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

by Alexis Abbott

  As she steps forward to let me show her some of the finer details of the handiwork, a bird on the windowsill chirps, the sound of it and the gentle rustle of the forest just outside reminding us that at last, we can live together in peace, that we can make our own future in any way we want.

  Together.

  Glossary

  Georgian

  genatsvale : untranslatable term of endearment, something like “you before me”

  Dila mshvidobisa : Good morning/afternoon (greeting)

  chemo kargo : my good one (term of endearment)

  sykhaara : my light (term of endearment)

  dampalo dzaghlo : rotten dog (expletive)

  chemo okro : my gold (term of endearment)

  bavshvi : baby (term of endearment)

  Mshvidad iqavi : Be quiet

  Nabozvaro : Bastard (insult)

  Ghmerto chemo : My god

  patara gogona : little girl

  Diakh : Yes

  ghmert’i : oh god

  Mosmena : Listen

  Spanish

  ¡Cuatro cervezas, por favor! : Four beers, please!

  Con un limón, también : With a lemon, also

  la ensalada con fresas y un té, por favor : The salad with strawberries and a tea, please.

  ¿tiene un encendedor? : got a lighter? (cigarette lighter)

  silencio : silence

  bueno : good, okay

  Señor, su masajista está aquí : Sir, your masseuse is here

  Sangre de Jesús! : blood of Jesus!

  Por favor, señor : please, sir

  Hola, señorita. Haces aquí : Hello, miss. What are you doing here?

  No te importa : It’s none of your business/It doesn’t matter to you (colloquial)

  Cuida tus modales : Mind your manners

  Tu novio : Your boyfriend

  Taken by the Hitman

  Description

  Out of the darkest evil will come the strongest love.

  The Bratva is changing, but whenever there's change, there's resistance. I have to prove I’m one of them or else I’m dead.

  I wasn’t prepared for what they wanted. They gave me a young and beautiful woman, to defile and break.

  With a gun to my head, it's not like I have a choice.

  I've never met a woman like her. Damaged, just like me, but with a clever mind that she knows is a dangerous weapon, and curves for days. Every second I spend with her, it becomes less about business, less about the darkness I'm trying to leave behind, and more her. About us, against the world.

  We're going to rise above the shadows the Bratva have cast on us.

  They made a dangerous mistake. They bound her to me in a way that those monsters could never comprehend. She has a part of my soul now, and I have a part of hers. Soulmates, in a way.

  I'm a bad man, but I'm going to do right by her. I'm going to prove to her that even in the darkness, there's always something worth fighting for.

  I’ll kill them all for her. When it’s all over, and she doesn’t need me for revenge anymore, we won't be able to walk away from our love. She’s been taken by the hitman, and I won’t let her go.

  1

  Konstantin

  Snow as pristine as the first day of winter falls softly from the cloudy skies, never knowing how cruelly it mocks those of us slowly freezing to death in the prison yard of Krasnoyarsk.

  Guards patrol the high stone walls lined with barbed wire, and all we can see on the far, forested hills over the tops of those oppressive borders is the occasional light or plume of smoke from a house. Some of my fellow inmates make a pastime of making up stories about their residents. I’ve joined them, once or twice. We suppose the little red house to the northeast houses a lovely young woman who has to tend to the few farm animals she has left after her father fell too ill to work. We suppose the white house to the northeast has a young woodsman in it who will one day come lend a hand, but we’ve seen little traffic on those remote roads so far this winter.

  Today, though, I don’t join them in supposing anything. My mind is too preoccupied with the very present reality of what I’ve been offered this morning, in a place where being offered anything is more scarce than daylight in this icy, derelict place.

  The guards exercise us in the yard. Lined up in formation, we are put through routine exercises that keep the blood flowing, all of us outfitted in heavy uniform jackets that do little to keep out the biting cold. To the seasoned veterans who might die behind these walls, this has become as routine as breathing. They go through every exercise without even needing the guards’ commands, and sometimes, I wonder whether they’ll keep doing them at the same times if they’re released into the free world once again. I wonder if this place will ever truly leave any of them.

  The newly enslaved inmates are harder to watch. Many of them are young men in prison for crimes of necessity — for thievery, for fighting back, for leading the criminal lives the law and poverty forced them into. Many of them still have the spark of life burning in their eyes. The same spark that I feel fading from mine with every passing day. They shiver as they fumble through their exercises, glancing from side to side and wondering if this nightmare is as real as it feels.

  I call them ‘enslaved,’ for that is what it means to be in prison. We eat on command, we sleep on command, we piss on command, and we toil for no wages on command. The state finds in us a source of legal slavery in an institution that is worldwide. And if there is one passion that has not faded but grown stronger in these months in prison, it is my hatred for slavery.

  Our exercises conclude and we’re given a few minutes of imaginary freedom to wander the yard and talk. Though I must admit, such a regulated life looks a lot like my life in the Spetznaz — the Russian elite Special Forces — did. And if I agree to carry out what I’ve been tasked with, my life here will end every bit as bloodily as my life in the military did.

  I move over to a planter and have a seat nearby a group of older men who are playing cards, blending in with the three other burly men watching the game. Nobody says anything, and I suspect the old men didn’t say anything to each other when they got the game started. They didn’t need to.

  My eyes want to drift to a certain person on the opposite end of the yard, but I force them to fall in line and obey my self-control. I cannot be seen observing him, watching his every move as I wrestle with whether I will carry out what has been asked of me.

  I ask myself whether I will kill my target.

  The Bratva presence in prison is strong. The eight-pointed star that marks their members is visible on their chests, backs, and arms in the shower, and other prisoners are quick to point them out to new inmates who get funny ideas about starting fights. I was never one to engage in such petty things. When I arrived in prison, I had every intention of living out a quiet sentence in my cell, burning through books that I’d often heard of but never thought to read. That would be the only distraction from the burning thorn of slavery in my side, a thorn I knew I’d never again be able to extract from others as long as I was in shackles. But it seems that upon my arrival, word spread quickly about the nature of my crime. I wondered who among the guards spilled the story of what had me removed from the Spetznaz, since I’d hardly spoken to anyone behind these bars, but I suspected it could be any one of them. Some of them must be truly curious as to why I was spared execution for treason.

  Whatever the case, my plans for a quiet life were dashed to the ground this morning. I’d been visited by a man I didn’t recognize, yet he’d introduced himself as a loving uncle. He gave me his warmest regards, wished me the best for my sentence, and given me a thick book that the guards suspiciously did not check when I brought it back to my cell.

  Inside the hollowed-out book was a note bearing a name and an eight-pointed red star, and it was wrapped around a shank.

  The message was clear. This man was to die, and I would gain the favor of the Bratva. But I did not act immediately. I may be a slave, but I
am no dog to bite on his faceless master’s orders. So I did some probing around about this Iosif Ivanovic that I was asked to kill, partly because I knew him to be one of the men bearing a red star on his chest.

  Eavesdropping on the whispering of other made men of the Bratva accomplished what I needed.

  “Did you drop the payload in the-”

  “Quiet. Ivanovic has rats in the walls.”

  I kept an eye on him during breakfast and lunch to confirm what this suggested. Indeed, around the man, there always seemed to be a guard within earshot. When he got up and passed through the sea of other inmates, running a hand through his greasy gray hair and snorting, a guard chose this time to make his rounds in that section. When we were marched into the exercise grounds, he had a guard beside him when he passed by prisoners from other cell blocks.

  He was protected. Protected against someone like me. He was a rat.

  Contempt could have easily grown in my heart for him. Those who chose to stick their heads up the asses of our oppressive masters were just as bad as the masters themselves, if not worse. It is no wonder he is disliked, either. He’s been in this place for a relatively short sentence, but he has luxuries that none of the older inmates have, and he lords it over them. He’s started to gain a following, a few other younger inmates clinging to him for safety, the one glimmer of warmth in this cold place. To that end, I feel almost bad at the thought of slaying him, but I know that their simpering is a short-term solution to their pain. They’ve turned their backs on solidarity.

  They’ve turned their backs on the Bratva.

  Iosif and his small entourage sit on the far end of the yard, and even now, there are two or three of the newer inmates sitting around him as he speaks to them like a teacher explaining things. Now I see why the Bratva wants him dead sooner rather than later, and perhaps why they’re interested in someone like me doing the deed. If he’s allowed to go on much longer, he’ll have a small army of spies doing his bidding in the prison, and by extension, the bidding of the guards. I only afford myself one glance at him to size up the men around him before I look back to the card game in front of me. Men like Iosif are paranoid beyond reason.

  A bell rings, and the barks of the guards indicate that we’re to head back inside. Within seconds, we all fall into line, and the guards to a quick headcount of us all. As everyone is accounted for, I notice one of the guards moving Iosif aside, to his confusion. I can’t help but glance over to him, but I grimace faintly as I realize he’s being moved with the high-security prisoners, those who’ve done deadly crimes and require special attention.

  I had planned to follow him back to his bunk and do the deed there, but I know now that’s not an option. Someone must have tipped the guards off. All the more reason to make this job quick and quiet.

  I don’t know what it is that’s made me suddenly so willing to carry this deed out. Maybe it’s the drive to protect my fellow slaves from those who would prey upon them from within and without. My thoughts flit back to my childhood on the streets of Moscow, and I see in these other men the faces of the boys I grew up with. Us against the world. Slaves to circumstance.

  Or maybe I was just born to be a killer. A hitman.

  I march with the rest of the men back to my bed, one of many lined up in a long, wide, open room. There is no privacy here. As I sit down on my bed and the guards patrol past, I feel the book that I’ve hidden within my mattress. It feels particularly hard beneath me, a burning presence, reminding me of what is to come. I cannot take it out now. Not when so many people are still looking about them, many of them fresh and wide-eyed.

  Across the room, Iosif’s bed is getting assigned to one of the new inmates. I frown, my suspicions confirmed. He’s being moved to a place with higher security. It’s a risk on their part; arousing suspicion about Iosif, even to protect him, jeopardizes his position as an informant. And of course, being out of the general public means that he has less influence. I imagine he’ll be moved back within a few weeks.

  I don’t want to wait a few weeks.

  One thing clues me into where he is, though. I notice two of the men I know to be loyal to him whispering to each other, and after a few moments, they get up and head out of the room, in the direction of the bathrooms.

  Iosif never uses the bathroom alone. It’s one of the few places where he’s lightly guarded, so he keeps his own men around him. He’ll probably be meeting with them there before getting moved. My window of opportunity just shrank.

  Glancing about, I take out my book, shoving it under the covers and transferring the shank to my pants before taking it out and pretending to find my place in it again. After a few moments, once I’m sure nobody's looking, I replace the empty book under my mattress. I need a distraction. In a room full of testosterone-fueled men, this isn’t a difficult task.

  The man on the bunk next to mine is glaring across the room at another man. I’d seen them blowing up at each other briefly in the yard yesterday before the guards intervened. They were former accomplices of some kind. As I get up to go use the bathroom, I whisper something in his ear about what the other man said about him during exercise today, and that’s all it takes to have him getting up and crossing the room. By the time I’m out into the hall, the sounds of a fight are already breaking out, and the guard who had been about to follow me gets distracted, rushing into the bunk room to break up the two men.

  I have to move quickly. I pass the stone walls of the facility until the restroom comes into view. Everyone knows it’s Iosif’s bathroom, and there’s a guard posted at the front, as always. Sometimes it’s a surprise he even needs protection, with all the attention offered him by the guards.

  What happens next, I know will cost me dearly. But life in a hopeless cell will push a man to drastic limits. The guard gives me a meaningful glance as I start to walk by. My hands are too quick, though, when I turn and deliver a hard, precise strike to the side of his head, and he crumples to the ground, cold.

  There are cameras in the facility. No matter what happens next, I’m going to spend the rest of my time here in maximum security after this, if the guards don’t kill me. With purpose, I stride into the bathroom.

  I hear a conversation taking place within, and the sound of my footsteps gives them pause. They aren’t used to being interrupted. I turn a corner, and the two men who’d left the bunk room are lounging by the sinks, and there’s one closed stall in the bathroom.

  “What fucking guard let you in? You’re in the wrong bathroo-” one starts to say before my fist connects with his head. The element of surprise gone, his friend shouts for a guard and lunges for me. I sidestep him easily, bringing my knee up to his gut and pounding my elbow into his spine as he goes down with a shout. To my surprise he gets up again, scrambling for my legs, but I catch him by the collar and lift him with one arm, slamming him into the sink. Teeth clatter to the ground as he slumps, unconscious, and I step calmly to the closed stall door.

  With one solid kick, I force the door open, and it swings aside, revealing my target, sitting on the toilet with his pants around his ankles, his beady eyes focused on me. He knows when he’s been gotten.

  “I was wondering when they’d send someone after me,” he says, his voice a smoker’s rasp. “But to send you, of all people? An insult.”

  I step forward, my face stony. His scraggly-bearded face is twisted into a sneer as he watches me approach, and I draw the shank out of my pants.

  “You judge me, I see it in your eyes,” he says with a mirthless laugh. “But how can you? We’re both traitors, you and I. Do you not see the irony in their actions, sending a traitor after a traitor? You’re disposable to them. They will turn on you. And one day, you’ll find some young buck catching you with your pants down.”

  Without a word, I reach down to his prison uniform, tearing the shirt apart and exposing that red star on his chest, and I drive my shank deep into it, straight to his twisted heart as he grips my hands in vain.

  His
grip starts to slacken, the grimace on his face fading as blood starts to pour from his chest, and I feel the boot of a guard kicking into the back of my leg, and the nightstick blows start to rain down on me.

  I don’t know how much time passes while I’m unconscious. When I start to awaken in the hospital wing, the slow drip of anesthetic soothing my nerves, I see one of the nurses leaning over my chest, poking something in. I fight to stay awake, raising my hand a little through the sedatives. Maybe Iosif was right. Maybe I’d done my part, and they’d sent someone in to finish me off.

  But as the man leaning over me brushes my hand away, he stands up, and I look down to see the fresh marks of the red, eight-pointed star he is tattooing over my heart.

  2

  Rosie

  “Wake up, Rosie, wake up!” squeaks the high-pitched voice from one side of my rickety little futon in the living room. I’m already awake, and have been for probably hours, just lying here protesting the early morning hours, hoping in vain that I might fall back asleep. I should know better by now. My body knows when to get up, like clockwork. As soon as the girls open their eyes in the morning, it’s like a magical internal alarm clock starts chirping in my head. It comes from years and years of being the one who awoke with their cries in the middle of the night to soothe them and rock them back to silent contentment.

  I’ve been a mother to these girls, my little sisters, for their entire lives — a long, exhausting eight years so far. The twins have me wrapped around their little fingers, and they hang on my every word and look. After all, eight years of adversity will do that to you, bring people together in a way good times never really can. We’ve always been here for each other, because nobody else will have our backs if we don’t.