by L. L. Ash
Bullseye
The Minutemen Series
Book 2
Copyright © 2020 by L. L. Ash
All rights reserved.
Disclaimer:
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Preface
Serge
My phone ringing woke me up out of a dead sleep.
Fumbling around for the thing on my nightstand beside me, I yanked the charging cable out. Lifting the phone to my ear, I swiped the green circle to answer.
“It’s time,” a voice said over the line. “Vishka is calling in his favor.”
I’d changed my phone number since we left for Europe, and after two years of living side by side, enjoying a permanent vacation, I had almost forgotten about that dark spot in my past.
“He needs you in New York,” was all he said.
Vishka.
Vishka needed me in New York.
Shit!
I moved away from Adele who was sleeping peacefully on the bed next to me, still facing the Eiffel Tower, framed in our rented condo’s window.
Locking myself in the bathroom, I asked for the details.
“Your flight is in twenty-four hours,” was all the voice added. “Be here or we will come after her.”
My heart picked up its pace.
“I’ll be there.”
The line clicked and died as I slowly dropped my phone from my ear.
My eyes met my reflection in the mirror. My hair was still wild from Adele’s hands, lips still swollen from her insistent kisses. Heading into forty-five did nothing but make my woman more exotic and beautiful.
Shit…
I scrubbed my hands up and down my face.
The ring on my left ring finger glinted in the light, reminding me that if Adele knew about this, she’d fuck me up. Like, seriously fuck me up. With her fists. Or a blunt object.
Despite everything I’d learned by growing up with mob kids and working with them, I was still defenseless to the woman I loved.
As it was, I had to leave her in Paris with our one year old daughter to fend for themselves for who the fuck knew how long.
One trip. I could handle one trip.
I inhaled a big breath and looked at my phone again, a seed of an idea planting in my brain.
Maybe, just maybe I could call in a favor, too…
Chapter One
Maxim
The sight lined up just right; my target’s head perfectly centered in the scope.
And then my phone buzzed.
I took one more breath and let it out in a slow stream as I pulled the trigger.
The whole street erupted into chaos as I rolled onto my back, already unassembling my rifle.
My phone buzzed again as sirens blared from across the street.
Damnit… Who’s calling me? It’s the fucking middle of the night.
In Egypt, anyway.
I got my things back into the tan bag I’d brought them in, folding down the main body of my gun and unscrewing the barrel before cinching it closed.
Sliding the face cover of my turban back over my mouth and nose, I tucked it into the twisted band over my ear before making my way to the door of my hotel room.
I’d only been in there for a few hours, but I didn’t get it to sleep in. That window had the perfect view, with a straight shot to the building across the street where my target went daily.
Gripping my bag in my hand, I went down the elevator and to the lobby where I gave the key back, complaining about the facilities with a Turkish accent.
With my heavy tan and the work I’d put into perfecting my language and accent skills, the woman likely already believed me to be vacationing from that area.
Not Russia where I was truely from.
Well, Russia and New York. But I’d only spent a handful of years there before I was plucked up by the military.
I spent a lot of years in the middle east, learning the cultures and languages, but most importantly, I learned how to shoot, and I learned how to spy.
The American Government thought I died more than seven years ago. They’d trained me to be one of their top agents, and I’d repaid them by going rogue and becoming a ghost.
My phone buzzed again, with a text this time.
I got into the thick throng of people on the street before slipping my hand under my tunic and getting my phone out to see who the hell was bugging me.
Blocked Number: Ghost
Ah, so it was business.
Someone was eager to have someone else killed.
I slipped my phone back into my pocket and made my way to my car down the road.
Inside, I put my earpiece in before returning the phone call to the blocked number.
“Ghost?” a male voice answered.
“What color does the moon glow at night?” I asked my secret question. Anyone who calls me had to know the answer or they don’t talk to me.
Period
“It doesn’t,” the voice answered back with a laugh. “Your mom’s ass is so big it blocks out the moon.”
A grin split my face. Only one person on the planet knew the true answer to that question, because we’d come up with it together.
“Serge?”
“In the flesh,” he answered back.
His voice was deeper than last time I talked to him. But then again, it’d been years.
“How the fuck did you get this number?” I asked now, wondering who’s ass I’d have to kick for giving my phone number away.
Not that I minded. Serge was one of my best friends in the world.
One of my only friends.
“Iev dug around for me until he found it,” he sighed. “You’re a hard man to find, Max.”
“I meant it to be that way,” I said in a low voice, both glad to hear from him, but also a little worried as to why he’d go through all the effort to find me.
I was the fix-it guy. So what did he need fixing?
“And as nice as it is to hear from you after all these years, what do you need?”
“Always the one to dispense with pleasantries.” Serge chuckled. “Ok, well, other than it’d be nice to catch up, I did call for a reason. A pretty serious reason. I need to call in that favor, Max.”
Fuck me…
“A favor?”
“I wouldn’t ask you if I wasn’t stuck between a rock and a mobster’s dick, man. You know that. I’m uh… I need you to catch a plane to New York.”
“New York?”
“Yeah, New York. I’ll explain everything when we’re there. Meet me at our old haunt. I’ll be waiting for you there.”
“Fine. I just finished up my job here… I can spare a few days.”
“Might need more than a few days,” he warned, then hung up.
“Fuck...” I whispered to myself, shoving my ear piece back into my pocket before quickly walking the few blocks to my real hotel room.
I dropped my bag on the sad-looking bed and pulled my suitcase together.
Dragging the turban off my head, I stuffed it in my bag, along with my other outfits of disguise and donned my favorite, comfortable jeans and a hoodie. Sifting through my current pair of IDs and passports, I shoved my Turkish set back into the hidden pocket inside the lining of my carry on bag and dragged on my heavy combat boots.
New York… I’d hoped to never have to go back. I held no fond feelings for the place, beside the obvious moments with my mother before she had died. And there were those times with my
only friend Serge, who quickly got sucked into the world of crime that surrounded us daily. He got into prostitution, but I managed to keep my nose down and clean until I finish high school, unattached to anyone. That was before the Army though, of course.
I checked my wallet, finding an assortment of US dollars inside. How convenient.
As I was heading back out the door, my bag on my shoulder and the fold up gun in its bag on my elbow, I shoved it into a garbage bin and slipped away.
No fingerprints, since we’d burned those off a long time ago, and no DNA evidence to connect me to the assassination, so it didn’t matter who found the gun, or even if anybody did find it.
I was careful and I always got away with it.
A cab brought me to the nearest international airport just in time for me to grab the first flight to the United States, which happened to be to Colorado. I’d find a connection to New York when I got there.
I slipped through security without a problem, then sat in the commercial plane with all the tourists and screaming babies and everything I hated all crammed into one little sardine can of an aircraft.
I just breathed out, letting everything roll off me as I pulled on my headphones. On that plane I wasn’t Maxim Kovac, international assassin. Today my ID said I was Edward Keller, going home to his normal, everyday life in New York City.
Mila
The last note of the opera drifted out of my mouth as the orchestra faded into nothing. I cut it off and left the stage with the overwhelming echo of silence, and I could see some people in the first few rows with teary eyes.
My chest swelled with the great performance, but that silent echo inflated my eardrums and burst as the crowd surged to their feet and exploded into applause.
The curtain closed and I was joined on the stage by the other performers.
“Excellent,” my co-star told me with a smile.
I felt happy, but also frustrated and almost...lonely, as we bowed.
It would be my last show before my arranged marriage to my father’s friend. It was really a business deal. A marriage meant to seal an agreement, just as they did in the barbaric medieval days.
I’d tried to refuse the marriage, but father was...convincing.
I would do my job as his daughter, and maybe if I did everything right, my new husband, whoever he was, wouldn’t mind me singing.
Sick dread slithered through me at the thought of never performing again.
God, I hoped he would understand. I hoped he would be good to me.
I hoped he was handsome, too.
The first two, those were the most important though, and I’d settle for them. But I didn’t hold out any hope for love.
After we all shared hugs and farewells, I left the theatre with a frown, following my father’s men.
“That was an excellent performance.” My brother Daniel grinned. “But you’ve always been able to sing like a songbird.”
“As you remind me with every breath.” I smiled wanly back at him as we got into the car to go back to my father’s estate.
“Hey, I think songbird is a great name for you!”
“It was when I was twelve, little brother,” I gave him a playful glare. “Even you are an adult now, Danny.”
“I’ve been an adult for years.” He puffed out his chest, proud to show off all twenty-two years of him.
I just sighed, trying not to feel sadness encompass me again.
“I’m happy to go with you to Saint Petersburg. I’ve never been there.”
“It’s even colder than here.” Danny huffed. “Make sure you pack for it.”
As the car drove on, I looked out the window at the home I’d always known. Romania was where I was born, as were many, many generations before me. It was my home. Knowing that there was a big chance that I would never see it again made me sad, but also a little queasy. The opera I participated in, my family, my friends...everything. To do this for Tată was… It would change my life forever, and that, in itself, started to make me shake like a leaf.
“You ok, soră?” Danny asked, a compassionate look on his face.
How he had managed to escape with his emotions unscathed in Tată’s world was incredible to me. So tough, unfeeling and brutal, but yet he always treated me like a fragile little doll, even though he was my younger brother.
“I’m fine.” I forced a smile on my lips for him.
It wasn’t his fault that this was happening. It wasn’t his fault that I was being sold to the Russian mafia as a power trade.
Swallowing hard, I forced myself to calm. I’d never survive my new life if I wore my heart on my sleeve. No. To protect myself and my family, I had to stiffen my spine, coat it in iron, and get ready for my immersion into the Brotherhood.
Chapter Two
Maxim
“Hell’s Bells!” Serge grinned as he stood from his spot on the elementary school's playground jungle gym.
It’d been… actual decades since we’d been to that school together.
“Don’t you look all slicked up and prissy,” I told my friend, taking the hug he offered me and returning his kiss on my cheek.
“Better than you, scruffy looking nerf herder.” Serge grinned, pushing me back to look me up and down.
I ground my palm against the thick, dark hairs growing coarse on my chin.
“Yeah, well I didn’t exactly have time for a trip to the spa when you called me.” I smirked. “You sounded like you were up shit creek without a paddle, boat, or life preserver.”
“That about sums it up.” He sighed. “I hate to get to business after all this time...”
“Let’s get the business over with, then we’ll catch up,” I told him, sitting my cold ass on the metal grate floor of the play gym.
He sat again beside me, looking around again before turning to me.
Honestly, he didn’t have to look for anything. I’d made sure the place was spot free before joining him.
“So you know what I uh...what I did.”
“Did? You don’t whore anymore?” I asked him.
He wrinkled his nose.
“Nope.” He shook his head and sighed, leaning onto his elbows.
Pulling my beanie further over my ears, I tried not to shiver as he continued. Damn, it wasn’t the smartest thing to go from summer in Egypt to winter in New York.
“Married now. Got a kid, too.”
“The hell?” I asked, laughing quietly. “Since when?”
“Couple years ago,” he said, going into his pocket to grab his phone.
There on the front was a picture of a beautiful woman holding a chubby little baby.
“You’re for reals?” I asked him, taking the phone from him.
“No joke.” He nodded. “I got out of it. Only problem is, Vishka made me...give him a favor. To get out.”
I turned to him and lifted an eyebrow, handing the phone back.
“He wants me to, uh, seduce someone.”
“And?”
I still didn’t get what I was doing there.
“I want you to do it for me. I’ve got a wife and...I can’t. I just can’t. I’d never be convincing and I...I love her. I’m not going to cheat on my wife.”
“Fuck man, what’s wrong with you?” I asked, chuckling as I pressed my head into one hand.
“Love.” He sighed, rolling his eyes as if put out by having found his happily ever after.
“What makes you think I can do that?” I asked him. “I’m not a prostitute. I don’t know how to seduce women.”
“I know you,” he said eventually as one of the swings squeaked in the background, a particularly cold gust of November wind hitting us full on. “You’ve always been good with women. You know what they want and you’re trained in this shit. I’d more than likely get myself killed, anyway.”
“And let me guess.” I groaned. “You don’t do it, you die.”
“No. My family dies,” he ground out.
Well fuck.
“So, wh
at do I have to do?” I asked him.
He handed me a stack of papers.
“Mila Vasile. Daughter of Ilei Vasile.”
“Drug Lord.” I nodded.
I had my finger on the pulse of each economy all over the world. Ilei Vasile was a big fucking deal in Romania and Eastern Europe in general.
“Right.” He nodded, handing me a picture of the target. “Mila is to be married to Kir Popov, the son of-”
“Brotherhood’s boss in Russia, Nico Popov.”
“Right.” He nodded again, handing me a picture of Kir.
“Wedding is in three weeks. We need you to go in there, make her fall in love with you or something and...don’t let her marry into the Brotherhood.”
“Why the hell not? Who cares if the Brotherhood and a drug lord marry their kids together?”
Serge bit his lip.
“Vishka is… He has been up against Popov for a while now, evidently. He is aiming for the whole fucking operation. A coo of sorts.”
“He wants to be the head of both arms?” I lifted a brow in curiosity.
“As far as I understand, yes. He would only tell me so much, and having you do this instead of me...He’s...”
“Not happy?”
“That’s one way of putting it,” he said, chuckling nervously.
“Well fuck, Serge… I don’t know. I don’t know how to seduce some woman that I’ve never met before.”
He gave me that look that he always gave me when I said something stupid.
“I’ve seen you seduce Emma Rodgers, Max. There’s no way in hell you’re going to convince me that you’ve got no game.”
I chuckled.
While that was true, it was also many, many years ago, and I wasn’t the same person anymore.
Now I was an assassin. I was an emotionless asshole with nothing in life besides the next kill and the next payment. That was all. How was I supposed to make some woman fall in love with me?
“And if it doesn’t work out then...just—”
Serge frowned and bit his lip, not even able to say the words.