Oh fuck no.
Chapter Sixteen
“Where the fuck did you find this thing?”
The tux fit me perfectly, damn it. I’d heard them called monkey suits, and at this moment, squirming in the snug pants and tugging at the tight collar of the dress shirt while I stared with true fear at the confining jacket lying on the bed, I understood why. Give me a tactical vest, fatigues, and a hundred-pound pack of equipment any day—this was the real torture.
Abby seemed to be enjoying my discomfort a little too much as we stood before the warped mirror in the safe-house bedroom. “Charlotte.”
Charlotte again? Who was this woman?
Who cared? Right now I hated her guts.
“Who—”
My woman smoothed her hands down my chest, a small grin playing on her lips. “A friend.”
“Since when do you have friends?”
Not what I’d meant to say, but the glare Abby shot my way convinced me to keep any attempts at explaining behind my lips.
“I do have friends. You’d know that if—”
I kissed her hard on the mouth. “I know; if I stuck around during the day.”
“Right, dickhead,” she said as she picked up the black bow tie lying on the bed. “I knew Charlotte before my dad…you know.” She waved a hand vaguely, the ends of the tie swinging in the air. “A few months ago we reconnected. She founded a charity that assists low-income families in affording adoptions.”
“Hmm.” Sounded noble of her. I glanced down at the dress clothes and wondered if I needed a background check on this Charlotte. Or maybe we’d skip right to the torture considering she was the one who’d provided the monkey suit.
“You’re pouting like a little boy forced to dress up for church.”
“We were Jewish. We didn’t go to church; we went to temple,” I reminded her.
“Did you wear a yarmulke?”
I could hear it in her voice; she was imagining three stair-step boys with little black yarmulkes on their heads, following their parents into temple. My memories of that time were almost as rosy, so I wasn’t sure if it truly had been rosy or I’d simply colored them that way after living on the streets, in the midst of violence.
“Of course we did.”
“Then you’re more than familiar with fashion over a comfort.”
I groaned. I’d hated wearing the hat. Most kids did.
When she moved close, her hands brushing my neck to slide the bow tie under my collar, I took the opportunity to grip her hips and force her against me.
“You’ll wrinkle,” she protested, but her eyes didn’t protest.
Fuck wrinkles. “I love your eyes.”
Smooth palms slid along my cheeks, drawing me down until our foreheads met. I was so close I could see the individual blue and green and brown stripes in her irises. Close enough that I couldn’t miss the flash of something uncertain as her gaze dropped to my mouth.
“Do you?” she asked.
I dug my fingertips in deep, grinding my semihard cock against the softness of her belly. “Of course I do.” How could she doubt that?
Abby dropped her gaze to the tie, hiding her expression. “I want you to love more than just my eyes, Levi,” she whispered.
My knee-jerk instinct was to force her head back, take her mouth in a long, hard, branding kiss, and not stop until we were both sweaty and sated. I didn’t. That would be a way to hide, to keep the focus on sex and not being as naked before her as she’d just made herself before me. Abby deserved so much more.
Instead I took a long, deep breath, gathered my fucking courage, and transferred my grip to her neck, holding her still as I stared straight into those goddamn gorgeous eyes.
“I love you, little bird.”
Her eyes went wide.
I leaned in until my lips brushed hers. “I love you. I have from the moment you stared up at me with those eyes and said yes when I asked you to dance.”
“Before you kidnapped me?” she asked, one side of her mouth quirking up.
Maybe even before that. I had spent days watching her, learning her habits, waiting for just the right opportunity. I’d wanted her as much for me as I had for revenge by the time I approached her at the club that night we met. It would’ve been so easy to snatch her at any time, but I hadn’t been able to resist the chance to take her to bed before I took her away from her life. Call me a bastard, but I’d needed her in a way I was only now beginning to understand. Only now that I’d realized I loved her.
It was Abby who kissed me then, soft and sweet and honest. The kind of honesty I’d tended to avoid before with fast, hard sex. Abby had taught me better; in the months we’d been together, she’d taught me that it truly was safe in her arms.
“Have you thought about what this means?” she asked as she went back to work on my bow tie. Like she needed a focus, which, granted, I could understand considering the confusing loops and tucks she was performing under my chin. But that wasn’t why she was avoiding my eye. The question was anything but casual.
“That I love you?”
“No.” She flipped me a glance of pure joy at the declaration, though. Did just saying I love you really mean that much to women? “That you’ll be outing yourself to society.”
The shudder that hit me couldn’t be hidden. “Only because those are the circles Chadwick runs in. The circles that matter.”
Abby laid her hands flat on my chest. “Those are also the circles that will know very quickly about your inheritance. Once you do this, you’ll have no choice but to claim it. What is that going to mean to you? Your life? Your brothers’ lives?”
The shudder was nothing compared to the surge of fear that hit me. Fear had been nonexistent in my life since I’d learned to use my fists. Abby was the only person on the planet that could make me afraid, and this step, necessary though it might be to protect everyone, could change our life together. Would she want to go back to what she’d known before, the glitz and glamour and wealth her father had been immersed in? Would she find someone else, someone more sophisticated, less ruthless? Would she still want me if I chose to continue the life I’d led up to now? I’d never known anything else, not really. Two-thirds of my life had been tied up in violence.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I don’t know what to expect, what I want.”
A vee dug deep between her eyebrows. “But…?”
“But…not doing this would mean walking away from my parents, and I can’t do that, not anymore. There are a hundred practical reasons to go public, but the one that really matters to me is making the past right. For them.”
She kissed me again, but it wasn’t soft or sweet this time. Apparently my woman had a thing for altruism.
“Explain to me again where we’re going?” I asked when she released me. Tuxedo pants weren’t exactly made to accommodate a screaming erection.
Abby stepped back, eyed my dilemma—which only made it worse—and snorted in amusement before turning her attention to my question. “The St. Mary’s Sisters of Charity was the place that took my mother in when she ran away from home.”
Abby’s mother had escaped an abusive family as a teen, I knew, and been helped by the shelter here in the city to get on her feet. “So the charity dinner is for them?”
“Among others,” she said. “It’s an annual event that highlights charities for the homeless in the city. St. Mary’s is honored every year.”
“Why did they invite you when you aren’t on the society circuit anymore?” Abby had lived quietly in her new home, far from the circles her father, then a gubernatorial candidate, had frequented. All she’d wanted was to go to school, have friends, get a job, have a boyfriend. Be normal.
My heart squeezed.
“Because when I sold Derek’s mansion, I donated the money to them.”
This time my heart stopped. That was millions of dollars.
“Why?” I choked out. “That money could’ve set you up for life.”
Abby shrugged and handed me the black socks to go with the dress shoes she’d gotten me. “I’m already set for life with the inheritance. I didn’t need it. If they could help someone else like they helped my mom…”
“So what you’re saying is, all the focus will be on you as their special guest, and I just have to smile and look pretty?” Thank God.
Abby smirked like I’d known she would. “Your relief at that fact doesn’t become you as a hit man.”
“Are you kidding?” I shot her a sexy look from under my brows. “That’s what us hit men do, fade into the background.”
“You couldn’t fade into the background if you tried. Get you into a roomful of women, especially in a tux”—a hungry growl left her—“and we’re likely to have a stampede.”
The strangest sense of pride hit me. I’d never given a fuck if I looked good unless I needed to for a job; all that mattered most of the time was being strong and capable. But Abby’s gaze on me, her craving for me… Jesus, how did other men do this?
As I put on the stiff shoes, Abby moved to the emerald-green dress hanging on the door of the closet. When she dropped her robe, a visceral punch hit my stomach.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” I said absently, my gaze on the side view of her breast as she reached for the dress.
“Why not just kill Chadwick?”
It was the simple solution, right? Get rid of him and our problem went away. He’d already killed two men that we knew of.
“Because he isn’t the only one involved.”
“So we follow him up the food chain?” She stepped into the circle of material spilling over the floor and pulled it slowly up her body.
“We have a good chance of doing that tonight, in fact.” It was the second reason I’d agreed to do this, the first being to safeguard those around me.
“Will you kill him after?” She clutched the bodice to her generous breasts, small spaghetti straps tethering it at her shoulders.
I stomped my pants legs down as I stood, moving to stand behind Abby, reaching for the zipper of her dress. “Would it bother you if I did?” I finally asked, but it felt more like could you accept who I am if I did?
She raised her head, staring straight at me in the reflection of the mirror, and a savage light burned in her eyes. “It wouldn’t bother me a damn bit.”
My cock tightened all over again, at the sight of her, fierce with the need for vengeance, and at my own satisfaction. This was the woman for me, no doubt about it. The woman who, if I allowed her to, would accept me exactly as I was. All I had to do was let her in.
“Good,” I said, letting the need for her roughen my voice. “You won’t be disappointed then.”
Chapter Seventeen
Why did it take so much more discipline not to tug at the tight bow tie around my throat than it did to wait patiently for a mark to walk into your trap? Because seriously, this fucking thing felt like it was strangling me.
“You look like someone has you in a choke hold,” Abby whispered, her amusement plain.
“Feels like it too,” I growled.
She reached up to smooth my collar. Oh yeah, she was definitely amused. I’d have to remind her of that later, when I punished her.
“Just remember to tell Charlotte thank you when we see her. She pulled off a miracle, whether you know it or not.”
The mysterious Charlotte would be here tonight? “I’ll definitely say something,” I promised, just not what, exactly.
Abby snickered. She knew me too well—and accepted my rough edges better than I ever could the glamour. She was the miracle, not a tux.
How the hell had I found myself here in the first place? Following Abby up the marble steps of the city’s largest museum as dozens of couples dressed just like us, only with far more diamonds, walked the same direction. It was surreal, nothing like the grit and grime I’d spent the last nineteen years immersed in.
And far too close to the times I remembered my parents going out in the evenings. Leaving us boys with a babysitter. This was their world, their people. And here I was, pretending I was worthy to enter the sacred space that had once been theirs.
“Abby!” A young woman in a neat nun’s habit, hair buried beneath a black veil, rushed to meet us as we entered the lobby. Someone from St. Mary’s, I presumed. “Thank you for coming.”
“Thank you for inviting me, Sister Katherine.”
The nun’s warm smile stretched to encompass me. “There are cocktails being served in the reading room. May I show you the way?”
But Abby waved Sister Katherine on. “You have much more important things to attend to. We’ll find it.” She leaned in, exchanging a brief but heartfelt hug. “Will I see Margaret later?”
“She wouldn’t miss seeing you,” Sister Katherine said, then hurried off.
“Margaret?” I asked as we walked through the museum lobby.
“The head of St. Mary’s.” A hollow look filled her eyes before she blinked it away. “Margaret knew my mother for a short time.”
I wanted to stop, to drag Abby to one side of the wide hall and kiss her until that look was a thing of the past, until pain was a distant memory. But I couldn’t have what I wanted, not right now, not with the crowd surging around us. All these people made it difficult to determine threats, to position myself so I could protect Abby if I needed to. It kept me on alert, tense. I’d never had social niceties to begin with, but now… The men here might seem more civilized, but they knew a threat when they saw one, and gave me a wide berth.
The women were another matter altogether.
“I told you there might be a mob,” Abby murmured as I handed her a glass of champagne from a passing tray.
Women in all directions were glancing our way, some covertly and some without an ounce of shyness about the hunger flaring in their eyes as they settled on me. I was tempted to suck back my entire glass but limited myself to a small sip; I didn’t, however, resist the need to tug at my tie. “It’s warm in here, isn’t it?”
Abby chuckled.
To our right I caught sight of an older woman in a blue sequined gown, white hair gently curling around her head, gliding toward us, arms outstretched. Abby broke into a wide smile. “Mrs. Davenport, what a pleasure to see you again.” She reached for the older woman’s hand, real affection in her voice.
Nancy Davenport. A former governor’s wife, and from what Abby had told me, the only one of her father’s acquaintances to take a motherless girl under her wing when Abby first stepped into the role of her father’s hostess.
“Darling Abby, it’s so good to have you back with us.” She enveloped Abby in a cloud of Chanel No. 5 and air-kisses.
“Oh, I’m not back, Mrs. Davenport,” Abby assured her. “Simply a visit for my favorite charity.”
“I know they find you a blessing, my dear.” She leaned back, her faded green eyes seeming to take in every detail of Abby’s face. “You’re doing well.”
A statement of fact, not a question. A soft smile answered her. “I am.”
I held back the denial that wanted to escape me. How could Abby say that? She’d lost her home, someone was trying to kill us, and she was shackled to a man whose emotional growth had been stunted in childhood. It was amazing she was still sane.
And yet that smile didn’t lie, nor did the hand that reached for mine.
Mrs. Davenport’s gaze latched on to the move, then trailed up my chest to my face. “And who do we have here?” she cooed.
Red tinged Abby’s cheeks, a soft blush that made me want to kiss her. I took Mrs. Davenport’s hand instead, her papery skin soft against my calluses. “I’m Abby’s boyfriend, ma’am. Levi Agozi.”
Her eyes went wide. “My my my, you are a handsome one, aren’t you?” She winked Abby’s way. “You are one lucky girl, my dear. And deserve every moment of it.”
“I believe I am the lucky one, Mrs. Davenport,” I said and meant every word.
An ac
tual twinkle lit the older woman’s eyes. “Why you— Wait, did you say Agozi?”
“Yes.”
Friendly speculation slid over me again. “Any relation to Nathaniel Agozi?”
My breath caught in my throat. “My father.”
The words came out gruff, but I don’t think Mrs. Davenport noticed. She was turning to scan the room, a light laugh escaping her. “That scamp! I can’t believe Redding didn’t tell me you were here.” She turned back to us. “He knows how close I was to your dear mother.” Her scrutiny this time was more personal. “How in the world did I miss it? You have your father’s face. And definitely his looks.”
“Redding?” Abby asked.
“Warren Redding. Head of Hacr Tech, you know.”
Abby was shaking her head. “I don’t think we’ve met.”
“He knows you’re here, of course?” Mrs. Davenport asked me. “He and your father were so close, but I had no idea he’d kept track of you.”
I cleared my throat. “It’s been a while.”
Abby glanced at me. I slid my arm around her shoulders, warming the chill I could feel taking over her bare skin.
“Well, I’ll give him a mouthful when I see him.” Mrs. Davenport’s attention was drawn to a side door, where a servant gestured for her. “I must see what’s on fire before dinner can be served. Excuse me.”
After hugging Abby one final time, the older woman disappeared toward the kitchen. Abby turned to me, a frantic look in her eyes. “How do we—”
My cell vibrated in my breast pocket. Abby paused as I pulled it out. The screen brightened when I tapped it, a notification for a text showing. I clicked it open.
“There you are, you bastard.”
I showed Abby the picture Eli had sent as he listened in on our conversation through my earpiece. An older man, deep wrinkles framing his eyes and mouth, built like a bull, with thick, dark hair and eyebrows. Warren Redding.
Scrolling down, I scanned the bio Eli had attached. CEO of Hacr, appointed twenty years ago by the board, of which my father had been the majority shareholder. Head of research and development. Had he been my father’s friend?
Assassin's Prey (Assassins Book 3) Page 10
