“That’s the way it’s got to be for me, Pop. I’m done.”
Moment of truth time. Big Poppa Giovani had built his fortune by stacking bodies, and I was telling him I wasn’t stacking for him any longer. He wasn’t answering me, and I felt my blood starting to go cold. I swear the old man didn’t even blink, not even when he opened his mouth to give me his answer.
“You think you can buy your way out for five hundred grand, Jonathon? I told you, it doesn’t work that way.”
He moved fast, faster than I ever would have thought for a guy his age and size. He was standing at the same time his hand was on his desk, and he was pulling the desk drawer open. It was going to end here, it was going to end now.
Lights out, Micky. Lights out.
Chapter 29
Jackie
“They fired you?”
I was standing in front of my locker cleaning out my things. It would have been obvious to anyone anywhere near the hospital for the last couple of days what was going on. But Jill still needed to go through the formality of asking.
“Yep. I have officially been terminated for cause. Apparently, there is a clause somewhere in our employment contracts about cavorting with known felons.”
“Oh Jackie, I’m sorry.”
She hugged me, but I realized it almost wasn’t even necessary. I would have probably quit if they hadn’t fired me anyway. This place was just a depressing reminder of the crap life I was leaving behind.
“Where are you going to stay, honey?”
“Good question, Jill. I don’t even know.”
“I go by your house two times a day, Jackie. It’s covered in crime scene tape. There’s no way the police are going to let you back in there.”
Nice going, Jackie. Maybe I would have been better off letting Martin have the house…
“You know what Jill? I don’t even fucking care. I’ll probably just sell the damn house anyway. I’m officially done with Martin. I’m officially done with working the crappy midnight shift. I might as well sell that fucking house and turn the page.”
It was liberating and it was no bullshit. There were two other nurses at the break room table and I could see they were listening to every word. I remembered sitting at that fucking table night after night and listening to someone else talk about their exciting life. I never thought that someone would one day be me.
“What do you think happened to him, Jackie?”
She had asked me the question that I had been thinking about the entire time but had been afraid to ask myself. I answered her as honestly as I knew how.
“I don’t know.”
I knew he wasn’t going to get caught by the police. If anything, he was going to get killed by his own people. But now that I knew him, I knew that those people really weren’t his people.
All I knew for sure was I hoped that he had gotten away and he was on his way to a beach somewhere.
Mexico?
Barbados?
Grand Cayman?
Wherever. Any place was better than here. It was what I needed to do too. I needed to get the hell out of here and go sit on a beach somewhere. My preference would have been doing it alongside of Micky.
I felt eyes on me and saw that Jill was still looking at me.
“You developed a thing for this guy.”
She wasn’t asking a question, and I wasn’t arguing with it either.
“I just hope he gets away safe, that’s all.”
The locker was just about empty except for a couple of my old sweaters which I decided they could keep or give to the next poor fool who came along. I shut the locker door and grabbed my bag.
“Why don’t you come stay with Robert and me?”
It was a sweet gesture. How do you tell your BFF you would rather retch than stay with her and her husband?
“He still has that single friend of his, Jackie. The divorced guy, not the younger guy. The younger guy found someone on Tinder a couple of days ago. But the divorced one is still available. We can set the two of you up…”
Ugh…
I was struggling with telling Jill I would rather have my lips surgically sewn to a monkey’s ass than get setup on a date with her husband’s divorced friend, and another nurse came into the locker room. Karen Sullivan, resident busy-body and barely a friend to me.
“Oh, Jackie, you’re still here?”
News travels quick on a small hospital staff…
“On my way out now, Karen.”
“They just brought a guy in. Looks kind of like that dirty hitman that was in here the night you ran out. He’s in bad shape though, gunshot wound. He’s down in room 315…”
Chapter 30
Jackie
One flight of stairs and two hallways and I was sprinting to room 315. Jill had been with me from the start, but she started falling behind me halfway up the stairs. Any other day she would have lapped me, but I needed to see Micky. I got to the open doorway and I threw myself in.
He looked bad. He looked like he had been worked over hard. Arm in a sling where the bullet had gotten him and lacerations up and down what I could see of his body. Half his face was bandaged and the half that wasn’t was staring back at me with an icy hate. He wasn’t Micky, but he was plenty familiar to me.
“What the fuck are you looking at, you filthy whore?”
Jimmy Giovani, every bit the gentleman I had remembered from the last time I saw him, although I thought by this point he had joined the non-living. Although by the looks of him, he had gotten most of the way there.
“I don’t understand.”
I said it out loud, although I wasn’t really talking to Jimmy. I thought Micky had killed him. Talking to him made as much as sense as talking to a ghost.
Although a ghost probably would have been friendlier.
“What do you mean you don’t fucking understand, you stupid bitch? Go get me a drink of water.”
His right arm was in traction and his left arm was in a sling. Where he had been shot was obvious, and I walked over to look at the wound.
“I don’t work here anymore, Jimmy. And don’t call me a stupid bitch.”
I placed the flat part of my thumb on the center of his wound and pushed, relishing the groan that came out of his filthy mouth. When I was satisfied that his manners were going to be a little better, I asked him again nicely.
“I thought Micky killed you.”
He didn’t answer right away so I moved my hand back towards his shoulder and he grimaced.
“He should have fucking killed me. He didn’t have the guts. He shot me in the shoulder and then handed me over to Sammy. Fucking guy didn’t even have the nerve to finish me off himself.”
I turned to see Jill standing in the doorway looking at both of us.
“Who the hell is that? That’s not your guy, is it?”
That struck Jimmy as funny and he let out a hideous, obnoxiously loud laugh.
“Your guy. Listen to that. Two days on the run and you fell in love with Micky Steele you stupid…”
The word ‘bitch’ was getting ready to roll off his tongue and I motioned towards his shoulder with my thumb. It was enough to slow him up but not enough to keep him from talking.
“Don’t get too used to the idea of you two together, sweetheart. When I get out of this bed I’m going to find him and skin him alive. If you’re around, I might even play nice and let you watch. If my old man hasn’t killed him already.”
He was vile and I was considering whether I wanted to punch him in the shoulder with the gunshot wound. But as I stood there thinking about it, the room started to darken.
Two men were in the doorway, or at least standing in front of it on the other side of the door frame, blocking out the light from the hall. Two big bodies, neither one speaking, and then they came through the doorway, one big body at a time.
“Oh great,” Jimmy said. “Now I have the fucking Thirteens to deal with. What do you two fucking bozos want?”
Jill
had managed to squirm out of the way of the guy in front and had scooted along the wall to get next to me. For a few awkward seconds I thought neither of them were going to speak. Somewhere in my brain I started readying myself for more gunfire. But then the guy in front spoke first.
“Your old man sent us to bring you back, Jimmy. He was afraid for your safety, and he wanted to make sure we kept an eye on you. He said he wanted to make sure you didn’t get lost on the way home. He’s got some things he needs to talk to you about.”
The edge suddenly disappeared from Jimmy’s face. The edge had suddenly disappeared from Jimmy’s whole attitude. The three of them were exchanging looks without saying a word, and it was no longer any place for two women to be hanging out. I grabbed Jill by the hand and weaved my way between two big Italian bodies.
“See ya, Jimmy. Wouldn’t want to be ya.”
Chapter 31
Jackie
“You sure you don’t want to come stay with us, sweetheart? The guest room is all made up, you can stay there as long as you like.”
“Jill, honey, I think a week ago I would have jumped on that offer. Right now, another minute I spend in this city is a minute too long.”
“I understand, honey. Shoot me a text and let me know where you end up going.”
I hugged her like she was the only thing left that I cared about, because in a way she was. She kissed me and turned to head back up to her floor and I grabbed my bag full of stuff.
Crap, actually. A bag full of crap representing the last eighteen months of working the graveyard shift. Go me.
I walked out of the front doors of County General for the last time and headed towards my car. It was already getting dark but the Beetle stood out in the parking lot like a big ol’ sore thumb. As much as I had always liked the old Beetle, I stopped and gave it a hard look.
Maybe Micky was right. Maybe it was time to get something new.
“Mustang. You’re much more of a Mustang girl. Not boring, fast and loose.”
I didn’t even realize he had been there and I just about pissed myself as I spun around in the dark. Three days on the run had obviously not turned me into a cagey, stone cold killer. That and the fact my heart melted a little bit as Micky stepped out of the darkness. Handsome as ever and very much alive.
“You’re not dead.”
“Keen observation. You must be a nurse.”
“Not anymore. Officially fired as of an hour ago.”
“I’m sorry, Jackie.”
“I’m not sorry, Micky.”
He nodded his head at me. I had thought I was ready to leave here when I was still in the hospital. I was absolutely certain of it now that I was standing there looking at him.
“Why’d you come back, Micky?”
I stepped towards him and he stepped out of the shadows he had been standing in. One man, one Hawaiian shirt, and two leather briefcases—and everything about the package was drop dead gorgeous.
“I thought maybe you’d want to go away with me for a while. I mean, seeing as how you’re presently unemployed.”
“What’s with the briefcases? Did one of them have babies?”
He lifted the one in his right hand. Brand spanking new leather with shiny spindle locks—a stark contrast to the sorry excuse in his left hand that had been to hell in back.
“Big Poppa Giovani, do you believe this guy? I offer to buy my way out for a half million dollars, and he refuses to take my money. He thanked me for saving his life and sparing his kid. He gave me a half million dollars. Employer matching program he says—do you believe that shit? How many legitimate companies are there anymore that do that kind of thing?”
“Seriously?”
“I’m as serious as a heart attack, Jackie. The man is a big softie. I mean, he gets a lot of bad press for killing people, but deep down inside, he is really a sweet old guy. Although he was originally only going to give me two hundred and fifty grand.”
“Really? How’d you convince him to give you five hundred?”
“I didn’t have to convince him of anything. I told him there was a girl I wanted to marry and fly off somewhere to never come back again. The guy is as sentimental as he is ruthless. He gave me the other two fifty as a wedding gift.”
“You’re so full of shit.”
He laughed and looked at me, and I knew he wasn’t full of shit. And then he put his arm around me and I didn’t care.
“Totally serious, Jackie. So you kind of need to do this now. You need to marry me and we need to get out of here.”
He started walking me towards the car.
“I’ll marry you, Micky, but where are we going? Tahiti?”
“I’ve got two words for you. Bora Bora.”
“Get in the car, Micky. We can talk about it on the way to the airport.”
Thanks for Reading!
If you liked what you read, please consider clicking this link to leave me a review!
Want free books? Click this link to join my mailing list – and if you want advance copies of my books make sure to join my ARC team!
Vivian Connelly on Amazon.com
Other books by Vivian Connelly
Dirty Neighbor
A one night stand, a simmering family feud and a hastily arranged marriage of convenience - what could possibly go wrong?
Jonathon
The Hawthornes - ugh, even hearing the name makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
If my father was going to scrap with another family in my crummy home town, it was no surprise it turned out to be them.
I'm sure they're as sharp as a bag full of hammers, so I'll help him settle this thing and then it's back to Chicago where I belong.
But as long as I'm here, I might as well take a chance on that little firecracker across the bar.
She's gorgeous, and it's not like I'll ever see her again, so what have I got to lose?
Olivia
I agreed to come home one last time, but I'm only helping my father out of a jam.
As soon as I settle this stupid little skirmish with the McCallisters, it's back to New York City where I belong.
But since I'm here for a few days, I might as well take a drink from that tall, handsome glass of water looking at me from across the bar.
It would be the most fun I've ever had in this sleepy little town, and then I'll be out of here for good.
Now available at Amazon.com and on Kindle Unlimited!
Dirty CEO
Who knew corporate espionage could be such HARD work...
Jennifer
All my friends got married out of college, but that wasn't the road for me.
I wanted to make a name for myself in the business world, and keeping a man around was only going to hold me back.
Sure, I could have used my looks to get ahead, but I promised myself that I would conquer the world using my brains and not my beauty.
But then my mentor asked me to compromise the sexy CEO of our biggest competitor, and all those plans went right out the friggin' window...
Ethan
There are two things that motivate me in this world: money and women.
Maybe not in that particular order...
But if there's one thing I've learned in business, it's never get involved with a female employee.
Screwing around with someone in the company can only lead to trouble, and I'm a man with way too much to lose.
But then my HR Director hired a goddess for our marketing position, and all those plans went right out the effin' window...
Now available at Amazon.com and on Kindle Unlimited!
grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share
Dirty Hitman Page 13