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

by Alexis Abbott

  I hear her footsteps padding closer, and I can tell by the sound of her breath that she’s nearly on me. Then there’s a moment’s hesitation, and I can practically taste in the air the same pause a deer feels the moment it can’t see or hear its predator but suddenly, inexplicably realizes it’s being hunted.

  Delaney was already turning heel to run away when I rise up from behind the log, but my arms catch her easily as she lets out a scream, pounding her little fists against me and struggling against my arms as I pull her close to me.

  “No, no!” she shouts, kicking at my shins with bare feet as I try to get a hold of her arms and pin them to her sides, chuckling at her efforts. “Damn you, no!”

  As she struggles, I catch a glimpse of her eyes and realize there’s mortal fear in them, and once I’ve hugged her to my front, squeezing her still for just a moment, I can feel her heart pounding fiercely against me, her breath seizing up. She’s starting to have a panic attack.

  “Shh, little princess, shh,” I hush her, but she starts thrashing again, trying to get away. At last, I release her body, holding onto one of her arms with a grip that I know she can’t hope to break away from. With a pained grunt, she struggles away, pulling and jerking her shoulder, and I frown, scooping her up again. “You’re going to dislocate your shoulder,” I chide her.

  “What do you care?” she snaps, trying to kick at me with her legs while I hold her. “Just...just get this over with, will you?”

  I raise an eyebrow at her, perplexed, but then I see her looking up at me defiantly. I’ve seen that look before. She expects that I came out her to kill her for her disobedience. The look in her face is that of someone ready to face death, and it’s not a look that cowards have it in them to produce.

  This girl gets more interesting by the hour.

  I find myself laughing quietly despite myself, and Delaney’s face goes bright red, and she reaches up to strike me again, but I catch her, setting her down on her feet and gently restraining her arms as she tries to hit me.

  “Quit laughing, you sadist! What are you laughing about?”

  “Poor girl,” I say, “do you think I would have chased you down all the way out here to kill you? If I’d wanted you dead, well, you’re already doing a good job of making that happen, running out into the forest at night with nothing but a dress. Don’t you know,” I add, a grin on my face as I lift her chin to face me, “there are wolves prowling about at night.”

  There are tears in her eyes, and I realize that I might have pushed her too far. She thrashes out against me again, but I can feel that her body is too tired to put up much of a fight.

  “Why do you always do that?” she pouts, her voice choked by a sob.

  “Do what?” I ask as she starts to calm down, her breathing getting slower and steadier.

  “You trivialize everything that happens to us! To me!” she says, a couple of heavy tears rolling down her face. “I’ve been going through hell because of you, and you’re laughing at me! I could have died tonight for all I knew, and you’re just laughing it off like...like I’m some-”

  “Petulant little American who’s never known a day of hardship in her life before now?” I answer, narrowing my eyes. Her lip quivers, and still, she looks beautiful in the moonlight, her pouting face challenging me with its stare. I could kiss that frown away.

  Despite myself, I do not feel my heart hardening against her plight as I usually do. She’s ignorant, that’s something she can’t deny...but it’s also something she can’t help. And in her, I see a hint of something more. Some kind of potential beyond the air-headed whims of an upper-class spoiled girl.

  “Come with me,” I say, releasing one of her arms and slipping my hand down to hold her smaller one, enveloping it entirely in a firm but gentle grip.

  “Do I have a choice?” she mutters as I lead her along, minding her step a little more. I lead her a short walk south, being careful to take paths that are not riddled with sharp twigs and thorns. The poor girl came out here with bare legs that are already covered in little cuts. After a few minutes, Delaney is still too shaken up to question our destination. The treeline breaks, the smell of salty air reaches us, and there’s a slope that leads down to the lapping waves that crash against the sandy shore of the Mediterranean.

  The full moon casts a gorgeous road of moonlight over the waters, and with Delaney’s hand in mine, I feel her heartbeat start to settle, perhaps calmed by the sounds of crashing waves. I give her an unreadable glance before leading her down the slope, towards the waves.

  “You were a short walk from the shore. You might have followed it to safety, rather than die alone in the woods,” I say once we’re down there. A light breeze washes over us, and Delaney’s first instinct is to move closer into me, but she catches herself and steps back, her cheeks reddening as I grin down at her.

  “So are you just taking me down here to show me what I could have done right?” she says ruefully, frowning out at the waters. “Prove to me that I’m just a scared little girl without daddy?” she adds, imitating my accent, and I give her hand a warning squeeze that makes her drop her defiant expression.

  “I already knew that,” I tease, and she reaches out to slap my chest again, but I catch her other hand, leaving us standing like dancers in the middle of a waltz on the beach as the waves lap up over her feet in the sand as she looks up at me with pouting eyes.

  “Where do you suppose I am from, Delaney?”

  She furrows her brow, and I can see her trying to figure out if this is some kind of verbal trap. “I...I don’t know. Greece? Russia?”

  I tut, raising my eyebrows. “Careful, girl. I’m a forgiving man, but accuse my men of being Russians, and you might find yourself in hot water I can’t save you from.”

  “You’ve been the one putting me in hot water all this time!”

  “I saved you just now, didn’t I?” I return, and she pauses. I smile. “It hurts, doesn’t it? To be powerless no matter how hard you fight back? I know the feeling well, believe it or not, but people like you? You could go your whole life without it.”

  She stares at me as I nod down the coastline toward the direction of the villa, and I start to walk her in that direction.

  “I am from Georgia,” I say, “the country that shares the name of your state.”

  “How do you know where I’m from?” she says, eyes widening in surprise, but I wave her off.

  “All of you girls, you put your lives up on display on the internet for all to see. It was easy to find you. I know where you are from, what school you went to, and your impressive cheerleading career-”

  “You stalked us!” she says, and I raise my eyebrows in genuine surprise.

  “We kidnapped you, chemo kargo,” I say with a smile. “Do you think we would do such a thing without adequate preparation?”

  She falls silent for a few moments, chewing her lip as we walk. I look back at her and catch her watching me, curiosity in her eyes.

  “Georgia,” she says, furrowing her brow. “That’s where the war with Russia was a few years ago, wasn’t it?”

  “Ah, so you know of it,” I say, grinning as my eyes watch the sand in front of me for a few moments, leading Delaney along. “Do you know how strange it is to hear someone talk of your homeland like some strange place in the corners of the public eye?”

  “And I suppose you’re going to blame me for that?” she says, and this time, I pull her forward roughly, right up to my chest as I turn around and face her, looming over her in the moonlight. My eyes bore into hers as her breath catches in her throat, and I feel her start to shake in my grip as I watch her carefully.

  “This war,” I say bitterly, “this footnote in American media — when I was released from prison, that war became my life. My friends and I, some of them my associates today, we were thrust out into the war right out of prison. It was all we had to look forward to.”

  I bring my fingers to the hem of her dress, running them along it slowly, taking
in the feel of the fabric. I bring my hand up to the back of the dress, doing the same there, my fingers brushing against her skin. Her cheeks redden as she watches me, listening.

  “You’re eighteen. While you use this time to celebrate with friends, put your memories up for the world to see, prance around Europe in expensive dresses, flirt with men from around the world — when we were eighteen, we were sent to become faceless casualties in a war we were goaded into. We were given nothing, and we had nothing to look forward to. Nothing the law would give us, anyway,” I add, twirling one of her locks of hair around my finger with a smile. For the first time, she doesn’t pull away from me or look terrified.

  “You like this, don’t you?” she says, her voice barely more than a whisper. “Making money off people like me.”

  “A man must take pride in his work,” I say, turning and tugging her along with me. “Besides, a little hardship might be good for you. Nobody should live their life like they have the whole world at their feet without being brought down into it once in a while. But tell me,” I ask, suddenly pulling her up to my side and wrapping my arm around her waist, smiling down on her as if she were my date once again, “since we’re on this romantic walk of ours, why don’t you tell me about your life in the stars?”

  Her face flushes again when I yank her forward, taking her in beside me. The look in her eyes is unmistakable, and it fills my heart with fire. She’s not used to this, getting ordered around and forced to obey commands. Better yet, she likes it. I could take her right now, if I wanted — strip that fancy dress off her and have her riding my cock right here on the Spanish shore, and all I would have to do is keep pushing her just a little further.

  “I...wasn’t exactly the center of attention all my life,” she says after a few moments of silence, slowly, her eyes moving reluctantly from me out onto the waters. “I probably can’t compare to, you know, Georgian prison and a war against Russia, but…” she raised her eyebrows a moment, thoughtful. “I guess you could say I’ve had to adapt. I didn’t focus on my looks or how to talk to people that much when I was really young, and I learned pretty quickly that you can’t do that as a girl.” There is a hint of ruefulness in her voice, but only an undertone, and I glance at her, interested.

  “Oh?”

  “Boys will tear you apart if you don’t look or act a certain way,” she says, chewing her lip a moment. “Girls will too, but mostly because their dads taught them to.”

  “And what did your daddy teach you?” I ask, and she turns her big blue eyes up to me before rolling them.

  “My dad? I could get whatever I want from him. I learned how to ‘walk the walk’ on my own. I had to,” she says, and I can see a hint of confidence in the statement. I find myself smiling, looking down at her, and she catches me a moment later, furrowing her brow over those eyes I could look into for ages.

  “What? What is it?”

  My hand squeezes her closer to me. “Nothing. Enjoy the walk, Delaney. It’s not much farther to the villa now.” I flash her a grin. “You ought to enjoy your time at the beach while it lasts.

  Half an hour later, we reach the point where I have to take her back up off the beach to march up to the compound. As we start to leave behind the sand, she yelps as I sweep her off her feet, carrying her over the forest floor as we make our way to the cliffs. She squirms in my grip, surprised, but in time, she finds it more comfortable to put her arms around my neck for support, though she seems reluctant to do so at first.

  She’s tired by the time I step up to the villa entrance, where two of the guards hail me with grinning faces and a wave, but she fights off sleep the whole way.

  I find myself impressed by the girl’s resilience. Most people would be exhausted after such an escape attempt and the rush of being recaptured, but Delaney fights through it, keeping her eyes alert around her.

  I carry her up the stairs, back to her room. This time of night, there are few people around the halls walking about. Nobody questions me as I take her in, but one of the guards, a man with a thick face and ugly brow follows us to the room, nodding to me and closing the door behind us as I head inside and set Delaney down on the bed. I glance over to the window to notice that it’s been boarded up from the outside, and I smirk at Delaney, who makes a pouty face.

  “Like I’d try it again,” she says in a huff.

  “Nobody expects lightning to strike in the same place twice, little girl,” I say, but there’s a warning to my tone, and instead of stepping away from the bed, I stand there as she looks up at me defiantly, crossing her arms.

  “Now what are you not going to do again?” I ask, my tone condescendingly chiding as I look down at her with a smile, and she frowns, refusing to speak. “I want to hear you promise me,” I say in a lower tone, leaning down at taking her chin in my thumb and forefinger to look at her with a piercing gaze. She blushes, holding back for a few moments more, and I narrow my eyes.

  “Let me make something clear, doll,” I say, putting my knee on the other side of her, leaning into her and forcing her to lean back, her face reddening even more as I take one of her hands at the wrist and press it into the pillow behind her as she lays back on it, my body nearly horizontal over her. “I’ve been kind to you tonight in bringing you back, but I don’t want you to make the mistake of thinking you’re anything more than a case of money to me. You aren’t with your daddy anymore,” I growl into her ear, and I can practically hear her heart racing. “You are my prisoner. And I will get what I want from you. You have more spirit than most, I’ll give you that, but if you don’t behave, I’ll be all the more tempted to keep you here for myself, you pretty little brat.” I raise my head, looking down at her wide, petrified eyes.

  “I promise,” she breathes, her body trembling with both fear and need under my looming, rock-hard form. “I promise, Darios, I won’t try to escape again.”

  “That’s a good girl,” I say, rising up again and lingering a moment before standing and bringing the bedsheets over her body, tucking her in. I turn and head for the door, my face stony as I stride away from her, feeling her eyes on my back. “Sweet dreams, Delaney.”

  I open the door, and my guard jumps back, a surprised look on his face. He must have been listening I give him a hard look as I shut the door behind me, then lock it. I start to head down the hall, but I cast a glance over my shoulder after about twenty paces.

  The guard is looking at the door with a hungry look in his eyes. A moment later, he looks up and meets my gaze, blanches, then walks in the opposite direction, disappearing behind a corner. I frown.

  I’ll need to watch that one carefully. He gives me a bad feeling.

  8

  Delaney

  I sit on the edge of my bed, staring at the stained, aged walls and trying not to think about the fact that my escape was so poorly executed. I am not accustomed to failure, and I’m finding it to be an excessively uncomfortable feeling. Especially once Darios showed me just how close I had been to potential safety, the Mediterranean coastline just beyond my grasp. I feel like such a fool, thinking I could simply throw myself out a window into the dark, wild night with no sense of direction or further plan and actually survive. I am a very smart girl, I know that without a doubt, but I’ve always been more apt to plan everything down to each detail rather than to just dive in spontaneously. I don’t like winging it. That’s never been my forte.

  But desperate times do call for desperate measures, I remind myself calmly. And it didn’t go as badly as it could have gone. I wasn’t eaten by a wolf. I didn’t fall into a sinkhole and break my legs. And Darios, upon catching up to me as he inevitably would, did not kill me for my transgression.

  I bite my lip and look down at my empty palm, remembering the sensation of Darios’s hand taking mine, his fingers completely encapsulating my much smaller, daintier hand. A shiver runs involuntarily through my body and I sigh, rolling my eyes to the heavens at my own physical response. Am I really so lonely and desperate that I am
beginning to have fond feelings for the very man who has made my life hell? A jolt of discomfort racks my brain; am I experiencing Stockholm Syndrome?

  “No, come on. You’re better than this. Get yourself together,” I murmur softly to myself, shutting my eyes tightly. “Delaney Underwood does not get the softy-feelies for her captor. Get a grip.”

  But the feeling remains, like a tiny voice whispering in the back of my head, prodding me to explore the question further: how do I really feel about Darios?

  “Nope,” I mumble firmly, getting to my feet and pacing back and forth across the little room. I shouldn’t be thinking about this at all. I should be busy trying to figure out my next move. I should be concocting a new plan, a new strategy for saving my own ass. And I should be doing everything I can to rescue my friends. Megan may have been lucky enough to go home with her family, but to my knowledge, Lyssa and Caitlin are still being held against their will, too. Just like me.

  I gulp. Or worse.

  For all I know, they could have it even worse than I do. In fact, I have not seen or heard anything about either of them since we first got shoved into separate cells. I don’t know if they’re alive or dead. My stomach churns and bile rises in my throat at the thought of two of my best friends being hurt or threatened by these wolfish predators. I have to swallow hard and fan myself a little bit to tame the nausea in my gut, my heart pounding in my chest.

  I have done my best not to think about the worst possible scenarios so far, because dwelling on the negatives has never really done much to help in the past. I find that I focus best when I can make myself a little detached from a situation. I have to remove my emotions entirely and just thinking as logically as possible. But this time, I can feel the tsunami waves of emotion starting to build height and power in my heart, and I don’t know if I can stave off my feelings.