PRIZE: A Bad Boy Hitman Romance

by Sophia Gray

  Victoria was a taker, too, but there was a difference. She took and built on it and made something of herself. She didn’t step on others to do it. Her restaurant was a testament to what a working woman could accomplish.

  And in the bedroom—there she was give and take. Damn, could she give and take. The things we did to each other was amazing, and the things I wanted to do to her yet…

  But more than just sex, I wanted to take Victoria away from all of this hell. Sweep her off her feet. Maybe go on a long vacation. A cruise somewhere. Just the two of us. Hell if she wanted to bring Sage along, too, that would be fine with me.

  And then once we came back, then what? I wanted to go to her restaurant. I wanted to talk with her all hours of the night. I wanted to spend time with her horizontal. I wanted it all.

  And I wanted it now.

  I had never been this obsessed with a woman before, and in such a short amount of time, too. Would we have staying power as a couple? I didn’t know. I sure as hell hoped we did, but only time would tell.

  And if we didn’t get the fuck to that motel soon, there might not be enough time for us to find out.

  “Damn it, Bob! Do you need me to—”

  “Sit back,” Bob snapped. “If I can’t see, I sure as hell can’t merge. Come on, asshole.”

  I glowered at him. “Who you callin’ an asshole?”

  Bob honked and then jerked the wheel. “That dipshit I just cut in front of.” He glanced in his rearview mirror. “You really want me to?”

  “Yes!” I growled.

  He nodded. “Looks like the cop’s pointed the other way. Hold on. We’re gonna fly!”

  The tires squealed, and we peeled out, flying down the thin shoulder. A few cars honked, and I saw a lot of mouths flapping and middle fingers flashing, but I didn’t care.

  We took the next exit, and we had to figure out a new route, but at least we were moving again. And even better, that cop didn’t tail us. We were in the clear!

  But who knew if our luck would hold.

  Especially since the other van hadn’t gotten over when we had.

  “Bob, pull over,” I dictated. We would wait for a few minutes, and if the other van didn’t appear by then, we would just continue on without them. I wasn’t gonna wait forever.

  Serious honking sounded behind us. The van flew up, and Bob gunned it, and we were back to caravanning it. Good. Although I didn’t want it to come down to a shootout, I felt much better having both numbers of men and guns on my side.

  Especially because… oh, fuck…what if we weren’t the first ones to reach Trenton? Yeah, I had talked to that stupid, pompous drug lord, and threatened him even, but what if he decided he didn’t want to wait to collect his money? If I could track down Trenton, and especially since my main lead had been from regulars at the fucker’s bar, then he could track down Trenton, too, and once you had the town, it wouldn’t be that hard to figure out where exactly Trenton was staying…

  Trenton really was a dipshit. Maybe I had failed him, but at some point, he had to be held accountable for his actions, and his actions had led him to this point, where his own friends, his own family, had turned against him.

  He had no one.

  And when he realized he was truly alone—because I had to believe Sage saw the light by now, I mean, come on, Trenton was holding her mother for ransom!—he’d be incredibly desperate.

  Caged animals tended to attack, even if they knew they couldn’t win.

  And there was no way in hell Trenton was gonna win.

  “How much farther?” I all but growled.

  “Ten minutes, give or take.”

  “Make it five,” I ordered.

  Bob flashed me a quick grin and floored it. I checked my side mirror. The other van was keeping close to our tail. Good. Power in numbers. Power in gunfire.

  But I sure hoped and prayed that we wouldn’t have to fire a single shot. What if one of us missed and hit Victoria or Sage? And, despite everything, I didn’t want to shoot Trenton either. Messed up kid might not be able to turn his life around. I’d tried. Maybe jail could straight him out. Or maybe he just needed a final out. I didn’t want to be the one to end his life, but if it came down to him or one of the women, it killed me to say it, but I would pick the women.

  Never ever did I think I would ever think such a thing. My men were my family, and I would bend over backward for them. I would give them the shirt off my back, given the housing, pay their rent if they were between jobs…anything and everything. What was mine was theirs.

  For so many years, I had taken that adage “bros before hoes” to heart. Maybe that was why I had so many one-night stands and short relationships. Maybe I hadn’t met the right woman yet. I mean, I cared for Victoria despite us not knowing her for a long time. I could easily see myself falling in love with her. I desperately wanted to give us a chance at something huge. We might work, we might not, but I wanted that chance. Trenton would not take that away from us.

  And I had a feeling Victoria wouldn’t turn into one of those clingy women who would want me to ditch the Devil’s Horns. That would be the only deal breaker for me. I would not turn my back on my men, on my family.

  One might argue that that was exactly what I was doing with Trenton, but that wasn’t the case. If anything, he had turned his back on us. He’d chosen drugs over us. He’d chosen to not ask for help.

  My stomach twisted. I should’ve realized he needed help, though. How had I missed the signs? There had been one other time that I’d noticed that he seemed to be slipping into bad habits. He’d just lost his part time job, and he might’ve been on a break from Sage or another girl at the time. I’d caught him lying, and he hadn’t been at events he’d said he would go to, and I’d pulled him aside and asked him if he needed anything.

  “Nothing,” he had said without looking at me.

  “Nothing, huh?” I poured some whiskey from my personal stash and handed it to him. This had been a few months after he turned twenty-one. In two months, he’d be twenty-three.

  He’d stared at it and then gulped it down, draining all of the amber liquid.

  I had shaken my head. “Whiskey is meant to be savored.”

  He’d eyed the bottle, and I poured him more but then held the glass away.

  “Can you handle this?” I had asked him.

  “Yeah.”

  I lowered the glass onto the table but didn’t slid it over to him. “Can you handle whatever it is that makes you want to drink?”

  Trenton drummed his fingers onto the table. Then he reached over and clutched the glass, taking it out of my hands, but he didn’t drink it. “I don’t know,” he admitted.

  “You know you can always come to me, right?”

  “I hate living with Steven. He snores. He never cleans up after himself and makes me wash his dishes. His taste in music is terrible—”

  “What’s wrong with ‘80s music?” I demanded with a smile.

  Turned rolled his eyes.

  “If you want to move in with me,” I started to offer.

  He shook his head. “I don’t wanna live with you or one of the other Devil’s Horns guys.”

  “So find your own place,” I suggested.

  “I need a job first,” he muttered.

  So I had helped him with résumés and helped him go job hunting, and he found a new job, and he started to laugh and smile more. He had seemed happy. He seemed to be doing well. Or maybe I just hadn’t seen the signs, or he got better at hiding them. Maybe he hadn’t started using and only sold the drugs. That would’ve made it easier for me to be duped. Considering how much he’d hated his father for using drugs and his attempts to stay clean, I never would’ve thought Trenton would be the kind to sell drugs, to get others hooked on it.

  I was disappointed, but who was I more disappointed in—him or me? I wasn’t sure.

  The tires squealed, and the van jerked to a halt. “We’re here,” Bob said unnecessarily.

  The othe
r van was still parking as I jumped out. With little patience, I waited for everyone to get out. Moonshine Motel. We were parked around back. Good. Hopefully Trenton hadn’t seen us pull up.

  The place was a fucking dump. A place a rat would hide in and grow to be the size of a tiger. There were probably roaches and other bugs. Just thinking about it made my skin crawl.

  You wanted a place of your own, Trenton, but I didn’t think you would want a place like this.

  Damn it. He hadn’t wanted me as a father figure, and I never laid out any demands on him, but maybe I should’ve insisted he moved in with me. It would’ve cramped my style, but I had offered him to crash at my place. I hadn’t forced him to. He could make his own decision. He wasn’t a kid.

  The guys hovered around me, and I held up a finger. “Listen to me,” I said quietly. “We’re gonna surround the room, but first, we have to figure out which room they’re in.”

  I pulled out my cell and was about to call Hank, when the guy strolled over to us. He’d been waiting for us to arrive.

  “Have you seen signs of any of them? Trenton or Victoria or Sage?”

  “I saw Trenton. He came out a few times. He was on the phone, and he also left to get them some food.”

  So at least he wasn’t starving the women. Small favor?

  “What room number?” I demanded. Time to get this done and over with.

  Hank pointed. “Right over…What the hell?”

  I jerked around in the direction he was pointing. A young woman was racing out of an apartment.

  Damn it all, if it wasn’t Sage.

  Chapter 22

  Grant

  She didn’t get very far before Trenton burst out of the motel room. He raced after Sage, and I sprang into action. I shoved the other guys out of the way and dashed over to them.

  “Leave her alone, Trenton,” I warned as I approached.

  Trenton didn’t even look at me. He just went to grab Sage.

  Nope. Not on my watch.

  My fist cocked back, and I punched Trenton square in the jaw. He had some size to him, but I was stronger, taller. This wasn’t a fight he could win.

  He did land two swift punches to my stomach, and I wheezed out a grunt. I motioned for the other guys to hang back, and I noticed Victoria hadn’t come out of the motel room. I swore if he hurt her…

  If he killed her…

  We traded a few more punches, and his knee ended up in my gut. Damn. My next punch went over his head, and he grabbed me around my waist, trying to knock me down. I returned the knee to the gut, grabbed one of his arms, and yanked it up and out, to the side, at an awkward angle. Trenton groaned, muttering a curse, and he backed off, jerking his arm free.

  He circled me warily. There were dark circles beneath his eyes, his face looked a little too thin, and his gaze kept darting everywhere, like he was afraid of shadows.

  “You’re really doing this?” he asked between gulps of air.

  “You’re the one doing this,” I retorted.

  Trenton shook his head. “I had no choice.”

  “There’s always a choice. There are always options. There—”

  “There weren’t,” he said flatly, feigning a punch.

  I jerked away and then circled back. “You could’ve come to me.”

  “You and your self-righteous bullshit.” Trenton’s grin made my skin crawl. “You think you can walk the line, that you can do whatever the hell you want. Sleep with whoever you want. Screw over anyone who looks at you wrong. You’re an asshole.”

  I kept silent. Trenton could say what he wanted, but I knew the kind of man I was. Maybe I was a little selfish and self-centered at times, but I would give my all for my men, and at one time, Trenton had been included in that. Not anymore, and that was on him, not me.

  He lunged for my legs, and I tumbled to the ground with Trenton on top of me. He was fighting like he was a wild man. Like he was possessed. Like he had nothing to live for.

  “Vic…” I managed to get out as I batted his hands away. He was trying to go for my neck to suffocate me No way would my guys allow that, but I didn’t call them over. I could handle this.

  Trenton’s sick grin grew even more. “I killed her,” he said.

  What? No!

  Blind fury gave me strength, and I threw him off of me. I stood up and stared down at him as he scrambled to his feet. He was laughing until I stalked toward him.

  With shaking hands, he pulled out his gun, but I was quicker on the draw and a faster shot.

  Accurate, too.

  A long wail burst out of him as he crumbled to the ground. I had shot him in the leg. I hadn’t wanted to shoot him, not during the ride over, but now that he had killed Victoria…well…I was willing to shoot him.

  Still wasn’t willing to kill him, though. I just couldn’t do it.

  I walked over to where Trenton was rolling around in agony. Tears streamed down his face, and he was bawling. I had to admit, I felt badly for shooting him. If he hadn’t pulled out the gun, if he hadn’t shot Victoria, if he hadn’t pulled any of this shit…

  Trenton grabbed his left leg, still crying hard. Through it all, he stared at me. “Kill me,” he said.

  What?

  “Kill me,” he repeated. “I have nothing to live for.”

  I glanced over at Sage. She was standing off to the side, a little bit away from the guys, watching us. She was crying herself.

  “Sage…” Trenton reached out toward her with an outstretched bloody hand.

  She turned away from him without saying a word.

  “She left me. She’s leaving me.” Trenton never stopped crying.

  It was hard to see him like this. He was so utterly broken. Between the drugs, the money, and losing Sage, he was just broken. The saddest part of all was that it hadn’t had to come to this.

  “Just kill me!” Trenton screamed.

  “You don’t deserve death,” I said coldly, staring down at him.

  How could he? How could Trenton have killed Victoria? All she had wanted to do was save her daughter, to bring her home.

  Victoria was a kind and good person. She was a bright and cheery woman. She was a hell of a businesswoman, a go getter. She was the kind of person who got what she wanted out of life.

  And now her life had been cut tragically short. We wouldn’t have that time I wanted to see if we could work out long term.

  Because, here was the thing, I already suspected we could work out long term.

  I had fallen for her. Hard. Despite the whole mess with Trenton and Sage. Despite not knowing her for long. Despite my never being in love before. In lust? So many times I lost count, but in love? Never. Not until now. Not until Victoria.

  “Sage,” Trenton whimpered.

  She completely turned away from him. Good. I might’ve failed Trenton, but I would help the girl out. Get her a place. Buy her food, clothes. Whatever she needed. She was family now. No way would I let Victoria’s daughter fall through the cracks. Her boyfriend had held her hostage. She might need to see a psychiatrist after all this shit, especially after seeing her boyfriend—ex-boyfriend—shoot her mom.

  “There’s no point to living,” Trenton wailed. “Just kill me.”

  “Boys,” I commanded, “deal with him.”

  Sage peeked over her shoulder, and I nodded at her. I held up one finger, hoping she would wait, and I had to do it. I had to go inside the motel room. I had to see…her.

  It took me a moment to collect myself, to take few deep breaths, for me to be able to walk inside.

  Victoria was on the floor, tied to a chair, facing away from me. There were marks on her wrist near the binding. She had put up a fight. Of course she had.

  Steeling my nerve, I walked around to face her, and then I almost began to cry myself.

  Trenton had lied. He hadn’t shot Victoria.

  She lifted her head. “Grant?” she whispered. She blinked a few times.

  “I’m here. I’m here, babe.” I pick
ed her and the chair up and set about untying her.