Hitman - the Series: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance Collection (Alexis Abbott's Hitmen #0)

by Alexis Abbott

  But I can’t let myself think like that. Not now. What has gotten into me?

  I convince myself it’s just the trauma of what’s happened to me which is clouding my judgement, but I’m lying to myself. I thought he was hot the second I set eyes on him, and was curious about him ever since, even as I tried to push it from my mind. Now that I’m alone with him, though, I’m greedy for more.

  My eyes begin to catch other details of Max’s physique — scars. I squint, straining to catalogue them as he rinses off his body. There are shiny, jagged lines marring his skin, some on his arms and legs, and one particularly nasty one on his upper chest, almost to his collarbone. I wonder what could have caused him such pain. What kind of life has he led? As a gymnast, I’ve had my own share of awful injuries, and there are battle scars I bear, as well. But nothing to this extent. Who hurt him? Who made him this way? One thing is for sure: he didn’t get those scars as a mere gymnastics instructor in Paris.

  The water cuts off and Max steps out of the shower stall. For a glorious split second I take in his full, glistening frame before he wraps a towel around his body. He shakes his head vigorously to loosen the excess water from his hair, almost like a fluffy dog. The gesture is so cute and out of character it draws an unbidden smile to my face.

  “How did you sleep?” he asks simply, roughly combing back the hair from his face with deft fingers. It takes me a moment to rip myself out of the trancelike state I’m in, intrigued by every movement this beautiful, mysterious man makes.

  “Just fine,” I lie. The truth is, I still dreamed of dark, dank places and cruelly handsome faces last night. But every time I awoke with a pained cry, I was lulled back to sleep by the comforting warmth of the man lying next to me.

  “I apologize for the indecency,” he remarks, but there’s no hint of apology in his voice. I wonder if he’s only saying this out of obligation, because he doesn’t want to tread on my boundaries. But I’m relieved to hear his light, even tone. It means he’s not upset at me for barging in at him and staring at him like a horny school girl. Which, in fairness, is kind of what I feel like, so I don’t want his apologies. In my mind, there is nothing to apologize for. I needed a guardian to stay close. I asked him to come to bed with me.

  He was only doing as I requested.

  He was only protecting me. Again.

  “It’s nothing,” I assure him, trying to strike a balance between dismissing his apology and not sounding too eager. In truth, I’d repeat my actions again, and even though he’s my instructor, I think he did the perfectly decent thing.

  The strangest thing, though, that I don’t know how to deal with is my budding attraction to him. Or is it fully bloomed now? I’ve never really found myself attracted to anyone sexually before — not on this level. I’ve had silly, fleeting crushes in the past. I’ve even danced with boys at school formals. But nothing has ever stricken me so sharply as the proximity of Max’s strong, powerful body to mine.

  And I know what those captors wanted to do to me. I bet they’d have even fetched a higher price on my body if they knew I was a virgin. The documentary I watched said that untouched girls were always more highly prized, and that was precisely why I kept it to myself.

  So maybe it’s partly that fear bubbling over in me. I nearly had my virginity forced from me, and now I’m waking up to real, adult desires as a messed up way to deal with that. Or maybe it’s just one of those near death things where suddenly I have a new appreciation for life and experiencing all the things I never got to yet.

  And sex is definitely one of those experiences.

  I find myself longing to be nearer to him, constantly. Even now, as I sit perched on the bathroom counter, it’s difficult for me not to stare with desire. I can’t believe the urges coming over me. I decide to just chalk it up to my recent trauma and leave the moral questioning for another time.

  “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, Liv,” Max continues, standing there with his towel wrapped around his waist. His chest and stomach muscles gleam with the fairest sheen of moisture, catching every sculpted line. Those smoldering green eyes watch me intently, waiting for a response. Like he’s waiting for me to cry, to break down in front of him. It’s almost as though he expects me to be afraid of him — like it would be easier if I did.

  But I don’t. I fear my confusing feelings toward him, but I don’t fear Max in the least.

  “You’ve done nothing to make me feel uncomfortable. You saved my life. I will never be able to thank you for what you’ve done for me,” I explain to him, biting my lip.

  Our eyes meet and I feel a tingling sensation travel down my spine. It’s this powerful, unexplainable electric current, the same one I felt when I first sat down across from him at the banquet table in North Carolina. Something feels so primal, so natural about our meeting. Like we were always going to find ourselves here somehow.

  But then he drags his eyes away from me, looking into the mirror as the steam begins to clear and reveal his handsome, conflicted face. He falls silent, and I wonder what kinds of thoughts are surging through his mind right now. I can feel that barrier coming up again, the same one he put between us the moment he offered me the position as his student.

  “Your scars… how did you get them?” I ask suddenly, unable to stop myself, unwilling to let him recoil from me.

  He doesn’t look at me, keeping his gaze trained on his own reflection, and for a second, I wonder if I’ve instead pushed him away.

  “I told you that I used to walk a darker path. I lived a very different life years ago. I ran with a crowd who would sneer at the way I live now, would call me a coward or a quitter. But I could not run alongside them forever. Olivia, I did terrible things, and terrible things happened to me, as well,” he says slowly.

  “That mark on your chest,” I begin cautiously, “what is it?”

  He sighs, staring down at his hands gripping the edge of the counter as though it physically pains him to look himself in the eye now. “You don’t want to know.”

  “Please,” I press, moving closer along the counter so that my bare legs, poking out of the bottom of the oversized T-shirt he gave me, are almost touching his arm.

  Finally, he looks at me, and I feel that electric shock once again.

  “It is the result of trying to burn away my past. It was… it used to be a tattoo, marking me as a member of the brotherhood. The Bratva.”

  My blood runs cold.

  The Bratva. I remember vaguely a voice saying those words coarsely in the backseat of the car while I was being kidnapped. I drifted in and out of consciousness, unable to move or find my bearings, but that word appears to me now out of the clearing mist.

  Did the darker path he walk used to involve taking girls like me?

  16

  Max

  The horror I see in her gaze doesn’t land on blind eyes. I can only imagine the terrible thoughts running through her mind, and it’s inexpressibly painful to keep eye contact with her. I see her on the cusp of asking, was I once a part of the slavers who subjected her and Maggie to this fate? Have I done still more wretched things? Are the two of them just some form of penance for myself, a saved couple of girls among countless slaves I’d condemned?

  I was never a slaver, but I wouldn’t have been able to say ‘no’ to all of those questions written on her face.

  “That life is far behind me, Liv,” I say with some finality, but I can tell she doesn’t fully believe me. “I burned that bridge when I burned the tattoo from my skin. What I do now has no ties to those men and the evil they conduct. I hope my actions speak for themselves.”

  The look on her face is pained, and I frown, letting my head hang a moment. “I understand if this is difficult for you. I don’t expect you to believe me.” I cross the room with a set of clothes and let my towel fall to the ground out of her sight, donning a tight and thin black t-shirt, jeans, and shoes. She needs time to digest what I just confessed to her, or else needs time to run from m
e.

  I’ve been foolish, and let my guard down. For a few hours, there was a lingering question in the back of my mind if I could actually be worthy of a woman’s love and respect. I’d written it off so long ago, accepted my fate as a life-long bachelor, until she came into my life.

  Even then, I pushed those thoughts away, and was prepared to be professional with her, just like all my students. But fate had other plans for us. It gave me hope that there might be a future for me, outside of pain and death and work.

  I had to be reminded that I am unredeemable, and that no one outside the Bratva will ever accept the true me. Especially not a woman so beautiful and delicate as Olivia.

  When I return to the bathroom a few moments later, I’m earnestly surprised to see her still there. I almost thought she would have fled the room and my home, taking her chances away from anyone who’s had any affiliation from the mafia.

  I fear I’m her only hope in all this, and she knows this. Of course she won’t run, if she thinks her friend’s life is on the line.

  But that’s no basis for a relationship, so I turn back to the cold professional I should’ve been all along.

  “For now, Liv, I must press on,” I say, crossing the room and picking up my cellphone from the nightstand. For the first time since the revelation, I see her look up at me with a furrowed brow, as if watching me through a dream.

  “What do you mean?”

  “There are some things I must do on my own to help find Maggie,” I explain, knowing she isn’t going to like that explanation, but as she nods absently, I realize she’s lost in thought over what she’s learned about me.

  Perhaps I should not have revealed my past so early to her. Hell, I never should’ve revealed anything to her. I was a fool to think that she’d accept me as I am. The things I’ve done...

  But a hopeful voice within me reminds me that I would rather her be in shock now than lie to her and face my dishonesty later. I want her to trust me, even still.

  “But don’t worry,” I say, a bit of reluctance in my voice as I thumb through my recent contacts on my phone. “The man I’m leaving you in care of is...capable, if nothing else. And a touch less frightening than me.”

  And perhaps a little time away from me is precisely what she needs, I think to myself with a heavier heart than I want to admit. I brace myself as I hear the phone ringing after I call my contact.

  “First of all,” says Felix, pacing around the room and running his fingers through his curly hair and pushing his thick-rimmed glasses up his nose, “thanks for letting me know you’re alive after yesterday, asshole.”

  I roll my eyes, leaning against the back of the room with my arms crossed as I watch him, my eyes occasionally flitting back to Liv, who’s sitting on the couch. She hasn’t said much since I called Felix, and I’m becoming more concerned about her by the minute. Her being afraid of me at a time like this is potentially dangerous. If anything happens, I need her to know she can count on me.

  But it may yet be helpful, if only to keep her out of danger. If she doesn’t want to be around me, then I can pull off this rescue mission on Maggie without her interference, and that’s safer for all of us.

  “You would have known eventually, Felix,” I say, sounding bored. “We’ve had more than a few other things on our minds.”

  “Okay, sure, fine, but you can’t go into an apartment building armed to the teeth with guns and knives and then expect me to be able to sleep at night, alright?”

  I smile. “Here I thought you knew about my past.”

  “It’s one thing to read about someone,” says Felix in a fluster, “but to see him charging into a building like some kind of American cowboy, fuck! No offense,” he adds offhandedly to Liv, who just raises her eyebrows a little.

  “Anyway,” I change the subject, “like I said on the phone, we have more tracking to do. As you can see,” I say with a gesture to Liv, “we have one student somewhere safe, but we’re missing one more. Her name is Maggie. I have her number here. Can you work your magic again?”

  “Um duh?” he says, glancing to Liv as if asking if his use of the expression in English is correct. He speaks it heavily accented, but we converse in English to make sure she doesn’t feel excluded. Particularly considering the circumstances. “Are we going on another car ride?”

  “No,” I say quickly, “I can’t leave Liv alone. And I know she damn well doesn’t want to be. If you can get me a location, I will take care of what needs to be done.”

  Felix gives me an incredulous look, and I know what he’s thinking: am I seriously leaving him on guard duty? But I shoot him a meaningful look back, meaning that yes, indeed, I am.

  “This place is safe, Felix,” I affirm. “We took no car here, and the mafia hasn’t known about my location for years. This apartment is just another face in the crowd.”

  “Well then, yeah, I can uh, do that,” he says, pushing his glasses up again before he moves over to his bag and takes his laptop out, taking it over to the little excuse for a dining table and plugging it in before opening it. “But you saw about how long it took me to get an exact location last time. So, y’know, give me a few minutes to let me ‘work my magic.’ You know, magic that you could learn in like twenty minutes if you cared to.”

  “Sure,” I indulge him, “give me a tutorial on triangulating — I’m sure the slavers will put things on hold for us while we educate ourselves.”

  Felix rolls his eyes and starts typing on his computer after I slide my phone to him on the table with Maggie’s number pulled up.

  I spend a few minutes just pacing around the room while I wait on Felix, but before long, Liv gets up and heads into my room, flicking on the bathroom light and heading inside. I look after her a moment before Felix gets my attention with a click of his tongue.

  He nods in her direction, raising an eyebrow at me. “She okay?” he says in a low tone.

  I take a few long moments before responding. “She will be okay. She’s... taken in quite a lot in the past day and a half.” And though that much is true, what I’m really worried about is that I’m the one whose traumatized her most of all. Not long ago, just a few hours, she said I was a hero, and for that brief window of time, I felt something I never had before.

  But now she knows the truth. I’ve never been a hero, and no matter what I do to atone for my past, it will never be enough. Not for her, and certainly not for me.

  Frowning, Felix nods curtly and gets back to his work. As he does, I stand up and head into my room after Liv, waiting by my bed for her to get out.

  The door opens, and she stops short as soon as she sees me, standing in the doorway to the bathroom and looking away from me, unsure what to do with herself as I turn my gaze up to her.

  There are a few moments of awkward silence between us before either of us says anything, but something feels so...wrong about leaving her here without a word between us, without some closure.

  “Liv, I…” I start, closing my mouth and frowning as words fail me momentarily. “I can’t change anything about my past. I wish to god that I could, but…”

  She isn’t looking at me, just standing in the doorway with her gaze at the ground. I can feel the pain in her heart. She desperately wants to look back up at me, but after everything we shared last night, after everything she’s been through, I can’t blame her for her reticence.

  “When I was growing up,” I start slowly, “I had no parents. In America, such a start is incomparable. In my home city of Yakutsk, it is a near death sentence. The winters are harsher than anywhere else in the world, and the people can be just as cold to each other. I knew so little warmth in my life that I could never even begin to imagine what it might be like to share a bond with another person. In the orphanage where I spent my early boyhood, we were always in competition.” I almost smile at the memory, though most of them feel so distant now, after I’ve come through so much.

  “We fought against one another, we raced each other, we stole f
rom the administrators and compared our loot with one another. It felt like that was expected of us. We had to compete to be the best, in hopes that we would one day be adopted by some kind soul. I had only one person who I could call ‘friend’ during that part of my life.” I take a deep breath. I haven’t spoken of this in a very long time. I can feel Liv’s quiet gaze on me, but I keep my eyes on the wall.

  “His name was Andrei. He was tall and sturdy, not unlike myself. Through all the cutthroat competition of the boys’ pecking order, we had each other’s backs, no matter what. We fought together. We survived together. And when we passed into adolescence without a single prospect of adoption, we were ejected out into the cold Russian winters together.” I pause, Andrei’s face clear in my mind that day that we were discharged from the only home they’d ever known. “I felt so betrayed by the world by then. With so many families out there, not a single one would adopt us, give us the warmth every child should know? One more birthday rolled around, and I remember being so angry I wanted to flee the orphanage and starve to death out in the snow rather than face the icy shoulder of prospective parents.” I pause, looking up and meeting Liv’s gaze.

  “That day, Andrei spoke to me. He said, ‘Max, we humans, we find our greatest strengths in the bonds we forge with one another that we can choose, not in our families that we can’t. We will do what we must to get by, you and I, because we know that we can work together to do what we have to.” I squeeze my fists tight a moment, the memories quieting me despite myself. “That thought was in my mind when we left the orphanage together. And that was what kept me going when I started working for the Bratva to survive after my time in the military. None of us were truly free,” I say, more fire in my voice than I had realized as I stand up, “but together, we survived.”