“I’m sorry. I saw you walking toward your bike, and thought you were leaving. You told me you were going to walk to clear your head.”
“I was going to walk, but then I got outside and wanted a cigarette. I gave them up a few years ago, but I keep a pack just in case of emergencies.”
“Well, this was an emergency I can imagine.” She sat there staring at him, and he realized that she actually didn’t think he was going to come back.
“Come here,” he said pulling her closer to him and sitting her on his lap. When she was settled in, she took a deep breath in and then turned her face toward his.
“I can’t believe you came back. Dinner is probably ruined, but if you want I can call out for something.” She looked so earnest, and he knew he’d never known a sweeter soul. He couldn’t afford to have her though, so he would just have to be content to know that he’d once known someone of her caliber. Maybe that would keep him warm when he was without her, because that day was coming soon.
“I’ve only been around you for a week. It doesn’t seem like you see a lot of your family or your cousin.” And so it began… she had opened the door, and now he was barreling through. The shitty feelings he had swirling around his brain and heart could go fuck themselves because he had a job to do.
“I don’t like to see my family all that much. I’m the black sheep of the family. I don’t want to be a part of the destruction and crime they involve themselves in. I do go to dinner with them once a month. If you wanted, you could come along. It’s actually tomorrow.” She looked so excited, and he would have loved to go if he were a really here to be a boyfriend, but there was no way he was going to show his face to her father when he was on a mission to kill the man’s relative and junior leader.
“Will your cousin be there?” He had to ask since he didn’t know what he was going to do with the whole Lucca slash can I keep my job thing. It was better to have all the information available, and then he could decide the best route to take.
“Most of the time he comes, but I’m not sure about tomorrow. There have been people looking for him or so he thinks, and he’s been laying low for a while.”
“You don’t think people are looking for him?” Aidan wondered if she knew how serious her family’s connections were and how many people were probably looking for him. She had no idea that is how they met. He was on a mission to find the man she called her cousin and kill him. Then he needed proof so that his group of biker mercenaries could get paid. It was a dirty, cruel world, and all of the sudden, he wanted to protect her from it.
“I guess they could be.” She didn’t seem like she was too interested in her cousin running, and he wondered if she knew he was running for his life.
Turning her heads, he snuggled into his neck. “I’m kind of tired. I took a sleeping pill so I could relax, and it is really kicking in.”
“Come on, Sleeping Beauty,” he said as he pushed her off his lap and then walked behind her to her room. Getting her settled in her large bed wasn’t hard as she was already dressed and just needed to be tucked back in. When she patted the spot next to her, he took off his clothes and slid in beside her.
“Thanks for coming back,” she said sounding like she was almost asleep. He didn’t have an answer for that, so he just kissed her forehead.
“I know my cousin and dad would love you if they met you.”
She didn’t know how wrong she was. He lay in the dark and thought about how this was going to play out. There was a possibility that the cousin would be at the dinner with Lorna tomorrow, but there was no way he was going to kill him in front of her and his family, but maybe he could follow her to get to the house and then follow his mark home.
Lorna snuggled against him bringing her ass to fit his cock, and he thought about taking her up on what seemed to be her invitation, but he knew she was tired and all of a sudden he was too. What seemed like an open and closed case wasn’t feeling like that now. He had a piece of a plan to get Lucca, but after that then what? He didn’t think he’d be able to come back here after offing her cousin even if she didn’t know that he was the person behind the take down.
“Just like I do,” she said sounding like she was already asleep.
With an extra squeeze and a kiss to the top of her head, he did his best to level his breathing. The one thing he’d been chasing his entire life was acceptance, and here it was wrapped up in one sweet hearted package and he couldn’t even accept it.
“Damn,” he whispered into the dark room, and that word hung in the air like cloud full of poison.
CHAPTER SIX
Lorna didn’t want to be here in the Giovanni household, but this is what she said she’d do so that her father didn’t come looking for her. He’d set her up with her boutique, and she knew she should be grateful, but there was dirty money running through there. It looked like it was her shop, but she was the ordering manager and the name on the sign, but her father held the finances and paid her. She was paid much more than someone else in her position would get, and her house and utilities were included in the rent she didn’t pay, but it was a leash. They all knew it. If she were to step out of line, her father held everything in his all reaching hand.
“Did you talk to your father?” her mother was an old fashioned woman. She cooked and cleaned without pause. It didn’t matter that they had a chef and a housekeeper; she didn’t feel like a wife if she wasn’t busy. The woman made an art of it, and if you weren’t paying attention you may actually think she was doing something.
“No mom. I just got here.” She put down her purse and planned to wash her hands so she could offer to do some of the nothing her mother was doing.
“Well he came in here a few minutes ago, and he was terribly upset. He told me to tell you to see him as soon as you got in.” Her mother stopped her busy hands to look up at her. “So get going.”
“Alright, ma, I was going to give you a kiss before I met the monster man.”
Her mother kissed her cheek quickly. “There you go, now go see your father.”
Lorna went off toward her father’s office with a sense of foreboding. There was something going on in her life. Whenever it seemed like everything was going smoothly, something else would broadside her like a truck. It was just a mind fuck she did to herself, but all week she could sense it. She knew it was because of Aidan. He was so wonderful and sexy she wondered when the other shoe was going to fall. It hadn’t happened yet, so she was going to just go with the flow.
When her father called her to his office, it was usually just the two of them in there, but not tonight. He was there with Lucca, her Uncle Barry, her father’s good friend Tucker, and a few other guys that looked familiar but she didn’t know all that well. The look on everyone’s face was grim. They were all aware of where she stood on the crime portion of the business, so she’d never been invited to one of these meetings.
“Hey, Papa,” she said walking over towards her father.
“Sit down, Lorna.” He pointed at the chair that was in the middle of the room, and she knew she was in trouble. What was she, five years old? That was what she was thinking, but she sat down in the chair like her father requested.
“What’s this about?” She wanted to act like they weren’t all freaking her out, but they were.
“Do you love your cousin Lucca?” Her father got up to walk around his desk and sit on the corner. Lorna wondered if this was how he reprimanded the people who worked for him. It was very effective. She felt fully chastised and wanted to repent without knowing what she’d done wrong.
“Of course, I do. What kind of question is that?”
“I’ll ask the questions here. You just give the answers.” Her father’s strong voice had a bit of a boom to it, and she swore she could feel it vibrating in her chest.
“I’m sorry, Papa.”
“I’ve just gotten word that there is a man who has been sent to take out your cousin Lucca, and your name was attached to him.”
> Lorna sat in the seat not knowing what her father was talking about. The only person she had met recently was Aidan, and there was no way he was some sort of assassin. She just sat there because she knew that there must be some kind of mistake.
“You don’t have anything to say?” Her father shifted a bit on the desk, and she was reminded of a time when he slapped her. It was only once, and it was when she was a teen, but her cheek still throbbed like it remembered he’d done that and was afraid it was going to happen again.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She didn’t know how her father had found out about her dating situation, but it was safe to say he was probably having her followed. Was she ever going to be able to run her own life? Not while her father treated her like she was five years old.
“The man who has been sleeping with you at night and looking for your cousin during the day. Are you going to tell me you have so many men going in and out of your doors you can’t put a name on who I’m talking about?” The head of the Giovanni family didn’t take kindly to being called a liar or a fool, but that isn’t what she was trying to do.
“I’m not saying that, but I don’t think the man I spend my time with is the man out to get Lucca.” She looked over at her cousin and saw that he, indeed, looked like she’d hurt him personally. He had to know she wouldn’t be involved with anything like that. “Everyone knows I don’t like violence, and I wouldn’t ever do anything to hurt or bring harm to my own family.”
Her father drew in a deep breath. “I know baby girl, but the world is rough out there. People could find out who you are and use you to find us. That’s why I didn’t want you to move so far away. It’s hard to keep tabs on you when you’re not living in this house. I should have put the peepers in your house even though you told me not to. You’re too important to me to be on the streets without protection.”
“I’m not on the streets. That would be my house you’re talking about. I’m safe in my own house,” she argued her point without trying to get loud. Somehow the people in her family saw that as a reason to just yell louder and scream out their point of view. That didn’t help anyone, and everyone just got worn out without even hearing the other person’s side.
“You could be your own person if there was a security detail on you. There are times I’ve had you followed, and you had no idea. I’ve let you do your own thing, but something tells me you are getting snuckered and you don’t even know it.”
“Snuckered?” She knew her father made up words all the time, and she usually could figure them out, but not this one.
“It means being hoodwinked, taken for a ride, used… capiche?” Her father was getting a bit upset now. When he started throwing in Italian words, it was getting ready to get bad. She needed to explain a few things to him or she would find herself on father-mandated house arrest with no possibility for parole.
“I want to be my own person, Papa, you know that. I don’t stand in the way of any of the things you do. I know you have my job bugged and probably my phone too, and I don’t put up a fuss, but my home is my domain, and I don’t want it infiltrated.”
He turned around on the desk and picked up a picture. “Do you know this man?” He asked as he waved the picture around near her face.
The man in the picture had the same black hair she’d just recently run her hands through and big hard body she’d run her hands over following those touches up with her mouth. The man that she cared about couldn’t be the man they were talking about. Her father had gone through a lot of trial and error before, and she couldn’t remember a man that she liked that he approved of, but this was a bit much even for him.
She just shrugged in answer to his question because she knew how he worked. She’d say something, and he would shoot her down. There were times when it was just better to keep your mouth closed, and she could tell that this was one of those times.
“A shrug isn’t going to work little lady. This is the man my people have said is trying to put your cousin into a grave. Do you know this man or not?” Her father stood up from the desk and walked over to her chair. She could almost feel the pain he was getting ready to hand down.
Lorna didn’t know what came over her, but she pushed out of her chair and flew at her father knocking him to the floor as she fell beside him. The clicking of the guns told her she’d made a grave mistake. Everyone except her father and Lucca were pointing guns at her face.
The metallic taste in her mouth was bitter, and since she hadn’t planned this out, she had no thought of what to do next, so she froze. It seemed like it was hours that she lay there with her hands raised and prayed they didn’t kill her. What would her mother think about all this?
“That’s enough, guys. What the fuck are you going to do shoot her? Shoot the daughter of the boss right on his office floor?” Lucca said to the men in the room as he pulled her up from the floor into his arms.
She felt so alone right then, so adrift. What in the world had she been thinking? She was the girl who was always by her father’s side as a child and the proclaimed daddy’s girl throughout her life. He’d hit her once as a teenager, and she’d never forgotten it. Her mother told her that she should have been a better daughter, and it wouldn’t have happened. It was probably true, but she’d promised herself no one would hit her again. His hand wasn’t raised as he walked toward her, but she felt the aggression and it was like her body took over.
“I don’t know what he’s done to you, but that ends tonight.” Her father said to her sounding like he’d never sounded before. Even with the guns and the chaos of the night, that tone scared the crap out of her.
“What do you mean?” she asked trying to get out of Lucca’s arms.
Her father turned to the guys she didn’t know. “Let it be done.”
“Let what be done, Papa?” She didn’t know if he would even give her the information after all that had happened, but she didn’t like the ominousness of what her father had told his henchmen.
“Little girl, I’ve killed people for less than you’ve done here tonight. Bringing strangers in among our family and helping someone find a relative are things that aren’t acceptable. You’ve embarrassed me in front of my men, and I’m fighting hard not to beat the hell out of you.”
She knew that her actions wouldn’t go over well, but there she was again getting in trouble for something she didn’t do. “Papa, I didn’t bring any strangers around.”
“Silence. This man you’ve been with… the one who’s looking for Lucca, will be killed tonight. Then we can return his head to the people who sent him, and then I can deal with you and your disrespectful nature.” Her father didn’t even look like the man she knew. His face was angry and red. It looked like it was going to pop. What she realized was that they were going to kill an innocent man because of her. Her father was going to take her actions out on Aidan, and his death would be on her hands.
She broke away from Lucca and ran to the door, but Lucca was much faster than she was.
“Don’t do anything stupid… well anything else.” Lucca always had a smile for her and a witty response. They hadn’t been able to catch up like they usually did, but she’d make sure they sat down for a nice long chat when she got this thing with Aidan all cleared up. She’d bring him that expensive liquor he loved so much. She gave him a kiss on the cheek.
“I’ll try my best.” She had to get to Aidan before the men her father sent did. The problem was she thought they knew where he was, and she had no clue. She could have tried harder to get more information about him. She didn’t know where he spent his days or much about where he’d come from, but there was no way he was a killer. She’d seen how shocked he was when he found out who she was, so he couldn’t have been using her for that.
She ran down the hall and into her old bedroom before she locked the door. Thank goodness she had her phone so she could send off a text message to Aidan.
People are coming to kill you leave wherever you are and
get to safety.
She wondered if he would think she was kidding with that kind of doomsday text, but she hoped he knew better. Her bedroom had been wired for sound and not video her, and her brothers had gotten to make that choice so her father wouldn’t know that she’d texted him. Hopefully.
There was a knock at the door that didn’t sound like your average ‘Can I come in and talk to you,’ and she wasn’t going to be able to sit down and talk to anyone with the way she was feeling. It had been a long time since she crawled out her window, but that was what she was going to do. This night had turned from bad to worse within minutes, and she felt like she was Alice in Wonderland. Everything was different even though it all looked the same. Heaven help her if she lost the only guy who made her not want to hide who she was.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Aidan had gotten the message from Lorna and had heeded her every word. It wasn’t every day a woman he was dating went to a family dinner with her mafia boss father and sent him a text that people were coming to kill him.
Hitman's Lust: a Dark Mafia Romance Page 24
