couldn’t be done. I did it. I robbed that sumbitch of his stash.
Leo and I outfoxed the best goddamn fox in the world. And that big pile of cash they thought was going to their bank is burning a hole in my back pocket. The satchel full of pristine, white, Colombian-grade coke is sloshing around in my bucket. I just need to get it past Exit 43 and back to Garland before I can call us safe and in the clear.
No Senators cross Exit 43. It’s an unwritten law among bikers like us that says territory is sacred. If they pass that mark, we’ve got all the power—and the right, or the obligation, even—to shoot them dead. And the cops in Garland ain’t going to do a thing to stop us. They take a cut of the action themselves to keep us out of trouble. May not be pretty, but it keeps us on the good side of the law.
Of course, I violated the goddamn truce myself. I’m the one who just crossed enemy lines to get Darcy’s stash. But I’m the fastest rider in all of California. I know the routes, the side streets, the short cuts, and the alleyways as if I invented them. Even Senator land is fair game to me. The two enforcers on our tail don’t even give me second thought as I motion with my leather-gloved hand to Leo to dash a left at Exit 42, a frontage road. We’re going to lose them before they can even get on our tail.
I slow my Harley down just enough so that it allows me to swerve right in front of the face of a big rig. The trucker slams on his brakes, causing his whole bed to lift off the ground and send debris flying everywhere. The cars around him swerve outwards towards the steep ditches and landscaping. The sound of metal on metal fills the empty air.
Leo and I use the distraction to veer off onto the exit ramp, our pace still slow and low. Our engines hum and purr as they practically crawl down the loop towards the overpass. We walk our bikes off the road and under the dark and damp cover of the little bridge. Only our shadows—of two men and their bikes—give us away.
Moments pass as I try not to hold my breath. Leo takes out a cigarette and lights up as he checks his pack. Last thing you want is to lose that picking on the road while you ride. What a waste. But he gives me the thumbs up. All accounted for. I do the same, distracting myself by counting out the wad of hundreds. It’s nearly $10,000, minus a couple of bills probably still crumpled in that runner’s sweaty hands.
Brandon gave me the job knowing that the cash reward would be high. A man much younger and dumber than me probably couldn’t resist the temptation. Ten grand could get you a whole new life in Mexico if you could manage to make it out without being caught by the Senators or one of the other Desert Knight chapters. A few have tried, but I’ve never heard them tell their tales. Punishment for stealing from the gang wasn’t exactly lenient.
So I know better. I know to leave the money alone and let the club distribute it. We’d all see a bonus in our envelopes later this month. A couple hundred towards food and some new riding boots was going to be my reward. That, and being named the new captain of the road crew.
It was a big honor, but I’ve been expecting it. Ever since Brandon was promoted to chief enforcer, his daddy, Clay Walsh, has been calling me to take a bigger position in the club. I was training young guys, new runners, left and right. And I was picking up night shifts which I typically didn’t do. I even gave up my part-time job as a bartender to be the full-time drug runner they needed.
Tonight, it was going to be official—leastways that’s what I heard. The rumors had been circulating that the huge blowout party we were stopping at later was going to be in my honor. I’m not one for much of a fuss…I like to keep a low profile, blend in. Easier to breathe—and get away—that way. But this was one time—one damn time—I was going to soak in their praise. I deserved some fucking recognition for doing their dirty work after all this time. I’d been treated like a goddamn second-class citizen in the Knights on account of me being a bastard with no daddy to claim me. So being treated like the king, even for one goddamn day, almost feels like retribution for all the times I was called a mistake.
Leo’s cigarette burns slowly as the little puffs drift my way. It brings me back to the present as I try to think of our next move. By now, the Senators’ riders have either peeled off at Exit 43, thinking we managed to get away—back over to our lines—or they’
re still hunting us out on the highway among the wreckage.
I close my eyes and open my ears to the sounds around me. There are some shouts from a lady as she tries to explain to another driver that it was his fault she slammed into this bumper. Another big rig passes on by in a flash with his horns blaring. And among the chaos, I hear two chopper engines racing to my left and right. They’re smarter than I thought.
“We gotta get out of here. We’re sitting ducks.” I turn on my engine, this time not caring how loud it roars and echoes off of the brick. “You ride in the front. I’ll take the rear.”
Leo looks at me with his bug eyes bulging from his sunken face. He isn’t quite sure what I’m talking about. To him, we’ve been free for minutes now. He doesn’t speak “road” as I do. He probably can’t even tell that those engines are Japanese…bikes made for speed racing. But he still trusts my instincts. After riding as my partner for over five years now, he knows better than to question me.
Taken: A Dark Hitman Romance Page 25
