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

by Alexis Abbott

  Almost immediately, my head starts to feel fuzzy and the edges of my vision turn dark. My stomach lurches with nausea and distantly I can hear myself murmuring, “K-Konstantin,” just before my legs give out and I collapse into darkness.

  When I awaken, my head is still swimming, but now I’m lying on our bed instead of at the bottom of the shower. Konstantin is perched on the edge of the bed beside me, looking downright petrified with worry. I’m wrapped in a gigantic terry-cloth robe clearly meant for the Bull, and he’s dabbing my forehead with a cool, damp washcloth.

  “Rosalie?” he says softly, his voice piercing through the fog in my brain.

  “Wh-what happened?” I whisper, my voice sounding thin and weak.

  “You fainted, moya lyubova,” he replies, stroking my cheek gently. My vision is starting to clear slightly now, and I can see that Konstantin has a towel wrapped around his waist, a sheen of sweat across his brow. He looks to have been suffering greatly while I was out.

  “I don’t feel so good,” I manage to croak, trying and failing to sit up in bed. My head starts to spin and my stomach churns immediately. Konstantin delicately eases me back against the pillows again. He looks at me intently, and I can almost see the thoughts racing in his mind.

  “Three days ago you said you felt ill, too,” he says, thinking aloud.

  I nod slightly, trying not to move too much.

  “At first I thought maybe I was being too forceful with you,” he reasons, and I can see the pain flicker across his face. I know the last thing he wants to do is hurt me.

  “No, you’re perfect,” I assure him weakly. “There’s got to be something else going on.”

  Suddenly, a flash of realization lights up his eyes and his jaw twitches. These are only subtle motions, but I know him well enough by now to spot his tell signs.

  “Oh bozhe,” he breathes, lifting one reverent hand to push the hair back from my face. “Rosie, moya ptichka, you might be pregnant.”

  The nausea in my stomach spikes and I groan, the real reason for my new physical weakness totally understood now. It makes sense. Of course I’m pregnant.

  “But we… we have to be sure,” I murmur. Konstantin nods and stands up.

  “I will get you a test. And some ginger ale for your stomach,” he says dutifully. “Will you be alright while I’m gone?”

  “Mmm, sure,” I reply, trying to keep my voice even. “I’ll be fine. But… hurry back.”

  He disappears, leaving me alone with my thoughts for the next twenty minutes. What if he’s right? What if I am pregnant? I don’t have time for another baby — I am already taking care of Daisy and Sunny. I get another wave of dizziness at the thought of what will become of them once a new baby is in the mix. I can’t do this. I can’t build this new fairy tale life with Konstantin here, not while my little sisters struggle to even survive. It isn’t fair to them.

  What the hell am I going to do?

  I’m still horribly conflicted when Konstantin returns. He unwraps the pregnancy test and helps me cautiously cross the room to the bathroom. A few minutes later, I stand with the little stick in my hand, staring in shock at the tiny plus sign.

  It’s true.

  I’m pregnant.

  I expected to feel anguish, total devastation and regret. But instead, it’s like every terrible fear I had is now eclipsed by the overwhelming love I feel for the tiny life growing inside of me. I know, without a shred of doubt, that this is what I want. We will figure out the details somehow — saving my sisters, ending the slavers — everything.

  When I tell Konstantin, his first reaction is to grin and throw his arms around me, pulling me close and kissing the top of my head. “I know you did not expect this, and neither did I. But Rosie, I am so happy. I never thought I could want something this much. But I do. I want to build a life with you, a family.”

  “Me, too,” I mumble into his hard chest, soaking in his stability and warmth. He is my rock, my prince. The man who saved me from darkness and breathed new life into my lungs.

  “I love you,” he says, and I know he means it.

  “I love you, too,” I reply, feeling giddy with joy.

  “But this… changes things,” Konstantin continues, stroking my hair. “We need to expedite our plan, lyubova. I will make it happen. Do not worry about a thing.”

  17

  Konstantin

  I’m crouching behind a large billboard off the interstate, far north of the city. This place is out of my jurisdiction as pakhan. But then again, so is everything I’m ordering to be done today. This is the day I’ve been waiting for since my second day in New York, and it came so much sooner than I’d hoped.

  “Begin,” says the text message on my phone, and the moment I press a button to send it out, I know I’ve sealed the fates of nearly a dozen men. I have signed their death warrants.

  The money Andrei and I acquired from our assassination and heist at the hotel a few weeks ago was not merely a vanity project to line our pockets. He and I both have deep purses, but to carry out what I’ve just ordered costs more than what a limitless credit card can buy.

  While I’ve been training my lover, rebuilding the Bratva, and carrying out jobs in the area, Andrei and I have been assembling a list. We’ve dispensed of the formalities of keeping this business of rooting out the sex slavery trade within the Bratva, as we’ve long since realized that this corruption spreads farther than we’d ever imagined. My assassination of the politician on his own fishing boat made waves, but now, I mean to send a message louder and clearer than ever before, one that will silence the slave trade in Brighton Beach permanently.

  Between our combined efforts, Andrei and I have a list of every major player left in the city who keeps the shamble of a sex trade alive. Some are Bratva. Some of them are politicians. Some are on the police force. And all of them must die. Every last dollar made from our heist at the hotel has gone towards carrying out the largest synchronized series of hits this city has seen in a very long time: everyone on our list is about to die within two minutes of each other.

  That’s why I took it upon myself to handle the most time-sensitive hit.

  Coming over a hill on the interstate, I see the small motorcade that contains my target: Don Emilio Guarnieri, head of one of the largest Italian mafia families in New York. I went through my old politician target’s files after his untimely death, and this is where the paper trail led me. The New York Guarnieris have been tangentially profiting from the Russian slave trade for years, and since most of the Russians have gone underground, Don Emilio’s profits have skyrocketed. What’s more, if there’s anyone who knows the root of the Russian connection, it’s him and his capos. And they’re all headed upstate for a weekend out.

  I shoulder the rifle in my hand, looking through the scope and follow the cars carefully. It’s overcast, with no chance of a glint off my scope’s lenses. I couldn’t ask for a better shot.

  There are two cars accompanying Don Emilio’s, one in front, one in back. A car full of men, I can deal with. The chance of my target escaping today, though, that’s not something I’m willing to risk. So I level the crosshairs on the gas tank of the Don’s sedan and take a slow, deep breath.

  The sound of the shot is muffled by the blast of fire that envelops all three cars just after I pull the trigger.

  The car in the back takes the brunt of the explosion, getting knocked upside down and rolling down into the ditch, its engine burning as the metal crumples around the unfortunate men inside. If any of them survived the first impact, the fire that engulfs the whole car a moment later finished the job.

  Don Emilio’s car was also thrown upside-down, and its burning remains now sit on the highway, and I can see the terrified driver scrambling to get out, but the smoke obscures the Don.

  The car in front was blasted forward, but it’s still rolling, and it skids to a halt as I set down the rifle and start sprinting for the wreckage. I could waste shots trying to take all of them from the
billboard on the ground, but as the smoke billows, it becomes clear that taking them on at close range would be more efficient.

  I close the distance in a matter of moments, but I hear shouting in Italian, and gunshots are already ricocheting off the burning metal around me as I draw my pistol. I crouch behind the Don’s car, and I hear the sound of footsteps coming around the corner to my left. I sweep the man off his feet with my leg, sending him tumbling to the ground before I take a quick shot to his head, ending him.

  That gives away my position, so I dart in the opposite direction around the car, and a breeze tells me the smoke cover is about to dissipate temporarily. Bracing myself, I rise from my position and start firing, and the remaining guards duck and seek cover, but they find none as I pick the rest of them off one by one.

  Suddenly, I feel a sharp pain in my leg as a man I hadn’t seen following me kicks the back of my leg, sending me to my knee, hard. A hand with a knife in it comes around to cut my throat, but I grab his wrist, shifting back to hurl him over my shoulder and slam him to the ground in front of me. In an instant, I’ve wrenched the knife from his hand and driven it into his head from above.

  As soon as the action started, it’s over, and I hear coughing from Don Emilio’s car. Slowly, I rise up, holding my pistol out and approaching the vehicle.

  “Out of the car,” I bark in Italian, “it’s over, Don Emilio.”

  Sputtering, the aged man tears out of his seatbelt and crawls out of the overturned car. He starts to fumble for a pistol in his coat, but I kick it out of his hands, and he slumps against the charred metal of the car, a stream of blood running out of the corner of his mouth as he glares up at me, my pistol still trained on him.

  “You,” he manages, his breathing ragged. He and I both know he’s burning through his last moments on this earth as he coughs up blood, despite his efforts to look dignified in this burning pile of trash. “I knew we never should have done business with the fucking potato farmers, no matter how sweet the Soviet cunts can be.”

  I fire my gun at the metal he leans on, and he recoils, terrified.

  “Perhaps you didn’t get the word about the change in management, Don Emilio,” I growl, stepping closer to him. “The flesh trade is over. I’m shutting it down. You aren’t the only target today.” I start listing the names of those men who are dying even as I speak, but he waves indifferently, staring up at the cloudy sky.

  “Dead men anyway. Diego, my right-hand man, he told me how he suspected you Russians’ involvement in these assassinations around town. He said we should back out of the slave trade. He might have taken matters into his own hands if I’d continued to ignore him. Damn him, he was right.”

  “Women’s lives are nothing more than money to you,” I say, narrowing my eyes at him.

  “Money and a good time,” he tries to laugh, but he ends up coughing. “You won’t get a repentance out of me in my last moments, you fucking snowbird. The Bull, they call you. Ha! You’re getting goaded around by red capes, snorting and pawing the dirt.”

  “Speak clearly, kozyol! Anton! Where is he? He’s the reason you’re dying today, you owe him nothing.”

  The Don laughs, knowing he has something, anything over me, and I have to resist the impulse to put him down right this instant. “Right under your nose, idiot. But now? I think he’ll be looking for greener pastures. Keep an eye on those who try to flee your ring, Bull. A fleeing coward is a deadly thing indeed. Maybe he’ll give you one for me.” He grins, his teeth stained with blood, and I raise my pistol to his head and put him out of his misery.

  I stride away from the burning wreckage, heading back to my sniping spot to gather my gear and disappear into the woods before the emergency servicemen arrive to clean up the mess. As I do, my phone lights up, and I put it to my ear.

  “It’s done,” comes Andrei’s voice, “the assassins have reported in. I assume you’ve succeeded?”

  “Yes, comrade,” I say, casting a rueful glance back to the street as I start marching into the wilderness, “but we can’t rest easy yet. We have one more target to strike at, and it has to happen soon. Anton is still in Brighton Beach.”

  18

  Rosie

  “And if it’s at all possible, remember the E-N-G guideline. What’s that again, ladies?” I ask, standing at the front of the room with my hands on my hips.

  A chorus of six young women dressed in comfortable athletic wear, all rescued from the Bratva slavers, call out, “Eyes, nose, groin!” With each word, they simulate jabbing an imaginary foe in the eyes, punching him in the nose, and kneeing him in the crotch. I have to smile, I’m so proud of them. It’s so fulfilling to be able to teach other women how to defend themselves, just like Konstantin taught me.

  “Awesome job, everyone!” I declare, clapping my hands together. “Great work today! I’ll be back on Thursday for our next session. If anyone has any questions, concerns, or if you just need someone to talk to, please don’t hesitate to come to me, okay? I am here for you, every one of you.”

  The women all nod and murmur variations of thank you and see you next time. This is an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of Jersey we’ve been using to meet up for therapy sessions, self-defense lessons, and just to congregate and get a sense of togetherness. I want more than anything for these women to know they’re not alone, that there is strength in numbers, and even more strength in knowing your own worth. I am fully aware that my brush with the Bratva was nothing in comparison to what most of these girls have gone through.

  One of them, a freckle-faced redhead named Valerie, was kidnapped from a shopping mall and sold to a horrible man who treated her terribly, keeping her as a maid and sex object. She was forced to clean his house and service him sexually for six months before Andrei and Konstantin found the man and eliminated him. Valerie is the most recent member of our group, and she’s still understandably skittish. After what she’s had to go through, I can’t blame her for being paranoid and timid. She hardly ever speaks during our meet-ups, but I continue to encourage her to show up, because even if she doesn’t really participate, at least our regular meetings lend some much-needed stability to her life.

  I turn away to start packing up my belongings, getting out my cell phone to text Konstantin and let him know we are all about to head out. Just last month, he surprised me out of the blue with a brand new silver Fiat, stating that I need my own vehicle. He knows I don’t really like to rely on him for everything, and he respects my independence. I like being able to drive around and enjoy my freedom. Especially now that I know how to take care of myself better than ever before. I’m stronger now, and I can look out for myself and my baby. And after all, it’s still early enough in my pregnancy for me to safely teach these classes, at only four months. I’m physically feeling much better now that my nausea and dizziness are mostly under control, and I’m even starting to get that typical baby glow.

  “Rosalie?” pipes up a meek voice from behind me. I turn around, surprised to see that Valerie is standing there fidgeting, her fiery amber hair hanging limply around her face. The poor girl has suffered immensely, still trying to regain the weight she lost during her six months of torture. She’s only seventeen years old, and even though she’s gone back home to live with her attentive parents, I think sometimes she still feels disconnected from her family. They will never really understand what happened to her or how to deal with it. Her trauma is unique to her own experience, and from what I have seen, a lot of families just don’t know how to even approach such a terrifying event.

  “Valerie, what is it?” I reply, careful not to step too close. She still has huge issues with personal space and boundaries, and she shrinks away from even the slightest, most innocent touch. It’s heartbreaking to see, but I like to think that she will get better with time and therapy. She’s already a little more alive than she was when she first came to us.

  “I-I just want someone to talk to, if that’s okay,” she murmurs, tucking her hair back behi
nd her ear and blinking her big brown eyes sadly. She hardly looks her age; with her waifish frame and submissive stance, she looks more like a child. A lost child.

  “Of course,” I assure her, nodding. “Do you want to go somewhere more private to talk? Are you hungry? I can buy you lunch.”

  The faintest hint of a smile graces her face for a split second. “Y-Yes, that sounds good.”

  “Come on. You can tell me what’s going on while we walk, okay?” I tell her.

  I gesture for her to follow me, forcing myself not to try and embrace her, even though my nurturing instincts are dying to embrace her and comfort her like I would soothe a small child. But she is no ordinary girl, and the usual comforts won’t help her. Valerie falls into step beside me as we walk out and get in my car to drive to a little roadside diner a couple miles down the road. I turn off the radio and glance across the console at her, waiting for her to begin.

  Finally, she mumbles, “I’m s-scared that my family d-doesn’t love me anymore.”

  My heart aches for her. I know how much it hurts to feel abandoned and out of place in your own household — years of neglect and outright violence from my father truly scarred me.

  “Oh, sweetheart. Come on, you know that’s not true,” I try to reassure her.

  “They treat me like some impostor or something. Like they want the real Valerie back, the old Valerie who wasn’t afraid of things. But I don’t know if I will ever be able to be her again. Not after what that monster did to me,” she explains, her voice trembling.

  “It just takes time,” I say, but I know she doesn’t believe me yet. It’s too soon, too early in her recovery for her to be able to trust me or anyone else yet.

  “I just don’t understand how six months could change my whole life so much. I don’t even feel like myself anymore, like the world is too big for me now. I try to sleep in my old bed at home but everything feels like it’s the wrong size, wrong color. Sometimes I wonder if I even really exist or if I’m just imagining everything. Maybe this is all a dream and I’m going to wake up back in that cellar he made me sleep in.”