Hostage of the Hitman
Alexis Abbott
Alex Abbott
Contents
Prologue
1. Delaney
2. Delaney
3. Darios
4. Delaney
5. Darios
6. Delaney
7. Darios
8. Delaney
9. Darios
10. Delaney
11. Darios
12. Delaney
13. Darios
14. Darios
15. Delaney
16. Delaney
17. Darios
18. Delaney
19. Darios
20. Delaney
21. Darios
22. Delaney
Epilogue
Glossary
Also by Alexis Abbott
About the Author
Romance Novels to your Email
© 2016 Pathforgers Publishing.
All Rights Reserved. If you downloaded an illegal copy of this book and enjoyed it, please buy a legal copy. Either way you get to keep the eBook forever, but you’ll be encouraging me to continue writing and producing high quality fiction for you. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imaginations. Any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, are entirely coincidental.
Cover Design by Wicked Good Covers. All cover art makes use of stock photography and all persons depicted are models.
This book is intended for sale to Adult Audiences only. All sexually active characters in this work are over 18. All sexual activity is between non-blood related, consenting adults. This is a work of fiction, and as such, does not encourage illegal or immoral activities that happen within.
More information is available at Pathforgers Publishing.
Content warnings: kidnapping, Stockholm Syndrome, mafia violence, BDSM
Wordcount: 65,000 Words
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Prologue
I’ve had the wounded bird with me for some time, but it’s been clear for a while she’s ready to fly once more. She’s grown accustomed to my hold, after all my time tending her. She doesn’t struggle, doesn’t try to fly away. Her shiny red breast gleams in the light through the train window.
I open up the sliding window, and feel the air get sucked out. The little bird hops about the table before me, chirping excitedly. She’s unsure of what to do, even looks back at me. And I can’t help but smile. Poor creature; once upon a time she tried to fight my care. But she’d be dead without it. Now it’s hard for both of us to accept it as the scenery of southern France flies by. I give her a gentle nudge and she zips away, vanishing into the picturesque countryside. She’ll be fine, but I’ll miss the noisy girl.
She wouldn’t have wanted to see what I need to do next.
The Mediterranean coast spans the other side of the cabin’s view. We’ll be reaching the Spanish border before much longer, and that means it’s time to act.
Watching the view of the water outside disappear behind lush forest, I slowly fold up my napkin from the light breakfast I’ve been eating as I hear the footsteps of an attendant coming up behind me. I exchange looks with the two other men — my subordinates — seated at the table with me, and they give me nods that are so slight as to be almost imperceptible. None of us need to exchange any more words. Both of them know what to do. And they know the price of failure.
The attendant approaches us and starts to collect the remains of our food. “I hope you gentlemen enjoyed everything?” she asks, a kind intonation to her voice. I smile up at her as I catch her eye. She’s a young Swiss woman, we’d found out the night before when my men and I made our introductions, working here to save up to move to the very city we’re headed: Barcelona. And she spoke to us in her native French. We’d made quite a charming impression on her — I’d made sure of that. But I feel she deserves a bit of a break from the more unruly, ritzy tourists she no doubt has to cater to on a luxury train like this.
“We couldn’t have asked for better,” I say, flashing a smile at her as I hand her my empty cup, “but the service is even better. Did you do something with your hair overnight?”
“Never hurts to look sharp,” she says with a smile, her cheeks tinging with a little color as she gave her hair a subtle toss, pleased we’d noticed. “Never know who you’ll run into, in this business.”
“Mademoiselle, you’re far too good for a gig like this,” I say in a low, jokingly conspiratorial voice. “If I were you, I’d get off in Barcelona and stay there. The city’s bustling with modeling agencies who’d die to get their hands on the likes of you.” I am pleased to find that my French seems to be good enough that my light Georgian accent doesn’t slip through too strongly. Just strongly enough to have the effect I want.
She rolls her eyes, pretending to brush off the compliment despite her smiling lips. “Sure, sure. Can I get you gentlemen anything else?”
“Actually,” I say, pulling out my bag from under the table and reaching in, drawing out a bottle of champagne, “I was wondering if I could ask a small favor of you.”
She tsks, but an eyebrow rises at the sight of the bottle. “You know you’re not the only men on the train, I hope,” she teases.
“Maybe,” I say, flashing her a smile, “but if you’d be so kind as to help us bring this little surprise of ours to some friends of ours two cars ahead, we might be the only men willing to share some of it with you,” I say with a wink, my dark eyes holding hers for a few moments as she bites her lip and looks around to make sure no managers are around.
“Well…” she hesitates, but my smile breaks her. “I suppose I can spare a few minutes.”
“You can blame me if your manager misses you,” I add as we rise to our feet, and I run a hand through my hair as the attendant leads us out the dining car and up to the private cars that have been rented out.
Such cars are usually reserved for the richest and wealthiest men and women, often tourists who are traveling Europe. Pampered types who’ve never known hardship in all their days, British and Americans who view the continent as their own amusement park to ride around in. The smile I wear on my face as we approach our destination is genuine. Those are precisely the types of people I’m looking forward to seeing.
“This is a private car,” the attendant says, giving us a hesitant look as she reaches the door, “you’re quite certain this is where your friends are seated? I...could be in a lot of trouble if I disturb the wrong group.”
I reach into my pocket and pull out a hundred euro bill along with the bottle of champagne, handing both to her. “Very sure — and here’s a little something for your trouble. There’ll be more in it for you if you’d be so kind as to bring it in ahead of us, they don’t know we’re on the train with them. Tell them that Darios sends his best wishes.”
She looks nervous, obviously not used to this kind of thing, and I can’t blame her. I reach forward, lifting the poor girl’s chin up just a bit to smile at her and watch the color come to her cheeks. “You’ll do fine, mademoiselle. We’re right behind you.”
She gave an embarrassed half-laugh, running her hand through her hair before swallowing. “Of course, I’m sorry, I’m just a little flustered this morning.” She clears her throat, turning and unlocking the car door and stepping inside while I step back.
Over her shoulder, I catch a glimpse of the interior. It’s exactly as we expected — one large, spacious car lined with couches and a few tables, the lights low
and comfortable. Along some of the couches, I see young women in incredibly expensive outfits. Designer clothing that dominated the cutting edge of the Western fashion industry, imports from Paris and Milan that many of them had probably bought during their short stays in those cities. All of them are young and beautiful, the kind of beauty only wealth affords. They’re like porcelain dolls, spoiled and pampered.
And all of them are terrified.
Sure, most of the ones I can see from here do a decent job of pretending to be happy and placid as the attendant strides in nervously, but I can read the hidden emotions of other people like open books, and the thin veneer of a smile does little to hide the fear on each and every one of them.
That’s because all of those women are being kidnapped and held for ransom by the other men in the car that I can’t yet see.
It’s an operation I know well: find spoiled young ladies traveling across Europe, abduct them, and have their terrified parents pay ludicrous amounts in ransom money. The mafia is making a killing off of this, and the men inside this car are expecting to be very rich in a week or so. I almost feel bad for spoiling their good moods. “I’ll handle entry,” I whisper to my men behind me, “you two back me up once the smoke is cleared.”
“Excuse me, sirs and ladies,” says the attendant, defaulting to heavily accented English to speak to the passengers, her tone nervous, “but I have a gift from a, um, Darios?”
“...the fuck?” I hear a male voice grunt from the car, and without wasting another moment, I draw the pistol from my jacket and step inside, aiming it at the source of the voice and pulling the trigger.
The Georgian man seated on the couch hardly has time for his eyes to widen before his brains are blown onto the window behind him.
The attendant shrieks and drops the bottle of champagne, throwing her arms up around her head, and the room explodes into chaos.
There are three more men in the room guarding the girls, and their hands are already going to their concealed weapons. The man I just killed slumps in his seat as the two women who were seated behind him cry out in terror and cringe away. I grab the attendant around the waist and sling her aside to clear the path to shoot one of the other men standing up before he can aim at me, and I dive aside as the third man points and shoots. The bullets hit the wall of the car where one of the girls had been sitting just a moment ago.
The fourth man dives for me, and I sidestep him with ease, but he pulls a knife on me, and I’m forced to engage. His movements are quick and precise, but I get a hold of his wrist before he can land a strike, and I twist him around. I know the third gunman is trying to aim a shot at me, so I don’t stop moving, flowing around him like water and trying to keep my man blocking my line of sight.
Finally, I move out of my living cover long enough for the gunman to think he has a shot, but I twist the knife-fighter around by the wrist, and I hear a gunshot go off just as I pull him in front of me, and I hear him grunt as his own ally’s bullet hits his heart, and he slumps to the ground just as I level my gun at the shooter.
In a matter of seconds, three men have been killed, and most of the already terrified girls in the car are taking what cover they can under the tables, watching the fight with wide eyes. The attendant just laid down flat, covering her head with her hands among the broken glass.
And the man I see looking down the barrel of my gun makes me want to risk pulling the trigger right here and now.
“Darios Esadze,” he says, narrowing his eyes at me and smiling as I clench my jaw. “I was wondering whether I’d ever see you again, my old friend.”
“Luka,” I say back, evenly. “It has been a while. If I’d have seen you any other time after the war, you’d be a dead man, you fucking traitor.” Luka’s distinctive, curly red hair that spills down his shoulders could be spotted a mile away. It accents his cruel face fittingly. What felt like a lifetime ago, he fought by my side against the Russians in the fallout of the Ossetian uprising. “I’m surprised the Russians didn’t kill you after you sold out to them.”
“The lives of your comrades was enough for them,” he taunts, trying to egg me on into a fight. Before I can reply, there’s a gunshot from the door of the car, and Luka cries out in pain, his left hand blown clean off by the shot of one of my subordinates as the two of them stride in, training pistols on him.
A smile crosses my face as I step forward to the bleeding man, grabbing him by the collar and lifting him into the air with one hand as he cradles the stump at his wrist, his gun forgotten on the floor. He looks up at me, pain on his face through his sneer. “You want your revenge, then?” he spits, “Take it, you greedy bastard!”
“No,” I say, my voice dripping with contempt, “no, you’ll live a little longer.” I stride over to the other side of the car, opening the door to the outdoors that’s rushing by us rapidly, wind whipping inside as Luka winces in pain. “You’re going to take that bloody stump of yours and bring it to your superiors as a message: you’re not running this operation anymore.”
Before he has a chance to speak, I toss him out the door, watching him hit the ground with a thump before the train flies by, leaving him far, far behind in a matter of moments. I wonder if he’ll survive the hobble to the nearest hospital. It matters little — the Georgian mafia will have little interest in keeping him around after news of this failure reaches them.
I shut the door and turn around, surveying the damage. My men start to put their guns away, looking to me for orders as a couple of the women start to peek out of their hiding spots, wide-eyed and staring at me in absolute awe. The attendant is even starting to get to her feet carefully, as amazed as I am that she’s unharmed.
With a cry of delight, one of the women in a skirt worth more than the guns we’re carrying steps forward to me with shining eyes, a broad smile on her face. “Oh my god,” she gasps, “oh my god, thank you! They said they were going to take us for ransom, you saved our lives!”
She throws her arms around me, and I chuckle as I pat her on the back, then reach down and take her by the chin, lifting it slowly to look me in the eyes. As she looks into them, her smile starts to fade.
“You poor, spoiled girl,” I chide, my tone genuinely amused as I twirl some of her hair around my finger, and my men start to move about the room and direct the other confused women back into their seats. “I’m afraid this isn’t a rescue. I’m taking this operation over.”
I hear the attendant behind me inching towards the car door, and without looking away from the teary-eyed girl in front of me, I point my gun at the attendant and hear her freeze.
“You’ve been a gem, mademoiselle,” I say sincerely. “Now take a seat with the others. I think a lovely girl like you will fetch a fair ransom as well.”
1
Delaney
Several years later…
Today is the day my life is going to change.
I knew it from the second I woke up this morning and realized what I have to do. Instead of trailing along after my parents down the boring, historical streets of Europe while they drone on and on about what battles were fought where and badger me about what I’m going to major in at college, I’m going to have my own little trip.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m still going to Europe. And I’m still going to meet up with my parents in Switzerland so they can share historical anecdotes and lecture me about responsibility, or whatever they have planned. But first, I’m going to make this weekend one heck of a rendezvous.
I graduated high school just a few days ago, and I just turned eighteen a month before that, so I’m at a place in life where I should probably be starting to figure things out. I should have a plan by now, right? I should know where I’m headed and why.
I should know who I am.
But if my eighteen years on this planet have taught me anything at all, it’s that sometimes who you really are isn’t what the world actually wants from you. In fact, it’s been my experience that good things only happen when I pre
tend to be someone I’m not — until enough time has passed that who I have to be turned into who I’ve become.
If that makes any sense.
Anyway, the point is, sometimes you have to fake it ‘til you make it. And that’s what I’ve been doing for the past six years — faking it. And now I’m so good at being this version of Delaney Underwood that nobody even remembers the way I used to be, back before I woke up and realized I would never succeed until I became someone else entirely. It’s all a role, something my parents pushed on me until I just couldn’t resist any longer.
I’ve been playing this part for so long now that I can scarcely remember what I used to be like.
I sit up in bed and stretch, a yawn escaping my mouth as I swing my legs over the side of my plush, four-poster bed and trudge across the room to sit in front of my vanity mirror. I reach over and pull the jeweled cord of a designer lamp to my left, casting a pillar of bright white light across my face. I survey my face critically in the mirror, scanning for imperfections, for a flaw in the armor I must wear every day.
I smile to myself, realizing with a sigh of relief that there are no blemishes, no problems at all with the reflection in the mirror. I do this every morning, blinking blearily into my mirror with a sense of creeping worry, as though I might one day see some hideous, unfamiliar face staring back at me instead of my own. Sometimes it feels like I’m living under some magic spell, and at any moment the rug could be pulled out from underneath me. My life is good — really, really good — and I know I should be grateful, but when you get used to living a certain way, it just becomes your new normal.
Even if this wasn’t who I used to be… it’s me now.
I bat my wide, china-blue eyes and give myself a coquettish smile, my dimples appearing identically in each smooth cheek. There is a light smattering of freckles across my straight button nose, and my lips are full and pouty. People tell me I’m pretty; in fact, my entire existence is predicated on that fact thanks to my parents. What I am, the way I live my life, it all depends on my looks. And I’ve worked hard to get to this point.
Hostage of the Hitman: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance Page 1
