CONTENTS
Her Hitman
NEWSLETTER
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Epilogue
Extended Epilogue
Extended Epilogue
NEWSLETTER
A MAN WHO KNOWS WHAT HE WANTS
BRATVA BEAR SHIFTERS
LAIRDS & LADIES
RUSSIAN UNDERWORLD
IRISH WOLF SHIFTERS
Collaborations
About the Author
HER HITMAN
AN OLDER MAN YOUNGER WOMAN ROMANCE
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A MAN WHO KNOWS WHAT HE WANTS, 222
FLORA FERRARI
Copyright © 2020 by Flora Ferrari
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
The following story contains mature themes, strong language and sexual situations. It is intended for mature readers.
HER HITMAN
They use my passion for singing against me and kidnap me. The Bratva have me under their control. It’s only a matter of time before I take a fatal misstep and they punish me for it.
But then Damian Drake enters my life, a seven foot tall hitman with iron in his hair and the palest, deadliest eyes I’ve ever seen. He’s a man one step away from a beast, who will do whatever it takes to accomplish his mission.
He kills the man who’s about to assault me, and then I make a decision. I beg him to take me with him. I think this makes him angry at first, the way he looks at me so intensely. But then I learn that it’s something else.
He steals me away and then tells me that I belong to him now. I have no choice but to stay with him, especially when the Bratva threatens to chase me down and kill me.
Damian says he’ll never let anything happen to me because I belong to him. He says he treats his property well. He claims me. He uses me. He makes me his in every sense of the word.
But I’m scared I’m not enough for him. I’m only nineteen and he’s forty-one. I’m a virgin, and the idea of telling him terrifies me. What if I’m not good enough?
But Damian won’t wait. He’s going to take me sooner or later.
He’s the most possessive, jealous man I’ve ever met.
He’s my hitman.
*Her Hitman is an insta-everything standalone instalove romance with a HEA, no cheating, and no cliffhanger.
NEWSLETTER
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CHAPTER ONE
Damian
I take out the clip and examine the ammunition, making sure that everything is as it should be. Sparky watches me from his place on the motel bed, his tongue hanging out, tired and panting from our play wrestling. He tilts his head like he always does when I insert the clip with a metallic click, and then goes back to his wide-mouthed grinning.
“One last job, boy,” I say, placing the gun with the rest of my work materials on the table.
The motel curtains are drawn, letting in the last of the winter sunlight. The world has already started to turn hazy, and the light in here is even more so with the thick purple curtains, causing it to shimmer with particles of dust.
“One last job,” I say again, making sure he understands, making sure I understand.
I sit on the edge of the bed and feel it compress beneath my weight, the mattress giving a whine as it takes all two hundred and fifty pounds of me. Sparky climbs into my lap and curls up. I move my hands over his small body, his black and gray dappled fur. He’s a piebald sausage dog, his legs short, his body squat. When I see how bulky and happy he’s become this past year and a half – compared with the misery I found him in – I almost let a smile touch my face.
But men in my business don’t smile.
“Then it’ll just be me and you,” I tell him.
Sometimes I wonder what I did before I had Sparky. I would go whole months without speaking, a loner drifting through life, existing at the edge of society with only my work to keep me company.
It was different when my uncle was still alive, but Felix has been dead for almost two decades now.
“Forty-one years,” I muse, tickling him under the chin. His tail wags sleepily. “That means I’ve been at this shit for thirty years, almost. Can you believe it? Time really does fly, eh?”
He murmurs groggily and I sigh, gently placing him on the bed and then wandering back over to the table.
I’ve got my rifle, my gun with the silencer attached, garroting wire, bolt cutters, night-vision goggles, foot-wraps to keep my footsteps quiet and make sure I don’t leave any prints behind.
Gloves, mask, two separate knives.
I sigh and reach for the darkness within me, willing it to drape over me like a blanket of night. I have to make myself as unfeeling as stone when I’m on a job, as lifeless as a goddamn rock.
A machine—that’s what I become.
I glance at my burner cell when it begins to vibrate against the bedside table.
“It’s okay, little man,” I say, stroking Sparky’s head as I stride across the room.
“Yes?” I say, picking it up and answering.
As usual, Mr. Jenkins’ voice is distorted.
I’ve been working with this man for a decade and, as far as he knows, I’ve never heard his real voice. What he doesn’t know is that I’ve done some research of my own and long ago discovered that he’s a CIA operative with links to the industrial-military complex.
When Uncle Sam has problems he needs taken care of, he contacts men like me, men who will take out the trash for a hefty paycheck.
Men who are disposable if shit goes south.
“I’m sending you the coordinates now,” he says. “Your target is Dobry Kuznetsov. A picture will be attached with the coordinates. Limit causalities to the target alone. Limit exposure as much as possible. I am sending another file, proof of funds in escrow. These will be released when you provide photographic evidence of the job.”
I don’t say anything.
There’s no need.
We’ve been through this same routine a dozen times, at least.
I place the phone down and wait for the files to come through.
In the meantime I drop to the floor and start pumping push-ups, feeling my muscles ache coolly, a satisfying feeling that moves through me and tells me that even after all these years my body is still carved of goddamn steel, still ready to break bones and scale buildings and slink silentl
y like a panther if need be.
I turn over to start some sit-ups.
Sparky perches on the end of the bed, watching me curiously.
It’s a pain in the ass, leaving him in this motel room. But he’s used to it now and I’ll only be gone a few hours.
As usual, I’ve made plans just in case I don’t return. I might be the best at what I do, but even experts make mistakes. If I haven’t returned by tomorrow morning, I’ve paid the motel manager to come and collect Sparky and take him to a shelter … a shelter I already have an agreement with.
Sparky is never to be put done, I told them, handing over a wad of cash, ten grand in total. Even if nobody adopts him, he’s never to be fucking put down, you hear me?
I pump the sit-ups, feeling my hard abs crunching together. Sparky tilts his head as I come up, and then tilts it the other way when I lower myself down, over and over like he’s telling me no.
“I’m a killer, Sparky,” I tell him. “The men I kill, they may be bad, but that doesn’t change things. I’m a killer. I’ve killed twenty-eight men and tonight it’s going to be twenty-nine. I wonder how you’d feel if you could understand me. I wonder if you’d still love me, little man.”
I laugh grimly at myself, wondering what Felix would say if he could see me now, the grizzled old bastard.
Felix was the one who begged me to find a lady, to settle down. As he lay bleeding to death in my arms, his voice gurgling, choking with blood, he told me that his biggest regret was never seeing me find a woman and making a home, making a life, making something.
My phone vibrates and I leap up, shaking my head at the memory.
That might have been his biggest regret.
But I’ve never found a woman that stirs me like that, that awakens something primal and impossible-to-ignore inside of me.
Maybe it’s this life. Maybe it’s made me too cold.
But all I care about right now is getting this job done and then finding a quiet corner of the world with Sparky.
I pick up the phone and study the photo of Dobry Kuznetsov, a high ranking lieutenant in the East Coast Bratva.
He’s a red-faced man with a few pale hairs combed over his sweaty head, his glasses thick, magnifying his eyes. In the photo he sits at a dinner table, grinning widely, face shining.
He looks happy.
He looks like a man with no clue he’s going to be dead very soon.
CHAPTER TWO
Dakota
I stand at the window and look out upon the estate, the moonlight turning the icy grass a deep blue. Past the long fields, the guard turrets sit like squat stone creatures, the night-silhouetted shapes of the guards just about visible from where I stand. Even without the guards, climbing a wall that absurdly tall would be an insane feat.
And then even to get to the wall I’d have to run across the lawn—
No, scratch that.
Getting outside would be the challenge, considering that every door is locked and only the guards have the keys.
“What are you doing?” one of the guards snaps, striding down the hallway.
I flinch, cursing myself.
I turn and face him and make sure not to look him in the eye. I stare past him instead, because I’ve learned that they don’t like it when you look at the floor. They think it makes you weak-spirited, not worthy to serve them … but neither do they like it if you look at them squarely. They think it makes you overly spirited, and not worthy to serve them.
In the periphery of my vision, the guard looks like they all do to me. A big, leering, tattooed Russian man casually wearing a firearm on his hip. He nods back the way he came, from which come the sounds of the party, the too-happy music, and the boisterous laughter of the Bratva, Dobry’s laughter the loudest of all. It’s like he thinks if he guffaws with enough force he can pretend he isn’t a complete freaking psychopath.
“Do your job. Or we will find something else for you to do. Dobry’s brother, the noble Andrei, didn’t send good vodka directly from Moscow for you to gaze like a fool out of the window instead of serving it. Go.”
I quickly walk down the hallway, heart thudding in my chest like it always does when I have a run-in with the guards.
I slide into the room and take one of the silver platters from the servers’ table, walking as gracefully as I can around the cavernous ballroom.
The floor is marble and decorated in ancient Russian scenes, a sweeping kaleidoscope of color that is impossible to study closely with all the ladies’ heels and men’s shoes clipping across it.
As I stride between the tattooed, grinning Russian men and the chirping women in their elegant dresses, I see a sword and a spark of lightning and the corner of a globe, the sail of a ship, the room so huge that it can contain dozens of separate scenes.
I make my circuit, letting out a breath, glad that I didn’t stumble in my heels.
Before they brought me here, I was never much for wearing heels. I was always more comfortable in boots or sneakers. Heels require an expertise that I never cultivated.
I feel my mind trying to tug me back to the night it happened, but I forcefully drag it back. Thinking about that will only sting me with shame and regret and self-hatred, and I haven’t got time for that.
Another platter—another circuit.
A bunch of the guests have begun raucously dancing in the center of the room, the party devolving into loud shouting and back-patting as it always does. The band in the corner picks up their music to match the mood, the drums beating deeply and the violin whining like a banshee.
The guests don’t look at me as I serve. They don’t look at any of us, as though the trays are simply floating around the room, their eyes trained not to see us because … well, who wants the sight of a kidnapped nineteen year old messing up their evening?
No, no, I imagine some of these fine ladies saying. Leave that curvy one in the background. She’s far too unlike us, with our pearls, our thin waists, and our shining actor’s teeth.
I find myself smiling at the thought of them even acknowledging me. It would be so absurd, so out of the ordinary.
I quickly kill the smile.
I’ve been here for a month, but it didn’t take me that long to work out that smiling was a big mistake.
Smiling is a sign that we’re human, after all, and that’s just another distraction they don’t need.
Still, I console myself as I make yet another circuit, the heels causing my feet to cramp—still, I haven’t been selected by any of the men yet.
Most nights they come drunkenly clambering into the servants’ quarters, demanding a woman to spend themselves on. I press myself against the wall and turn my gaze away and silently pray they leave me alone.
And so far they have.
But what happens when one of these sick bastards picks you?
I push the question down.
I can’t think that far ahead.
All I can think about is …
Another platter—another circuit.
I don’t even feel like I’m controlling my body anymore. I switch to autopilot and let my mind abscond to a dreamy forest, the leaves laden with snow, nothing around but the creatures brave enough to come out in the cold.
I imagine a guitar on my lap and a blanket beneath me. I feel my fingers on the strings and hear my voice rising into the winter air, dancing, rising higher, sweeter. I’m always working on my craft, always trying to improve. I used to get angry sometimes, sitting there, hating the sound of my voice.
But now I long for it, the freedom to sing, the freedom to dream.
Another platter.
Another circuit.
The night goes on and on.
I try to stay in my world of dreams, feeling the hard press of the guitar strings against my fingers, hearing my voice, feeling my voice.
But the problem with drifting away like that is that it makes me clumsy, especially after several hours of circulating, waiting, praying that I’m not noticed and d
on’t draw the wrath of any of these thugs.
That’s the most draining part about all of this … how tense I am all the time, constantly waiting for a guard or one of the higher ranking men to lay a hand on my arm.
“You, come with me.”
That’s all they’d have to say and I’d be powerless to resist.
The thought sends sharp stabbing terror through me, my belly going tight, my fists trying to clench against my will. I can’t clench my fists. They might see and take it as a sign of aggression.
Haha, the slave thinks she has the right to get angry.
I’m striding past Dobry and his cabal of goons when I realize, far too late, that I should have been paying more attention rather than disappearing into the safety of my mind.
One of the other servants comes striding across the room at the same time and we almost bump into each other. Charting a course through the growing mayhem is difficult enough with how erratic the Russians become once they start drinking, but the last thing I want to do is knock her platter out of her hand.
I dart back, slipping in my heels.
No, no, no.
I fall and fall, my hands flying and the tray clattering loudly to the floor. Several glasses shatter and champagne spreads like discolored blood across the marble floor, a few of the ladies tsking and stepping back, the music stopping, everybody turning to me.
I land with a painful thump, the impact spreading through my legs and up my spine.
Everything is dead-silent now.
A circle is forming around me, one composed of sneering lips and glaring eyes, and, at the front of them all, stands Dobry.
His combed over hair has come loose and spirals in wires around his head, damp with sweat. His shirt is stained in several places and the bottom buttons have come undone, revealing a slab of his hairy belly. He strides over to me, the guests and the guards parting for their leader.
“You want to make a joke of our party, is that it?” he growls in a heavy Russian accent. “You are jealous that we are having a good time, hmm? Is that your game? Speak, girl.”
“I’m s-sorry,” I say, something keeping me rooted to the floor, as though if I stay here what happens next doesn’t have to happen.
Her Hitman: An Instalove Possessive Older Man Younger Woman Romance Page 1
