Stolen Kisses

by Gray, Khardine

A man in the ladies’ room.

  I instantly tensed. The man came in and looked at me. I was about to ask him what the fuck he was looking at when Franco came in from behind him.

  Franco …

  He was here. Shit, he was actually here.

  God in heaven I couldn’t breathe.

  “Maria, Maria … why have you been avoiding me.”

  “Is that another friend Mama?” Flynn asked much to Franco’s disdain.

  “Flynn, Daddy’s home. I am definitely not a friend. I’m your father and I’m back big time.” He laughed and continued laughing like he’d said a joke. No, he was laughing at me. “Maria, Maria you think you can just get away with what you did? I think it was amusing to see you try, more amusing to watch you believe you could escape me.”

  “How did you find us?” I had to know, how he’d figured it out.

  “Friends in high places. Names pop up even if you use cash. Cameras everywhere. The biggest thing though was Flynn being taken in by the police. That was a dead giveaway. Names in systems and friends in higher places. You can’t escape me. You will be punished Maria. For everything. Everything.”

  I started to shake and my soul shivered.

  He was going to kill me.

  He was going to kill me just like I knew he would.

  Franco was going to kill me.

  “Come here Flynn.” Franco said crouching down.

  “No Flynn stay here.” I winced.

  My worst nightmare was happening. Us being found, having nowhere to run, and no one to save us.

  Franco walked up to us and grabbed Flynn.

  Flynn started crying and tried to reach for me. When I tried to take him back Franco backhanded me so hard I slammed into the wall and fell on the ground.

  Flynn started screaming and crying when he saw that.

  “Give him back to me!” I cried. “Give him back.”

  I couldn’t believe this was happening. I couldn’t.

  Franco looked to me and gave me a wicked, evil smile. His dark eyes darkened the way they used to before he beat me, or before he planned to do something to teach me a lesson.

  It was so strange I remembered when I was at the Crowthorne and I saw Elliot grab Christina up by her arm. I didn’t know why that memory decided to pop into my mind, but it came. I’d thought at the time that I would never allow any man to treat me that way. I’d thought I’d leave if ever I happened to fall into a relationship where the guy was abusive. Look at me now still taking it.

  So Pathetic.

  Franco looked down at me and that smile of his grew wider with a promise of death.

  “Flynn, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m booking a one way ticket back to Florida. It’s up to your mama to decide if you come with me alive, or in a body bag.” He chuckled.

  Dark dread filled me.

  Jesus …

  Jesus no …

  What was he saying?

  I never factored in the possibility that he would hurt Flynn.

  Looking at him now, I saw the pure evil in him—insanity and evil.

  How could I have been so wrong? Why couldn’t I see it before? Way back when, when we first met, why didn’t I see it then?

  He’d kill Flynn too. He’d do it to hurt me and then kill me.

  Terror like a steel weight dropped in the pit of my stomach, immobilizing me, and my mind became a vast expanse of desolation without hope.

  There was no hope.

  I saw now there never was to begin with.

  Chapter 30

  Dante

  Elliot Granger’s face was plastered all over the news within the hour of me leaking the story to the press.

  Leaking was the tamer version of explaining what I had done.

  I didn’t do the standard mundane spread of providing unauthorized confidential information. I blasted it, fucking blasted it to kingdom come so it would fucking spread to all corners of the damn globe.

  It was everywhere. Headlines of how the governor of Illinois was a fraud, murderer, terrorist liaison, and even how he rigged various cases to allow criminals who were guilty as shit to be acquitted.

  We took all that information Christina collected and did a grand exposè.

  All secrets and fucking lies exposed.

  It was a big thing to do, considering it probably put us all at risk, but we did it anyways. I did it and we were all ready for any kind of backlash it would cause.

  When secrets like that were exposed there was little anyone could do to fix the problem. There was no respite in damage control. No one to help you in the end.

  I definitely got this guy good, but nothing would give me more satisfaction than killing his ass dead.

  It wouldn’t bring back Christina. It might not mend the hole in my heart that widened as the years went by, but it was something. Something I had to do, something I would do.

  Now we rode hard like demons from hell to find him.

  About half an hour ago the secret squad lost track of him. Then Gibbs came through for us and sent over an address.

  Elliot was currently at the civic center. It was a fifty story building in the city that could be seen from everywhere.

  We were about five minutes away.

  “When we get there it’s all the way up to the top floor guys.” Claudius instructed through the wireless microphone. We all carried one. It was a small virtually undetectable device that fit on the lapel of my jacket.

  When we pulled up out front we parked on the door step. Normally this building closed at six. Claudius waved his all access pass to the city over the sensor panel on the door and it opened for us.

  Us …

  Not just The Four.

  There were twenty of us total.

  Twenty of the meanest badass guys on this side of the planet.

  Bad to the bone guys who were trained to kill on sight. We did not travel light either.

  Trouble met us at the door as expected.

  Bullets started flying the minute we stepped into the foyer. Three guys ran out with their guns blazing.

  Alex ended them in two seconds.

  It seemed like either these people here didn’t think we’d find them or they underestimated us.

  I hoped it was the latter.

  Barabbas could talk all he wanted, come to us in that Godfather get up with his hat and his attitude. He could call us all boys who didn’t know our place, but what he didn’t realize was we were his worst nightmare.

  We were new age coming for vengeance and it was he who had to watch himself.

  We proceeded up to the top floor and must have looked like a nightmare coming out of the elevator doors .

  Mobsters in true gangster style walking out with our guns ready to kill anything that moved.

  And we did too.

  More guys came out and like the speeding bullets that flew from my Berretta’s I killed ever mother fucker who came for me.

  This was war.

  We barged into the conference room to be greeted by more guys.

  Elliot was sitting ahead in one of the seats on the raised platform. Next to him was Barabbas. Both looked to us scowling like demons. Beside them was the creepy guy who just looked on in anticipation.

  Inside the room was where the war would start, because it was filled with over a hundred men. Some of which I knew to be Antonellas.

  We were vastly outnumbered, but it wouldn’t stop us.

  All guns were raised when we walked in.

  All guns aimed at us and Elliot stood glowering at me—specifically at me.

  We stopped inside, just by the door’s entrance.

  Claudius was right,

  this was my fight and because of that I stepped forward.

  “Seems like you all have a death wish.” Elliot had the audacity to speak.

  “I don’t have any wishes. I’m in control of what I have and what I don’t have. Know what I want?” I threw back.

  “What?” he smiled. This guy was definitely the ty
pe who was in charge. Looked like he had power over Barabbas too.

  It was just the body language between them that showed the dynamics.

  “Your head. Chopped from your miserable body. I’ll do it myself. Chop it off and throw it in the river. Cover it with roses and sit watching while the fish eat it all up.”

  He went to smile, but I noted the hesitation.

  He didn’t know me and those that did definitely took my jovial mannerisms for a sign of weakness in some way. Or that I didn’t have the balls to do certain things, then they were shocked to shit when they discovered what I could do. Who I could be. What I was really like.

  The truth was I’d been the beta for a very long time and I had struggled to be the alpha to impress a girl.

  I did it to impress a girl I really couldn’t think about right now, because she was my weakness. She was my damn weakness and my strength. I hated that.

  I hated it, because I was here seeing her face and hearing her words telling me she loved me. I was here possibly on the brink of no return and I’d die. Still she wouldn’t know as pissed as I was at what she did I loved her too.

  Damn Maria. I was here and I could accept that I became who I am because of her.

  I did it all to impress a girl and I didn’t realize by doing that it had changed me.

  It changed me into the monster I needed to be come out alive in situations like this.

  I changed from the beta and became Alpha and Omega.

  He didn’t answer and all I heard was clicking as I took two more steps forward, all guns trained on me. One look the wrong way or any sudden moves and I knew they would have me.

  They’d blow my head off and I wasn’t about to let that happen.

  I was doing this clever, the smart way.

  I wanted the story first, of how it happened.

  How he killed Christina?

  “How did you do it? How did you kill her? Tell me what happened to her.” I had to mask my emotions as I asked the questions. “Christina D’Angelo, tell me how you killed her.”

  The asshole just looked at me, not answering.

  “TELL ME!” I bellowed and my voice echoed around the room.

  “We’d had an on and off relationship. Things got messy when she got pregnant and demanded I leave my wife. I offered her the chance to live by breaking things off with her, but the little whore didn’t accept the offer.”

  Whore …

  The note, that was what he wrote on the note he’d attached to Christina.

  “Finish the fucking story,” I demanded.

  “With the amount of men she’d been seeing I was certain that baby wasn’t mine, but she insisted. When I fought back she threatened to expose me. Exactly the way you did tonight. It was my mistake. I should have really found the evidence she claimed she had, she’d hidden it somewhere where only she could find it. I thought killing her was better. I thought if only she could find it, then no one else would.”

  “You stabbed her multiple times. You bastard, you killed her knowing she was pregnant.” That time I couldn’t mask the emotion. I was a ruthless bastard, but I would never, ever do something like that. Kill a woman who was not only pregnant, but pregnant with my child.

  I remembered the stab wounds in her stomach. The whole scene was gruesome but that …

  There were no words. No words to describe what this man was.

  Evil didn’t begin to cover it. It didn’t even start to climb up the scale.

  The murder was vengeful and like payback. Vinny said she had dirt on him, but it was so much more.

  And more, there were two of them involved.

  “You weren’t alone. Flowers isn’t your style.” I instantly looked to Barabbas and the creepy guy.

  The creepy guy I kept my gaze on.

  Him, he was there, and the accomplice.

  The creepy guy who we were told was called Antonio, Antonio Manello.

  He was a Manello.

  The kind who did the dirty work like the cleanup crew, but there was a little more he was capable of doing. More that he’d been in a secure psychiatric unit for, for at the least a solid five.

  All related to his obsession with women being sexually assaulted and killed. People like him shouldn’t be allowed to live or ever been born.

  He was the liaison for the charity and the government office who provided the funds for the events and fundraisers. He did everything including meet with the organizers and people like Christina.

  The smile he gave me told all.

  I’d heard enough, saw enough, and it was time for war.

  No one was a quicker shot than me. My hands were quicker than the eye could ever be.

  It was something Pa had taught me. As this mother fucker looked at me smiling, I held his gaze making him think I was waiting for an answer, then I whipped out the Berretta from my left pocket and shot him straight in the head.

  Hand quicker than the eye. I chose the left, because the only person who could see my action or knew what I was going to do just by looking at me was Claudius, not even Gio. They all knew what to do.

  So when I heard bullets going off behind me it was no surprise. They took down the men on either side of me and threw the rest off kilter, because they didn’t see it coming.

  Never knew that we were the kind of guys that didn’t need a plan.

  The four of us in particular knew each other that well that we all the planning stages of anything all took place in our minds.

  Elliot and Barabbas dove to the ground trying to take cover.

  Gio covered me and Alex covered Claudius.

  We all covered each other shooting in tandem at the guys that came at us.

  Our other guys shot back too, but even with them and their skill I knew that being outnumbered against so many higher level guys would most likely get us killed.

  “Dante, Elliot’s getting away,” Alex cried.

  Fucking hell. Like the rat he was Elliot was running through the door ahead of us with Barabbas right in front of him.

  “Go, get him.” Claudius shouted to me.

  For a moment I hesitated. I didn’t want to leave them.

  “Go.” Gio balked. “We got this.”

  I took off.

  I ran when I couldn’t see Barabbas or Elliot anymore.

  Just before I went through the door they went through, the doors to the back of the hall burst open and in came more of our guys. Luc’s men, we called them.

  Seeing that I ran hyped on adrenaline.

  I couldn’t allow them to get away.

  If I did this would be it, these people knew how to hide. They knew where to go so that no one would ever find them. They knew how to disappear.

  I didn’t know where they’d gone I just ran the way I thought they would have went.

  “Up ahead.” Came a voice in my ear. It was Number Two from the secret squad. Jesus, I was so damn grateful to hear his voice. “There’s a helicopter on the roof. They’re heading for that. Take the stairs through the door ahead and open the first door you see.”

  “Thank youuuu.”

  “No worries man.”

  I flew through the door, up the stairs and out the first door he’d said. I saw them. Barabbas was getting into the helicopter. Elliot was just about to when I fired a blind shot at him.

  I intended that to faze him, because I didn’t have a clean shot from where I stood.

  He ducked down when I fired a few more, giving me time to catch up.

  Barabbas ordered the helicopter to take off even though Elliot wasn’t on board. Serve the motherfucker right. Mobsters were mobsters. They looked out for themselves first, just the way Barabbas was.

  Criminals were also the same, and they did whatever they could to flee when they knew death was coming for them. I made one jump just as Elliot was trying to board even though the damn helicopter was building speed to take off.

  I slammed into him knocking him back down to the ground. I then landed several punches in his fa
ce to stun him. The asshole was tougher than I thought. He managed to get me off him, but only to get a bullet in the stomach when I shot him.

  His resilience shocked me to shit, because the guy was still standing and quick on his feet too. As the helicopter took off he whirled around and ran to it, jumping and grabbing onto the landing skid.

  Fuck I watched him go up, but there was no fucking way I was going to allow him to just get away like that. I jumped too and grabbed onto him. The weight of the two of us caused the helicopter to dip and it couldn’t quite take off properly.

  “Get off of me.” Elliot wailed trying to shuffle me off him.

  “You fucker!” I punched him hard.

  We were about ten feet off the ground. The helicopter had kind of balanced itself, but us fighting on the left side was definitely a problem. I could see that the pilot was hesitant to take off.

  “Go! Fuckin go.” I heard Barabbas shout. “We’ll get rid of them on the way.”

  Yes, I was sure that would happen indeed and even more certain when the helicopter moved forward to go.

  I had about five seconds before I’d be looking down at the expanse of the city below and more than likely fall to my death.

  Fall to my death and that would be it.

  Elliot punched me in my face and I slipped, but grabbed on to his waist tighter.

  Seeing the last of the helipad I balled my fists and punched him hard in his stomach, right where I’d shot him. The impact was such that he lost his grip on the landing skid and we dipped.

  One more punch in the wound did it. He screamed and let go of the skid and we both went falling just as we were about to leave the last few inches of the pad.

  I let go of him and used the momentum to propel myself forward so I could grab onto the rail. I was a fucking daredevil. I knew how my body worked and what limits I could push it to. How to defy gravity, or work with it. I did it with my bikes all the time.

  So, when I fell and gravity took me I had my hand out ready for the rail. I grabbed it and gripped on tight slowing myself from going over the side.

  Elliot on the other hand screamed as he flew past me.

  All I heard was the scream and as I practically hung from the side of the rail on the building I watched him go down, all the way down.