As the sounds of our heels clicking on the asphalt of the parking lot echoes through the street, my smile fades before too long.
Even if Natalie can help me come to grips with the fact that I can't work around the clock, I can't deny the fact that I can't even look at this club of mine without feeling a pang in my stomach.
I don't know what the feeling is. Dread? Worry over the fact that, for all Natalie's protests, I can't do this every night? The feeling that I'm trapped keeping this place running? Yeah, probably all of the above.
Even as I watch Natalie's motorcycle pull out of the lot and I start the ignition of my own car, the vibration sending a shiver of a reminder of the night up my body, I can't help but think about how uncertain the future is. I might own a club, but this place is only scraping by month to month. The only thing keeping it up is my hard work.
The work never runs out.
And debts are due soon.
Special Note
Due to Amazon’s rules on exclusivity, Owned by the Hitman is unfortunately not available in this bundle. However, I’m happy to say that it is offered absolutely free to newsletter subscribers. You can get your free copy of Owned by the Hitman here: http://alexabbottauthor.com/newsletter/
Enjoy the rest of the bundle! These stories are in intended order, so you can read straight through :)
Sold to the Hitman
Description
She's terrified of me. She should be.
I'm no saint, but apparently even killers have limits. When the Bratva hired me as security for the night, I didn't know it was a flesh trade. I could have kept my cool, done my job, but then I saw her. Pure as a lily, dressed in skimpy lingerie, and being auctioned off to the foulest men in Brighton Beach.
I'm not used to this white knight sh*t, but I did what I had to do. I outbid those pieces of trash and bought myself a bride.
What the hell do I do with a sweet, subservient woman who's been trained to obey her husband? I can think of some things my baser instincts want me to do... But when she submits to me, I'm going to be the man that deserves it, not just the one she owes it to. So I'm going to make her life better. I'm going to make her want me just as bad as I want her.
And at night, when my new princess is slumbering, I'm going to make every one of those pimps pay in blood. I will protect her... and our unborn baby.
A full length Standalone Romantic Suspense novel. No Cliffhangers. Safe from cheating. Explicit language & swearing.
1
Andrei
I never feel out of place in the unique stillness that the streets of this city maintains at night. Even if the noise in Brighton Beach keeps on at a dull roar long into the late hours, there’s a certain sense in the air that in this little corner of New York, the gears of the city are taking a rest.
And these special hours give me my hunting grounds.
I’m leaning against the brick wall that makes up a side of The Vixen, a gentleman’s club that seems to draw just about every man in the city through its doors at least once. Its reputation and popularity have made it a true asset to its owners, my associates of the Bratva — the brotherhood we Russians in Brighton have established.
The men who come through this club couldn’t be more useful. They drink in the front, they gamble in the back, and they’re loose with their words in both.
All of this and more is what I suspect my target is doing while I wait for him. I take a drink from the flask in hand and check my watch before glancing around the corner — 2:24 AM. Most of the time I’m faking the swig, but a forlorn-looking Russkiy drinking outside a strip club looks less suspicious than a large man waiting outside it with arms crossed. Not that it matters. According to my client, the target should be stumbling out any minute now, and in no state to notice the difference.
And nobody in their right mind would question me.
As if on cue, the man my client wants dead staggers past the haggard-looking bouncer, narrowing his eyes at him as he does. He’s got ratty, thin hair tied back in a ponytail that’s graying, and he hasn’t shaved in a few days, a patchy, greasy beard sticking out from pale cheeks.
“The fuck you lookin’ at, ya thin-dicked cock-splatter?” he sneers at the bouncer.
The bouncer just gives him a brief glance before going back to his phone. He has impressive patience. My target spits on the ground and starts off towards his apartment. He’s wearing a nice suit that fits him poorly, and it’s got visible stains on it. He reeks of sleazy, ill-gotten gains, just as expected. The kind of man who steps on others to get where he’s going and makes a fool of himself with the spoils. I wait half a minute before starting after him, silently. The bouncer pays me no mind.
I feel good about this job. That seems to be rarer these days, but this particular hit has a few things going for it — the first being that this sleazebag has it coming.
This is a freelance contract, meaning I’m not being sicced on someone for my boss. My boss is one of the most feared men in Brighton Beach, in part because of how wantonly he doles out violence against people he thinks are his enemies. My last hit was on a man I knew to be innocent — a simple man vaguely tied to the Bratva, but guilty only of making some small slight against my boss.
And if my boss ever discovers how I really handled that job, it will be my name next on his list. The memories flash in my mind’s eye.
I’m tailing the man on his drive to his beach house. He pulls over at a gas station and heads into the bathroom. I leave my car beside the dumpster and head to his. I slip into the backseat and lie down. A few minutes pass, and I hear him open the car door, not suspecting a thing. He pulls out of the gas station, and once he’s back on track, speeding to his home, I cock my gun in the backseat.
I come back to reality with a start, and I remind myself that the man I’m following tonight is no such innocent by any measure. My client was nearly incoherent with fury when he contacted me, so I figured this was something very personal. After I got the essential information from the client, the rest of the story fell into place with only a little digging.
The scum I’m walking twenty paces behind through Brooklyn runs a string of payday loan offices. When he isn’t drinking on the job or conning the working-class clients who had to turn to him, he was making advances on one of the poor employees who worked full-time at his office not far from here — my client’s sister.
Four days ago, this woman was reported missing. Two days after that, my client contacted me.
He knew what had happened to his sister. Just before disappearing, she had come to him in tears over how her boss had been unusually aggressive in his advances that day, grabbing her and saying unspeakable things to her. She rejected him, and he threatened to fire her. It didn’t take a genius to figure out why she disappeared shortly after. But the investigation went impossibly slow; this scumbag had bought men on the local beat. Moreover, he knew the law never cared for the poor folk barely scraping by in the best of cases. So like many helpless souls before him, he turned outside the law.
The other upside to this job is the pay. This is one hundred grand I’ll be making with a clean conscience, for whatever my conscience was worth.
The target is ahead of me, still staggering, but I’m impressed by his ability to keep his eyes forward. Drunks are often easily distracted, but I can tell this is a walk this sod has made many, many times. He has a remarkable ability to shake from his mind that he’s guilty of murdering a young woman.
I wonder how his candor would change if he knew this stumble home would be his last.
The target was finally reaching his apartment, and I slowed to a halt and pretended to turn off into an alleyway as he bent over near a storm drain to start puking his guts out. I’m silently thankful I won’t have that mess to deal with in a few moments.
As I hear the target stop, I slip out from the alley and watch him head around the apartment building towards his own underground residence. Despite my bulk, I’m able to move behind h
im like a shadow drawing ever closer.
When I was being trained, my partner at the time thought it was amusing, the sight of such a large man dressed in all black slinking around like a predator. He was the first one to call me Shadow, and it seems to have stuck.
Still far enough back that I’m out of sight, I hear the target’s keys scrape and clatter on the metal lock as his drunken stupor makes him struggle with the door, and memories of my last job flood back to me.
He struggles with the lock, his hand shaking violently with fear as he feels the cold barrel of my gun pressed to the back of his head. “Faster!” I bark, and he drops the keys with a whimper. When he finally manages to get the door open, I take him by the scruff of his collar and toss him inside, and he sprawls out onto the floor of the sparsely furnished home he can barely afford. The man is jelly, looking up at me with tear-streaked eyes.
“Please, sir!” he gasps, gesturing wildly around the room as if offering its contents to me. “All of this, my house, my car, you can take it all, but please —”
I silence him as I put a cloth to his mouth, pressing it tight into his teeth as I lean forward, keeping him from making sudden movements. “Enough talk,” I order in a still voice.
The sound of the clicking lock brings me back to the present, and just like that, it’s time to act.
I start to close the distance behind him as he jiggles the knob of the door, pushing it open with a little effort before he stumbles inside when it finally gives way. By the time he’s got his bearings back, I’m within arm’s reach of the door. When he tries to throw the door shut, it meets only my hand.
“What th-” is all he has time to get out before I’m on him, the cloth in my hand muffling his scream as I press it into his mouth, holding the back of his head in the other. He’s too startled to resist me as I spin him around, forcing him to the ground with a sharp kick to the back of his knees. His legs give out easily.
I kick the door shut with a quick motion. He’s starting to jerk around under me, and I know I don’t have much time. The couch is next to the door. In a fluid motion, I grab one of the stained pillows and press his head into the ground, cloth in his mouth, and I cover his head with the pillow.
The next instant, I draw my pistol from the back of my belt, a silencer placed upon the tip of the barrel, and I aim it at the pillow.
Two quiet thumps of the silenced bullets hitting the pillow, and the target’s struggling stops.
I stand up from the man’s lifeless body as blood begins to trickle out from under the cushion. I reach over to a blanket draped across the back of the couch and toss it over the man’s body. He won’t be missed.
“More will come for you if they don’t think you’re dead,” I tell the cowering man as he looks at me incredulously. I’m looking him dead in the eye, speaking carefully, as if giving instructions to a child. That’s all this poor man is in the world of the mafia. “I know you to be innocent. My boss does not care, but I do.”
He claps his hands together as if in prayer, putting his forehead to them. “God bless you, sir, I can never —” But I cut him off.
“I have a safe house. I will take you there, and I will have food brought to you until it is safe for you to leave the country — that’s all there is left for you now. Start anew. You will be thought dead. You won’t be missed.”
I push the memories away once more. That hit was going to be the last time I ever found myself in such a position. That day, as I spirited away that innocent man to a safe place, I vowed to know the character of my targets. If I was to be an executioner, I must also play the judge.
I look down at the man I’ve just killed. Blood is starting to soak through the blanket. Without another word, I push open the door with my gloved hands, closing it behind me and sealing away that wretched man in the pigsty where he made his lair.
As I head out around the dark apartment building, I pull my jacket collar up and lower my head. I don’t suspect the cameras here — if there are any — mind one shadowy figure moving around any more than another, but I’m not taking chances.
I walk down the sidewalk away from the scene as if I’m heading home after a routine walk. The streets are nearly empty, save for a stray car that drives by with a slight swerve, a few of them probably from The Vixen.
I pay them no mind. This has become routine for me. My eyes turn toward the moonless sky, and I wonder how many other people in the city lead lives so nocturnal they can tell when the new moon is just a little brighter than usual.
Hours roll on as I walk around the city — heading straight back to my car after a hit would be a rookie mistake. By the time I’m strolling back to the parking lot of The Vixen, orange light is piercing the skyline, and I glance up at the sunrise as I open my car door. It brings me back to the midnight sun back in Siberia, where the star’s icy light was a mocking comfort.
No time to reminisce now, though. I’ve got a client to report to.
2
Cassie
I’m sitting in my room, staring out the window at the little red and brown birds hopping along the branches of our magnolia tree. They’re chirping so sweetly and happily, and I wonder what kind of conversation they must be having. What do little red birds talk about? I ponder, resting my chin on my arms. If only I could understand them. I can’t help fantasizing about what it must be like to fly.
It’s six in the morning and the sun is just starting to peek its bulbous golden face from behind the skyline of my suburban neighborhood, the homes all nearly identical, like a neighborhood of doll houses. Last night, there was a storm, so my father crowded us all into the den to watch the lightning and talk about the power of God. He does this every time a particularly nasty storm rolls through. He just wants us all to appreciate how small and insignificant we are, teach us to fear our inevitable smiting by the almighty if we succumb to sin. Daddy tells me that every time lightning strikes the ground, it is retribution for a sin committed in that spot. From this, I can gather that there is a whole lot of sinning going on.
We live in upstate New York, in a tiny little town full of beautiful parks and trees. There are lovely forests and lakes, but I don’t get out to see them very often. My parents know how dangerous it is out there, so they try their best to protect me from it and keep me locked up inside.
Sometimes this makes me sad. But I know it is a sin to defy one’s parents or to think negative thoughts about them. So I just remind myself that they are only trying to keep me safe from temptation, to keep me clean of sin.
Today is my eighteenth birthday, and I am graduating from the homeschooling program I’ve spent my entire life studying. It is bittersweet, saying goodbye to the textbooks and lessons which have given me glimpses, albeit obscured, of the outside world. From my geography books, I learned about just how huge the Earth is. And from my parents, I have learned just how evil most of that world really is. They have taught me that anything outside the little social group we’ve cultivated is tainted, too dangerous. Everyone in our group feels just as strongly about what Daddy says, and the one time someone dared disagree with the world view of the group, they weren’t invited back anymore.
Sometimes, the pictures in my textbooks make me feel some kind of strange wanderlust. But any sort of lust is utterly forbidden, even if it’s only a longing for another place, a piece of scenery I have never known. The world is filled with amazing colors I’ve never even touched, but I must remind myself that beauty like that can surely only be the devil’s work, trying to tempt me to step into a sinful world.
I glance at the clock. Any second now my mother will come and knock on my door, letting me know that it’s time to get up. Oversleeping is a symptom of laziness, an indicator of a slothful, ungrateful attitude.
And sloth is a deadly sin.
But they’ve frightened me enough that I always wake up before my mother even comes to get me. I want more than anything to be the best daughter I can be. I need to be perfect. And lately, my parent
s have been telling me that soon I’ll need to be more than just a perfect daughter.
I need to be the perfect wife.
There’s a curt knock at my bedroom door and I hear my mother’s voice call out, “Time to get up, Cassie. Get dressed and come down to make breakfast.”
“Yes, Mother!” I reply cheerily.
I jump up from my little spot by the window, my knee-length, white eyelet night dress swirling as I rise to my feet. I flounce over to the gray wooden vanity in the corner of my room, sitting down on the rickety stool. My face blinks back at me in the round mirror, and I can’t stifle a yawn. I do like rising early, but lately I haven’t been sleeping very well. This is subtly reflected in the light shadows beneath my eyes. I know my father will comment on this. The slightest flaw in my appearance is an affront to God, who made me. I need to be wholesome and beautiful, and this means I must be perfect at all times.
Especially if I am to be someone’s wife!
I lean closer and scrutinize my smooth, pale skin, looking for any imperfections. But luckily, I have been blessed with exceptionally clear skin. My mother says it’s because I am so faithful to my God, but I personally, secretly believe it has more to do with genetics — something I read in a science book before my father confiscated it. Of course, I would never admit that, though.
My cheeks are tinged rosy pink, and my full lips part in a perfectly symmetrical, straight smile, dimples appearing on both cheeks. I have long lashes framing my large, pale blue eyes, but I have never worn mascara on them. In fact, I’ve never worn any kind of makeup. It is forbidden in my household. Sometimes, at the supermarket, I have sneaked away from my mother to look at the makeup aisles, in complete awe of the multitudes of colors and textures. I know nothing about how makeup is supposed to be worn, but the colorful shades of lipstick have always intrigued me.
Hitman - the Series: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance Collection (Alexis Abbott's Hitmen #0) Page 3
